Kate Starbird
LightNews LightNews
banner
katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird
@katestarbird.bsky.social
88K followers 2.9K following 3.9K posts

Researcher of online rumors & disinformation. Former basketball player. Prof at University of Washington, HCDE. Co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Personal account: Views may not reflect those of my employer. #RageAgainstTheBullshitMachine .. more

Videos

Catherine Evelyn Starbird is an American computer scientist and former women's professional basketball player.

Source: Wikipedia
Communication & Media Studies 30%
Sociology 18%
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · Mar 27
On Feb 24, I gave a lecture at UW explaining what my team's decade-plus research on online rumors during crises reveals about the right wing "bullshit machine." Fittingly, a lightning strike impacted the original audio. Here's a fixed version w/ the full transcript: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjiG...
A Spotlight on Rumors
YouTube video by UW (University of Washington)
www.youtube.com

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
That sucks. Sorry for all of that. Hope the results were better than the process.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
Why not just heat the room and lose the gown? And then provide some sangria, and maybe let’s go for a Mediterranean beach vibe. (Okay, I’m getting punchy…)

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
Especially not tall women. Where are my knees supposed to go? Seriously.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
OMG. Next time I’m tying it on like a cape… that’s a brilliant idea.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
I need to make a note in my calendar…

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
I think I would have laughed out loud at that. It’s ridiculous.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
Pretty sure it’s in the script, because she asked me in exactly the same way for both scans / breasts.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4h
AND, what’s up with the gown games? Take the gown off one arm but leave it hanging from the other. Why? The tech is about to cup my breast and smash it into the vice thing. Is that dangling gown supposed to help me retain some kind of dignity? It feels like it’s having the opposite effect.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 5h
Also, bad idea to do bench press the day before a breast exam. Disrecommend.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 5h
Had a breast exam today. After being contorted & smushed into a glass shield, then gracelessly crushed w/ a vice, the tech asked if I was okay. I said my neck was stiff. She replied, “And you’re only 50. I put 80-year olds in this thing.” My one thought: No way this device was designed by women.

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Kate Starbird

davekarpf.bsky.social
Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 15h
I scribbled down all my shutdown-related intrusive thoughts and put them in a blog post.

open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...
The Shutdown Surrender
I just... I mean... Whatever.
open.substack.com

Reposted by Will Jennings, Peter Thorne, Brendan Nyhan , and 10 more

bgrueskin.bsky.social
Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 1d
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Reposted by Kate Starbird

lageneralista.ca
Alicia Wanless @lageneralista.ca · 3d
I’m speechless over this one: www.fpol.no/the-informat...
The Information Animal: Alicia Wanless on Power, Truth, and Technology | Forskningspolitikk
Alicia Wanless’s The Information Animal: Humans, Technology and the Competition for Reality delivers a sweeping study of how societies shape — and get shaped by — their information environments.
www.fpol.no

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 3d
“Early calls” are a common focus of rumors about election integrity. They contribute to uncertainty and can feed conspiracy theories about politically motivated “calls” (from one side) and changed votes (from the other).
taniel.bsky.social Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 3d
This is why you don't rush calls: King County has been very transparent (including on here!) about the number of ballots left, but then this happens and some will surely say something shady is happening.

Making calls shouldn't undermine trust! www.kuow.org/stories/kuow...

Reposted by Melanie C. Green, Kate Starbird

taniel.bsky.social
Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 3d
This is why you don't rush calls: King County has been very transparent (including on here!) about the number of ballots left, but then this happens and some will surely say something shady is happening.

Making calls shouldn't undermine trust! www.kuow.org/stories/kuow...

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Kate Starbird

protectdemocracy.org
Protect Democracy @protectdemocracy.org · 3d
WATCH: Counsel @haydenjohnson.bsky.social breaks down the key aspects of our victory against the Trump admin’s violent and unconstitutional actions in the Chicago area. Threaded ⬇️

If you're in the area & have witnessed misconduct by ICE & other federal agents, report them at tinyurl.com/chicagoTRO

Reposted by Charles W. Smith, Lindsay M. Tedds, David Murakami Wood , and 1 more

lukelebrun.ca
Luke LeBrun @lukelebrun.ca · 3d
Hi Bluesky 👋

Small life update: I’m at the centre of a multimillion dollar lawsuit in Alberta launched by a failed candidate for Jason Kenney’s UCP

It may be the longest and most expensive media trial in Canadian history

I’m ready to go public about it and I want to share more details with you 🧵

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
Would be very interested about building a feed around election integrity specifically in 2026.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
You sold me on the first paragraph of the article, which was <chef’s kiss>. I’m teaching a class on online bullshit today that ends with a design task for the students. Let’s see if I can get any of them to start thinking in this direction.

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
Collaborative news curation as a service, demonstrating the value of social media based on protocols, not platforms and a “playbook for killing information voids.”
graze.social Graze Social @graze.social · 4d
On Tuesday night, you may have noticed something a little different on Bluesky. Here's a peek behind the scenes of how the election feed came together. Endlessly grateful for this collaboration with @wnyc.org/@gothamist.com & @bsky.app!
About The Other Night...
How Graze is defining the next era of a decentralized, open social attention economy.
graze.leaflet.pub

Reposted by Will Jennings, Kate Starbird

graze.social
Graze Social @graze.social · 4d
On Tuesday night, you may have noticed something a little different on Bluesky. Here's a peek behind the scenes of how the election feed came together. Endlessly grateful for this collaboration with @wnyc.org/@gothamist.com & @bsky.app!
About The Other Night...
How Graze is defining the next era of a decentralized, open social attention economy.
graze.leaflet.pub

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
230 would shield them from (some) liability for content posted by third parties, but only in the U.S. Maybe the fines are occurring in other countries?

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
This is appalling. There has to be a way to hold massive companies accountable for *knowingly* facilitating & profiting from criminal behavior. And yes, I understand the value of Section 230, but here we have a trillion $ company that profits by letting its users get scammed. Has to be a better way.

Reposted by Meredith Broussard, Kate Starbird

jonkeegan.com
Jon Keegan @jonkeegan.com · 4d
Over the years I have read A LOT of damning stories about what Meta executives were saying internally about serious harms on their platforms (most of them written by Reuters’ @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social ). His new story is a blockbuster:
www.reuters.com/investigatio...

sherwood.news/tech/meta-pr...
Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports
The report shows that the company was hesitant to crack down harder on scams, due to the billions in revenue that they were generating for Meta....
sherwood.news

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 4d
Sky News does a great job here of showing that right wing voices get outsized amplification on X. The why of it is complicated (we have upcoming work on this). But the fact if it is undeniable. The platform is also full of clickbaity bullshit. Not unrelated.
socialmedialab.ca Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d
A fantastic piece of data journalism. #JournalismMatters💪

"How Elon Musk is Boosting the British Right. For nine months, Sky News' Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X's algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does."
news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com

Reposted by Mor Naaman, Gerald Friedman, Kate Starbird

carlquintanilla.bsky.social
Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4d
(Reuters) - Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.

$META @reuters.com
www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Reposted by Kate Starbird, Aleksandra Urman

socialmedialab.ca
Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 4d
A fantastic piece of data journalism. #JournalismMatters💪

"How Elon Musk is Boosting the British Right. For nine months, Sky News' Data and Forensics team has been investigating whether X's algorithm amplifies right-wing and extreme content. It does."
news.sky.com/story/the-x-...
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com

Reposted by Kate Starbird

dr-amykate.bsky.social
Amy thinks this episode of Black Mirror sucks @dr-amykate.bsky.social · 5d
#Seattle peeps! Does the #HousingCrisis and growing #Homelessness concern you? Come to the FREE Seattle premiere of a new documentary on consequences of eviction for kids and families.
* Friday, Nov. 7, 7 p.m.
* Kakao - 415 Westlake Ave N

Registration required

www.eventbrite.com/e/evicting-t...

Reposted by Greg Linden

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 5d
Not sure about everyone else, but I’m encouraged today (elated?) that we learned last night that we can beat candidates/parties of bullshit, AI slop, corruption, and authoritarianism without emulating them and without tacking towards a false center between us and them.