Alex Mahadevan
@alexmahadevan.com
Director of MediaWise and faculty doing AI, media literacy and OSINT stuff @poynterinstitute.bsky.social | alexmahadevan.com
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Merlin rocks. Could not issue a stronger “check it out”
‘It brings you closer to the natural world’: the rise of the Merlin birdsong identifying app
‘It brings you closer to the natural world’: the rise of the Merlin birdsong identifying app
Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 bird species around the world
www.theguardian.com
December 27, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Merlin rocks. Could not issue a stronger “check it out”
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
404 Media is about to enter energy saver mode. We're still publishing throughout the week, however, so watch your inbox / RSS / the @404media.co feed and you won't miss us too badly.
Before we all slip into the ether, I wanted to highlight a few stories I published this year that stuck out. 🧵🪡
Before we all slip into the ether, I wanted to highlight a few stories I published this year that stuck out. 🧵🪡
December 23, 2025 at 5:00 PM
404 Media is about to enter energy saver mode. We're still publishing throughout the week, however, so watch your inbox / RSS / the @404media.co feed and you won't miss us too badly.
Before we all slip into the ether, I wanted to highlight a few stories I published this year that stuck out. 🧵🪡
Before we all slip into the ether, I wanted to highlight a few stories I published this year that stuck out. 🧵🪡
Lmao
This is 404 Media's @jasonkoebler.bsky.social waving at himself through a Flock camera; one of 60 we learned was left exposed to the open internet. Not only could anyone with a link livestream it, but some admin portals were open with no login credentials required.
www.404media.co/flock-expose...
www.404media.co/flock-expose...
December 22, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Lmao
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from Editor-in-Chief Katie Sanders:
PolitiFact names 2025 the Year of the Lies
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from…
buff.ly
December 22, 2025 at 3:45 PM
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from Editor-in-Chief Katie Sanders:
Doing an analysis of Community Notes evidence links. New favorite domain
December 20, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Doing an analysis of Community Notes evidence links. New favorite domain
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
People don't go to their favorite restaurants just to eat, and they don't rely on news organizations solely for information. The business of news is about more than selling bits of information in exchange for attention. It's about delivering an EXPERIENCE that people actually want to participate in.
December 20, 2025 at 4:58 AM
People don't go to their favorite restaurants just to eat, and they don't rely on news organizations solely for information. The business of news is about more than selling bits of information in exchange for attention. It's about delivering an EXPERIENCE that people actually want to participate in.
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from Editor-in-Chief Katie Sanders:
PolitiFact names 2025 the Year of the Lies
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from…
buff.ly
December 18, 2025 at 7:59 PM
“It’s time to revisit the basics of why it’s important to call out lies. They’re more than just words. Lies harm livelihoods and families.” Read why PolitiFact named 2025 the Year of the Lies, from Editor-in-Chief Katie Sanders:
Y'all left out the funniest part. The wife of the sexy anime art husband is A MORMON
December 17, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Y'all left out the funniest part. The wife of the sexy anime art husband is A MORMON
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Just hours after the Bondi shooting, we saw a near-instant generation of closed loop of AI misinformation:
It appears that AI was used to generate a lie, which was then absorbed by AI, then regurgitated to others in a breaking news situation.
www.crikey.com.au/20...
It appears that AI was used to generate a lie, which was then absorbed by AI, then regurgitated to others in a breaking news situation.
www.crikey.com.au/20...
December 16, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Just hours after the Bondi shooting, we saw a near-instant generation of closed loop of AI misinformation:
It appears that AI was used to generate a lie, which was then absorbed by AI, then regurgitated to others in a breaking news situation.
www.crikey.com.au/20...
It appears that AI was used to generate a lie, which was then absorbed by AI, then regurgitated to others in a breaking news situation.
www.crikey.com.au/20...
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
With victims fighting for their lives and many dead in the Bondi terrorist attack, misinformation online is exploiting their suffering.
www.aap.com.au/factcheck/mi...
www.aap.com.au/factcheck/mi...
Misinformation exploits confusion, grief after Bondi attack
With victims fighting for their lives and many dead in the Bondi terrorist attack, misinformation online is exploiting their suffering.
www.aap.com.au
December 16, 2025 at 12:47 AM
With victims fighting for their lives and many dead in the Bondi terrorist attack, misinformation online is exploiting their suffering.
www.aap.com.au/factcheck/mi...
www.aap.com.au/factcheck/mi...
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
"Most local news organizations already place some value on their archives. The most common way they do this is by putting most of it behind a paywall" www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/loca...
December 14, 2025 at 5:16 PM
"Most local news organizations already place some value on their archives. The most common way they do this is by putting most of it behind a paywall" www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/loca...
re: the new iOS, does anyone *really* like being able to se when someone is typing???
December 10, 2025 at 7:02 PM
re: the new iOS, does anyone *really* like being able to se when someone is typing???
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Boas coisas para pensar neste texto publicado pelo @reutersinstitute.bsky.social e que ouviu o mestre @alexmahadevan.com. "Como a prosa gerada por IA diverge da escrita humana e por que isso importa".
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-ai-...
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-ai-...
How AI-generated prose diverges from human writing and why it matters
Delve, intricate, underscore, commendable. These English words are seeing an uptick in usage. You may also recognise them as hallmarks of ChatGPT’s prose.Over the past couple of years, numerous observ...
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk
December 9, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Boas coisas para pensar neste texto publicado pelo @reutersinstitute.bsky.social e que ouviu o mestre @alexmahadevan.com. "Como a prosa gerada por IA diverge da escrita humana e por que isso importa".
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-ai-...
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-ai-...
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
What makes me angriest about the fake AI videos where people yell at ICE is that there’s a million actual videos, there’s actual priests being pelted with pepper balls, it’s just that the real priest didn’t say “we worship the real God not your ORANGE one” so he wasn’t quippy enough
December 7, 2025 at 1:55 PM
What makes me angriest about the fake AI videos where people yell at ICE is that there’s a million actual videos, there’s actual priests being pelted with pepper balls, it’s just that the real priest didn’t say “we worship the real God not your ORANGE one” so he wasn’t quippy enough
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Another thing I read recently: The AI and Journalism Research Working Group (of which my colleague @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social and I are a part), convened by the @cnti.bsky.social has synthesised findings from 55 studies to evaluate how AI transcription & translation tools are impacting journalism
AI Transcription and Translation in Journalism
Working Group Briefing #2: November 2025
cnti.org
December 4, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Another thing I read recently: The AI and Journalism Research Working Group (of which my colleague @amyrossarguedas.bsky.social and I are a part), convened by the @cnti.bsky.social has synthesised findings from 55 studies to evaluate how AI transcription & translation tools are impacting journalism
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Manic-Depressive Friend A Blast While Manic https://theonion.com/manic-depressive-friend-a-blast-while-manic-1819566927/
December 2, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Manic-Depressive Friend A Blast While Manic https://theonion.com/manic-depressive-friend-a-blast-while-manic-1819566927/
How the Washington Post describes Zero Units vs. @propublica.org’s actual investigation.
December 2, 2025 at 12:22 PM
How the Washington Post describes Zero Units vs. @propublica.org’s actual investigation.
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
🚨 New working paper 🚨
Can LLMs with reasoning + web search reliably fact-check political claims?
We evaluated 15 models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek on 6,000+ PolitiFact claims (2007–2024).
Short answer: Not reliably—unless you give them curated evidence.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.18749
Can LLMs with reasoning + web search reliably fact-check political claims?
We evaluated 15 models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek on 6,000+ PolitiFact claims (2007–2024).
Short answer: Not reliably—unless you give them curated evidence.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.18749
November 29, 2025 at 10:06 PM
🚨 New working paper 🚨
Can LLMs with reasoning + web search reliably fact-check political claims?
We evaluated 15 models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek on 6,000+ PolitiFact claims (2007–2024).
Short answer: Not reliably—unless you give them curated evidence.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.18749
Can LLMs with reasoning + web search reliably fact-check political claims?
We evaluated 15 models from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek on 6,000+ PolitiFact claims (2007–2024).
Short answer: Not reliably—unless you give them curated evidence.
arxiv.org/abs/2511.18749
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
Among the many reasons newsrooms ought to have clear ethical guidelines around the use of AI... (cc: @alexmahadevan.com) The journalistic benefits of doing something like this (are there any?) pretty clearly do not outweigh all the negatives (i.e., confusing and annoying your audience).
KSTP meteorologist posting AI videos on Twitter of what he says is what Minneapolis will look like if his forecast is correct is really something… not a valid weather news source going forward imo
November 26, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Among the many reasons newsrooms ought to have clear ethical guidelines around the use of AI... (cc: @alexmahadevan.com) The journalistic benefits of doing something like this (are there any?) pretty clearly do not outweigh all the negatives (i.e., confusing and annoying your audience).
Well, Google's whole Gemini SynthID AI detector is certainly not working. AND a hallucinated interview!
November 21, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Well, Google's whole Gemini SynthID AI detector is certainly not working. AND a hallucinated interview!
If anyone thinks brain rot is something new, please check out Pomplamoose
From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot? www.wired.com/story/the-gr...
The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming
From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot?
www.wired.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM
If anyone thinks brain rot is something new, please check out Pomplamoose
Yoooo @murderxbryan.bsky.social, Ryan Lizza hit Olivia Nuzzi with a Guys classic
November 18, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Yoooo @murderxbryan.bsky.social, Ryan Lizza hit Olivia Nuzzi with a Guys classic
Really embarrassing stuff!!
November 18, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Really embarrassing stuff!!
Hell yeah BCHC
Turnstile’s unforgettable 2025 just got better: The Baltimore hardcore band earned five Grammy nominations. buff.ly/iNGepEB
November 7, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Hell yeah BCHC
Reposted by Alex Mahadevan
✨New working paper on the trade-offs involved in AI transparency in news 🤖📝
Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.
Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.
November 7, 2025 at 4:45 PM
✨New working paper on the trade-offs involved in AI transparency in news 🤖📝
Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.
Based on a case study of the @financialtimes.com, Liz Lohn and I argue that transparency about AI in news is a spectrum, evolving with tech, commercial, professional & ethical considerations & audience attitudes.