Ryan McGrady
@antisomniac.bsky.social
The internet, YouTube, Wikipedia, NYC, birds, media... Sr Research Fellow at UMass Amherst Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure, Media Cloud.
Places:
rhododendrites.com
Rhododendrites @ Wikipedia/Instagram/Threads
Antisomniac @ Mastodon.social
Places:
rhododendrites.com
Rhododendrites @ Wikipedia/Instagram/Threads
Antisomniac @ Mastodon.social
Pinned
The block log: 20 years of content moderation on Wikipedia - Ryan McGrady, 2025
This study examines two decades of user blocking on the English Wikipedia to understand how a volunteer-run, non-profit platform has adapted its content moderat...
journals.sagepub.com
New paper out today: The Blocklog: 20 Years of Content Moderation on Wikipedia. In New Media & Society. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
I have a short essay in Communications of the ACM about the new scraping wars between AI companies and websites, and how the fault lines are less clear than they were last time around.
cacm.acm.org/opinion/ai-s...
1/3
cacm.acm.org/opinion/ai-s...
1/3
cacm.acm.org
December 30, 2025 at 12:05 AM
I have a short essay in Communications of the ACM about the new scraping wars between AI companies and websites, and how the fault lines are less clear than they were last time around.
cacm.acm.org/opinion/ai-s...
1/3
cacm.acm.org/opinion/ai-s...
1/3
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, creative works from 1930 & sound recordings from 1925 will enter the public domain in the US, like:
💄 Dizzy Dishes, first Betty Boop cartoon
🕵️♀️ First 4 Nancy Drew novels
🚂 The Little Engine That Could
🎩 Morocco
🍑 Georgia on My Mind
and many more!
🧵👇
💄 Dizzy Dishes, first Betty Boop cartoon
🕵️♀️ First 4 Nancy Drew novels
🚂 The Little Engine That Could
🎩 Morocco
🍑 Georgia on My Mind
and many more!
🧵👇
December 26, 2025 at 2:01 PM
When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, creative works from 1930 & sound recordings from 1925 will enter the public domain in the US, like:
💄 Dizzy Dishes, first Betty Boop cartoon
🕵️♀️ First 4 Nancy Drew novels
🚂 The Little Engine That Could
🎩 Morocco
🍑 Georgia on My Mind
and many more!
🧵👇
💄 Dizzy Dishes, first Betty Boop cartoon
🕵️♀️ First 4 Nancy Drew novels
🚂 The Little Engine That Could
🎩 Morocco
🍑 Georgia on My Mind
and many more!
🧵👇
These ads made me think again about Steve Mann, who was pitching head-mounted displays and augmented reality to block ads (among other things) like 25 years ago. Seems like potential killer app, but wearables are made by attention, not hardware companies these days. www.curbed.com/article/tech...
The Year of Subway Slop
AI and nonsense ads trolled us on our commutes.
www.curbed.com
December 29, 2025 at 3:45 PM
These ads made me think again about Steve Mann, who was pitching head-mounted displays and augmented reality to block ads (among other things) like 25 years ago. Seems like potential killer app, but wearables are made by attention, not hardware companies these days. www.curbed.com/article/tech...
New paper out today: The Blocklog: 20 Years of Content Moderation on Wikipedia. In New Media & Society. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
The block log: 20 years of content moderation on Wikipedia - Ryan McGrady, 2025
This study examines two decades of user blocking on the English Wikipedia to understand how a volunteer-run, non-profit platform has adapted its content moderat...
journals.sagepub.com
December 29, 2025 at 3:34 AM
New paper out today: The Blocklog: 20 Years of Content Moderation on Wikipedia. In New Media & Society. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Albums + 90s is dirty, dirty millennialbait, but here I am.
Post a perfect album from the 1990s that isn't [an obvious one].
Post a perfect album from the 1990s that isn't [an obvious one].
December 29, 2025 at 3:10 AM
Albums + 90s is dirty, dirty millennialbait, but here I am.
Post a perfect album from the 1990s that isn't [an obvious one].
Post a perfect album from the 1990s that isn't [an obvious one].
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent. Archivists have uploaded the 60 Minutes episode Bari Weiss spiked.
Archivists Posted the 60 Minutes CECOT Segment Bari Weiss Killed
iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent. Archivists have uploaded the 60 Minutes episode Bari Weiss spiked.
www.404media.co
December 23, 2025 at 12:15 AM
iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent. Archivists have uploaded the 60 Minutes episode Bari Weiss spiked.
Spotify was archived by Anna's Archive 2 days ago. When the company starts filing lawsuits, remember this bit from the book "Spotify Teardown": Spotify *exists* because of bittorrent, and because it began ... *with an archive of pirated music*.
December 22, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Spotify was archived by Anna's Archive 2 days ago. When the company starts filing lawsuits, remember this bit from the book "Spotify Teardown": Spotify *exists* because of bittorrent, and because it began ... *with an archive of pirated music*.
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.
I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
December 5, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Let me tell you a story. Perhaps you can guess where this is going... though it does have a bit of a twist.
I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
I was poking around Google Scholar for publications about the relationship between chatbots and wellness. Oh how useful: a systematic literature review! Let's dig into the findings. 🧵
Well now that's interesting. Anna's Archive scraped nearly all of Spotify, making it available through bit torrent, starting with the metadata. Some quantitative description in the post. annas-archive.org/blog/backing...
Backing up Spotify
We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB). It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirro...
annas-archive.org
December 21, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Well now that's interesting. Anna's Archive scraped nearly all of Spotify, making it available through bit torrent, starting with the metadata. Some quantitative description in the post. annas-archive.org/blog/backing...
If only anyone said at the time that a law giving the executive branch power to ban an entire speech platform (or, of course, extract value under threat of ban) was a giant bipartisan congressional self-own.
Important to remember that the TikTok deal, which delivered the app into the hands of pro-Trump billionaires, was only made possible by President Biden and the Democrats.
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Trump turns Biden’s TikTok law into a big win
Biden officials said selling TikTok would safeguard it from political influence. Now, critics of a spinoff deal to Trump allies say that aim could be subverted.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 19, 2025 at 3:31 PM
If only anyone said at the time that a law giving the executive branch power to ban an entire speech platform (or, of course, extract value under threat of ban) was a giant bipartisan congressional self-own.
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
Gift link to an Interview with the Vanity Fair photographer who took photos of Trump’s staff. I’m struck by his response to the response: “If presenting what I saw, unfiltered, is an attack, then what would you call it had I chosen to edit it and hide things about it?” wapo.st/49ixYtq
The Vanity Fair photographer who disrupted Trumpworld’s polished image
Christopher Anderson, who photographed Trump’s team at the White House for Vanity Fair, defends his unvarnished — and extreme — close-ups.
wapo.st
December 18, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Gift link to an Interview with the Vanity Fair photographer who took photos of Trump’s staff. I’m struck by his response to the response: “If presenting what I saw, unfiltered, is an attack, then what would you call it had I chosen to edit it and hide things about it?” wapo.st/49ixYtq
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
December 16, 2025 at 11:31 PM
The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
My friend Isaac Brickman of @officehourspodcast.bsky.social and I have a new article out on middleware in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
December 15, 2025 at 2:54 PM
My friend Isaac Brickman of @officehourspodcast.bsky.social and I have a new article out on middleware in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3...
"If the court had carefully scrutinized the government’s national security arguments, it would have seen [...] a familiar example of the government exploiting national security fears to intimidate courts into giving it power that the constitution puts off limits." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The US supreme court’s TikTok ruling is a scandal | Evelyn Douek and Jameel Jaffer
The decision means TikTok now operates under the threat that it could be forced offline with a stroke of Trump’s pen
www.theguardian.com
December 15, 2025 at 9:48 PM
"If the court had carefully scrutinized the government’s national security arguments, it would have seen [...] a familiar example of the government exploiting national security fears to intimidate courts into giving it power that the constitution puts off limits." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
🎉 Celebrate Wikipedia Day NYC 2026 with us as we honor 25 years of the world's largest online encyclopedia! Enjoy keynote speeches, panel talks, edit-a-thons, family fun activities, swag, and more! 🎂 Register by Jan 20 wikipediadaynyc2026.eventbrite.com #Wikipedia25 #WikipediaDay #WikimediaNYC
Wikipedia Day NYC 2026
Join us at City Tech for a fun-filled Wikipedia Day, celebrating the website's 25th birthday with workshops, games, and more!
WikipediaDayNYC2026.eventbrite.com
December 15, 2025 at 4:15 PM
🎉 Celebrate Wikipedia Day NYC 2026 with us as we honor 25 years of the world's largest online encyclopedia! Enjoy keynote speeches, panel talks, edit-a-thons, family fun activities, swag, and more! 🎂 Register by Jan 20 wikipediadaynyc2026.eventbrite.com #Wikipedia25 #WikipediaDay #WikimediaNYC
MRC/Daily Wire's inane "expose" on Wiki Education is useful in that it's the most transparent expression of "yes, the war on Wikipedia is a direct extension of the war on education." Look, an org that supports any class supports classes we don't like!
December 11, 2025 at 9:43 PM
MRC/Daily Wire's inane "expose" on Wiki Education is useful in that it's the most transparent expression of "yes, the war on Wikipedia is a direct extension of the war on education." Look, an org that supports any class supports classes we don't like!
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
Since Elon Musk joined the Trump Administration in January 2025, Starlink has entered 26 new countries, sometimes in places where they had struggled for regulatory approval for years until they were suddenly greenlit
https://restofworld.org/2025/musk-starlink-trump-doge
https://restofworld.org/2025/musk-starlink-trump-doge
December 8, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Since Elon Musk joined the Trump Administration in January 2025, Starlink has entered 26 new countries, sometimes in places where they had struggled for regulatory approval for years until they were suddenly greenlit
https://restofworld.org/2025/musk-starlink-trump-doge
https://restofworld.org/2025/musk-starlink-trump-doge
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
It’s that time of year: what was the piece of writing about AI that stuck with you the most this year, pop press or academic? A few of mine in the thread. ⬇️
December 3, 2025 at 10:54 PM
It’s that time of year: what was the piece of writing about AI that stuck with you the most this year, pop press or academic? A few of mine in the thread. ⬇️
Recently attended the @oii.ox.ac.uk workshop on the Future of Social Media Research. Just went ahead and jotted down a few notes in a recap post here: rhododendrites.com/posts/OII-Wo... Thanks again to @manueltonneau.bsky.social and other organizers for two days of impressive sessions!
Future of Social Media Research Recap - Rhododendrites
I like the internet
rhododendrites.com
December 3, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Recently attended the @oii.ox.ac.uk workshop on the Future of Social Media Research. Just went ahead and jotted down a few notes in a recap post here: rhododendrites.com/posts/OII-Wo... Thanks again to @manueltonneau.bsky.social and other organizers for two days of impressive sessions!
Most interesting talk at this [early] morning's PlatGovNet conference was Sohini Banerjee's work on the caste/gender/labor exploitation of maid-on-demand app gig workers in India. Service upgrades like "do you want to add a background check - 3 in 10 maids are criminals!" marketing.
December 1, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Most interesting talk at this [early] morning's PlatGovNet conference was Sohini Banerjee's work on the caste/gender/labor exploitation of maid-on-demand app gig workers in India. Service upgrades like "do you want to add a background check - 3 in 10 maids are criminals!" marketing.
Perfect ending to this @theguardian.com article about the tech industry's own coddling media bubble.
“If you were a cupcake, what cupcake would be?”
“I don’t want to be a cupcake because I don’t want to be eaten,” Karp said. “I’m resisting becoming a cupcake.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
“If you were a cupcake, what cupcake would be?”
“I don’t want to be a cupcake because I don’t want to be eaten,” Karp said. “I’m resisting becoming a cupcake.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
How big tech is creating its own friendly media bubble to ‘win the narrative battle online’
At a time when distrust of big tech is high, Silicon Valley is embracing an alternative ecosystem where every CEO is a star
www.theguardian.com
December 1, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Perfect ending to this @theguardian.com article about the tech industry's own coddling media bubble.
“If you were a cupcake, what cupcake would be?”
“I don’t want to be a cupcake because I don’t want to be eaten,” Karp said. “I’m resisting becoming a cupcake.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
“If you were a cupcake, what cupcake would be?”
“I don’t want to be a cupcake because I don’t want to be eaten,” Karp said. “I’m resisting becoming a cupcake.”
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
The newest rule on the English Wikipedia is a single line: "Large language models (LLMs) can be useful tools, but they are not good at creating entirely new Wikipedia articles. Large language models should not be used to generate new Wikipedia articles from scratch."
November 24, 2025 at 9:40 PM
The newest rule on the English Wikipedia is a single line: "Large language models (LLMs) can be useful tools, but they are not good at creating entirely new Wikipedia articles. Large language models should not be used to generate new Wikipedia articles from scratch."
Planned to do some liveskying from a workshop at Oxford last week, but forgot about age verification. Rather than upload documents to Bluesky (surprised it's on board when Mastodon's not yet) I figured it could until I get back. Great workshop full of impressive people -- recap coming soon.
November 22, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Planned to do some liveskying from a workshop at Oxford last week, but forgot about age verification. Rather than upload documents to Bluesky (surprised it's on board when Mastodon's not yet) I figured it could until I get back. Great workshop full of impressive people -- recap coming soon.
Reposted by Ryan McGrady
YouTube's reach in the US is astounding. It's used by:
62% of kids under 2 (as reported by parents)
84% of kids 2-4 (as reported by parents)
89% of kids 5-12 (as reported by parents)
90% of teens 13-17
95% of adults 18-29
92% of adults 30-49
85% of adults 50-64
64% of adults 65+
62% of kids under 2 (as reported by parents)
84% of kids 2-4 (as reported by parents)
89% of kids 5-12 (as reported by parents)
90% of teens 13-17
95% of adults 18-29
92% of adults 30-49
85% of adults 50-64
64% of adults 65+
November 20, 2025 at 10:36 PM
YouTube's reach in the US is astounding. It's used by:
62% of kids under 2 (as reported by parents)
84% of kids 2-4 (as reported by parents)
89% of kids 5-12 (as reported by parents)
90% of teens 13-17
95% of adults 18-29
92% of adults 30-49
85% of adults 50-64
64% of adults 65+
62% of kids under 2 (as reported by parents)
84% of kids 2-4 (as reported by parents)
89% of kids 5-12 (as reported by parents)
90% of teens 13-17
95% of adults 18-29
92% of adults 30-49
85% of adults 50-64
64% of adults 65+