Dr. Casey Fiesler
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cfiesler.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Fiesler
@cfiesler.bsky.social

information science professor (tech ethics + internet stuff)
kind of a content creator (elsewhere also @professorcasey)
though not influencing anyone to do anything except maybe learn things
she/her
more: casey.prof

Casey Fiesler is an American associate professor at University of Colorado Boulder who studies technology policy, internet law and policy, and public communication.

Source: Wikipedia
Computer science 40%
Communication & Media Studies 18%

My management is that it’s not really a side hustle because I’ve always made very very little money and don’t particularly care if I make any :)

I get the points you’re making, I just disagree with you! (And also am pointing out the difference between my students and the general public in terms of my educational goals.)

Nope not at all! Also if it gets worse than this kind of thing I’ll reevaluate. I mostly just find comments about my appearance to be pathetic and sad. On other platforms it’s usually about my glasses though. :)

Yes I’m aware. I also can’t do anymore on that point than myself and my colleagues already have (speaking to people higher up making these decisions) but I can at least assure you that my students know about the fediverse.

As a single data point someone commented on one of my videos about AI on FB recently expressing that they had no idea AI can make things up. I get your point but I personally think that’s a net positive.

I don’t think that the people who are explicitly seeking out education are necessarily the ones who need it the most.

As for my students, I can talk to them directly about costs and benefits of social media platforms. Also my students for the most part are not on FB because it’s “for old people.”

So is mine. And actually the reason I started the page (which was easy to do because it’s cross posting from Instagram) was that someone said to me “you know who I want to see your content? My dad. But he’s only on Facebook” haha.

Oh it’s definitely not. I barely use FB at all anymore in a personal capacity. This is my public page just for educational content.

Given that they’re commenting on a public Facebook page it’s entirely possible that their comment will show up in their friends’ feeds. :)

FAQ: ugh Casey why are you even posting on Facebook especially if it’s so toxic?

There is an older demographic on Facebook who are not on other platforms and who may not be seeing any educational content about e.g. AI anywhere else.

Because I’m an educator, and this is where people who need education are.

Y’all. In case you were wondering, Facebook is the absolute worst. These were the first two comments on an educational video about social media privacy and impression management.

I am fascinated by how/why (I have theories) FB comments are so much worse than other platforms for me.

Pleased to share that at least temporarily, in honor of winter break, I have successfully trained most of my algorithmic social media to stop showing me AI news and instead to be highly concentrated on hockey romance and stardew valley. So anyway I might avoid THIS site for a couple of weeks. :)

With a system set up for peer review, sure! Which then essentially sets up a journal.

There are certainly out of the box models out there but it’s absolutely not trivial.

Kindle is doing this and all my author friends are livid.

Yes, see the update at the end of this thread!

It would have been disappointing to hear that I’d published over 100 things with not an academic publisher haha.

Yes it is.

haha thanks! It’s just my most recent ACM paper. :)

Update! This is essentially what I suggested as a “bare minimum” action but I think these are really important. I hope ACM also responds directly and has more to say. bsky.app/profile/jona...
Update: the ACM DL is being updated so that author-provided abstracts are the default view again, and AI summaries are more explicitly labeled with "AI-Summary". These changes should be visible worldwide by sometime tomorrow.
Update: the ACM DL is being updated so that author-provided abstracts are the default view again, and AI summaries are more explicitly labeled with "AI-Summary". These changes should be visible worldwide by sometime tomorrow.

Oh this is probably just because you’re not logged in with a “premium” account.

My understanding from a couple of different sources is that they’re well aware of the reaction at this point (and are hopefully preparing to do something!). I’m going to write to them myself but if they don’t have a response soon this isn’t a bad idea.

Please say more.

And of course, many authors might choose to use generative AI to help them do this. But then at least it would be their choices involved, and they would maintain responsibility in the narrative.

If you're interested in accessibly summarizing your papers yourself: cfiesler.medium.com/why-and-how-...
Why (and how) academics should blog their papers
Encouragement and tips for writing accessible, public-facing versions of your research papers
cfiesler.medium.com

If the legibility of research is a problem that ACM cares about - and I personally think it should be! - then the author of every ACM publication should be encouraged/supported to write an accessible, layperson's summary of their paper that could be connected to the DL entry for the paper.

In 2018 when I was communications chair for CSCW, I started a Medium publication where authors write blog posts based on papers published for the conference: medium.com/acm-cscw

These are not linked in the DL entry for the papers- they could be! They're way better than AI summaries.
ACM CSCW Blog
Research from the ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work and social computing
medium.com

A thought: If the problem ACM is trying to solve with AI summaries is that papers are written inaccessibly and some papers are hard to understand, here's another solution:

Actively support authors in (a) writing accessibly in their papers; and (b) writing their own public-facing summaries.

Nope! At least not based on my pubs.

Reposted by Mor Naaman

I haven’t looked at all of mine, but of the couple I did, one seemed fine and one had a small error that was fairly inconsequential. I’d be interested in what kinds of mistakes folks who have mentioned them are seeing!