Lindsay Popowski
@popowski.bsky.social
phd-ing @ stanford hci
online groups, social platform design, and mental models. also books. books books books.
online groups, social platform design, and mental models. also books. books books books.
We're doing a follow-up (in-person) workshop @ CSCW! Positech 2: Design for Hope will explore how design methodologies can help us envision and achieve positive social futures AND how these processes cultivate hope in the face of otherwise overwhelming challenges. More: positech-cscw-2025.github.io
July 14, 2025 at 11:01 PM
We're doing a follow-up (in-person) workshop @ CSCW! Positech 2: Design for Hope will explore how design methodologies can help us envision and achieve positive social futures AND how these processes cultivate hope in the face of otherwise overwhelming challenges. More: positech-cscw-2025.github.io
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
Following up on last year’s Positech workshop, thrilled to announce our workshop @acm-cscw.bsky.social 2025 on how design might help us cultivate deliberate hope in the face of complex societal challenges, whether in our everyday or broader aspirations 🌱
cfp 👉 positech-cscw-2025.github.io
cfp 👉 positech-cscw-2025.github.io
July 14, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Following up on last year’s Positech workshop, thrilled to announce our workshop @acm-cscw.bsky.social 2025 on how design might help us cultivate deliberate hope in the face of complex societal challenges, whether in our everyday or broader aspirations 🌱
cfp 👉 positech-cscw-2025.github.io
cfp 👉 positech-cscw-2025.github.io
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'
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my keynote happening in a few mins. registration here to stream it
aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...
aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...
July 8, 2025 at 9:58 AM
a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'
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Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
i think it is a sign of low character to post something controversial knowing it will get angry comments and then insult the people who responded to your ragebait
June 30, 2025 at 12:03 PM
i think it is a sign of low character to post something controversial knowing it will get angry comments and then insult the people who responded to your ragebait
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
AI companions aren’t science fiction anymore 🤖💬❤️
Thousands are turning to AI chatbots for emotional connection – finding comfort, sharing secrets, and even falling in love. But as AI companionship grows, the line between real and artificial relationships blurs.
Thousands are turning to AI chatbots for emotional connection – finding comfort, sharing secrets, and even falling in love. But as AI companionship grows, the line between real and artificial relationships blurs.
June 18, 2025 at 4:27 PM
AI companions aren’t science fiction anymore 🤖💬❤️
Thousands are turning to AI chatbots for emotional connection – finding comfort, sharing secrets, and even falling in love. But as AI companionship grows, the line between real and artificial relationships blurs.
Thousands are turning to AI chatbots for emotional connection – finding comfort, sharing secrets, and even falling in love. But as AI companionship grows, the line between real and artificial relationships blurs.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
As infuriating as the conservative SCOTUS is, never forget that America’s genocide against its trans population is the child of “moderate” liberal outlets like the Atlantic and the New York Times, and especially Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog, who made healthy careers out of polishing bigotry.
June 18, 2025 at 3:35 PM
As infuriating as the conservative SCOTUS is, never forget that America’s genocide against its trans population is the child of “moderate” liberal outlets like the Atlantic and the New York Times, and especially Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog, who made healthy careers out of polishing bigotry.
what is stanford hci going to do without our funniest member next year?
I'm so excited to join the CS department at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) as an Assistant Professor! I'm looking for students interested in social computing, HCI, and AI—especially around designing better online systems in the age of LLMs. Come work with me! piccardi.me
June 2, 2025 at 7:39 PM
what is stanford hci going to do without our funniest member next year?
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
I'm so excited to join the CS department at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) as an Assistant Professor! I'm looking for students interested in social computing, HCI, and AI—especially around designing better online systems in the age of LLMs. Come work with me! piccardi.me
June 2, 2025 at 5:16 PM
I'm so excited to join the CS department at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) as an Assistant Professor! I'm looking for students interested in social computing, HCI, and AI—especially around designing better online systems in the age of LLMs. Come work with me! piccardi.me
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
I'm excited to announce that I’ll be joining the Computer Science department at Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor this Fall! I’ll be working on large language models, computational social science, and AI & society—and will be recruiting PhD students. Apply to work with me!
May 30, 2025 at 3:56 PM
I'm excited to announce that I’ll be joining the Computer Science department at Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor this Fall! I’ll be working on large language models, computational social science, and AI & society—and will be recruiting PhD students. Apply to work with me!
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
@kjfeng.me and @rockpang.bsky.social are kicking off the panel on sociotechnical AI governance!
#CHI2025
#CHI2025
April 27, 2025 at 12:32 AM
@kjfeng.me and @rockpang.bsky.social are kicking off the panel on sociotechnical AI governance!
#CHI2025
#CHI2025
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
As Mariam Kaba said, "hope is a discipline."
As Václav Havel said (well before he helped liberate his country from totalitarianism), “Hope is … is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.”
As Václav Havel said (well before he helped liberate his country from totalitarianism), “Hope is … is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.”
March 26, 2025 at 4:52 PM
As Mariam Kaba said, "hope is a discipline."
As Václav Havel said (well before he helped liberate his country from totalitarianism), “Hope is … is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.”
As Václav Havel said (well before he helped liberate his country from totalitarianism), “Hope is … is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.”
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
BREAKING: We're sending an open letter to universities across the country, offering support and urging them to reject pressure to punish international students and faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.
Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.
March 4, 2025 at 8:05 PM
BREAKING: We're sending an open letter to universities across the country, offering support and urging them to reject pressure to punish international students and faculty for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.
Schools must hold firm against the Trump administration's censorship attempts.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
I just sent our university president and provost an urgent request to defend First Amendment freedoms at Stanford, given this administration’s willingness to punish those who disagree with it.
I urge you to do the same with your university leaders.
I urge you to do the same with your university leaders.
March 10, 2025 at 8:56 PM
I just sent our university president and provost an urgent request to defend First Amendment freedoms at Stanford, given this administration’s willingness to punish those who disagree with it.
I urge you to do the same with your university leaders.
I urge you to do the same with your university leaders.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
Hard to overstate just how much of the tech industry’s horrifically dystopian present grew right out of its transparently misogynistic past
January 10, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Hard to overstate just how much of the tech industry’s horrifically dystopian present grew right out of its transparently misogynistic past
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
Zuck positioned these changes as a return to history practice but, for these policy changes, that is untrue. The specific examples I called out above have been prohibited on the site since I wrote the first set of hate speech standards in 2009. 🧵 8/11
January 9, 2025 at 8:29 PM
Zuck positioned these changes as a return to history practice but, for these policy changes, that is untrue. The specific examples I called out above have been prohibited on the site since I wrote the first set of hate speech standards in 2009. 🧵 8/11
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
Dismantling the fact-checking infrastructure is going to be super handy when things start going wrong in the new administration and they want to redirect blame onto the left.
January 7, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Dismantling the fact-checking infrastructure is going to be super handy when things start going wrong in the new administration and they want to redirect blame onto the left.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
My advisor warned me that academics trend towards bitterness. He encouraged me to intentionally resist this, remember where I came from, and never forget the privilege of getting to spend a life working with knowledge and ideas. He too said that bitterness and resentment is easy.
In high school, my social studies teacher took me aside and told me that "cynicism was the easy path" and that I needed to resist it. It's probably the most important thing I learned in school.
Happy New Year. 11/11
January 4, 2025 at 4:17 PM
My advisor warned me that academics trend towards bitterness. He encouraged me to intentionally resist this, remember where I came from, and never forget the privilege of getting to spend a life working with knowledge and ideas. He too said that bitterness and resentment is easy.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
How do people *really* read Wikipedia? 📖 👀
We explored how readers navigate, fall into rabbit holes, and engage with information in a chapter for the ‘Handbook of Computational Social Science,’ edited by @tahayasseri.bsky.social. Stay tuned for the full book! 📚
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00939
We explored how readers navigate, fall into rabbit holes, and engage with information in a chapter for the ‘Handbook of Computational Social Science,’ edited by @tahayasseri.bsky.social. Stay tuned for the full book! 📚
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00939
January 5, 2025 at 5:45 PM
How do people *really* read Wikipedia? 📖 👀
We explored how readers navigate, fall into rabbit holes, and engage with information in a chapter for the ‘Handbook of Computational Social Science,’ edited by @tahayasseri.bsky.social. Stay tuned for the full book! 📚
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00939
We explored how readers navigate, fall into rabbit holes, and engage with information in a chapter for the ‘Handbook of Computational Social Science,’ edited by @tahayasseri.bsky.social. Stay tuned for the full book! 📚
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00939
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
The future (imo) will be filled with a constant ache and continual search for — with increasingly diminished capacity for discovery / identification of — authenticity.
I am fascinated by the people at Meta who think this is a *good* idea in exactly the same way I'm fascinated by conspiracy theorists.
It just seems so patently awful to me. And in ways that every sensible person I know would immediately grasp.
It just seems so patently awful to me. And in ways that every sensible person I know would immediately grasp.
why do we need AI-generated profiles. why
January 3, 2025 at 4:00 PM
The future (imo) will be filled with a constant ache and continual search for — with increasingly diminished capacity for discovery / identification of — authenticity.
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
hey coca cola is officially on the BDS list now so no more buying Topo Chico or starlight coke or whatever else they make
![Why boycott Coca-Cola? Because it's implicated in Israeli war crimes. According to research by WhoProfits, the Central Beverage Company, known as Coca-Cola Israel, which is the exclusive franchisee of the Coca Cola Company in Israel, "operates a regional distribution center and cooling houses in the [Israeli] Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone." Furthermore, its subsidiary, Tabor Winery, "produces wines from grapes sourced from vineyards located on occupied land in settlements in the West Bank and Syrian Golan."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:elyc3sjxjumnhz2qzwfdkgza/bafkreid5lik6om6k52gs7f4xe7ey54ca5luiatpn3smvi7j376njjtvcma@jpeg)
November 27, 2024 at 3:08 PM
hey coca cola is officially on the BDS list now so no more buying Topo Chico or starlight coke or whatever else they make
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
New paper: Do social media algorithms shape affective polarization?
We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️
We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️
November 25, 2024 at 8:32 PM
New paper: Do social media algorithms shape affective polarization?
We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️
We ran a field experiment on X/Twitter (N=1,256) using LLMs to rerank content in real-time, adjusting exposure to polarizing posts. Result: Algorithmic ranking impacts feelings toward the political outgroup! 🧵⬇️
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
Academic job market post! 👀
I’m a CS Postdoc at Stanford in the Stanford HCI group.
I develop ways to improve the online information ecosystem by designing better social media feeds & improving Wikipedia. I work on AI, Social Computing, and HCI.
piccardi.me 🧵
I’m a CS Postdoc at Stanford in the Stanford HCI group.
I develop ways to improve the online information ecosystem by designing better social media feeds & improving Wikipedia. I work on AI, Social Computing, and HCI.
piccardi.me 🧵
November 13, 2024 at 6:16 PM
Academic job market post! 👀
I’m a CS Postdoc at Stanford in the Stanford HCI group.
I develop ways to improve the online information ecosystem by designing better social media feeds & improving Wikipedia. I work on AI, Social Computing, and HCI.
piccardi.me 🧵
I’m a CS Postdoc at Stanford in the Stanford HCI group.
I develop ways to improve the online information ecosystem by designing better social media feeds & improving Wikipedia. I work on AI, Social Computing, and HCI.
piccardi.me 🧵
Reposted by Lindsay Popowski
This paper argues that online spaces become ghost towns because it's too easy to lurk without contributing, and that asking people to regularly re-commit—or the incoming messages start getting muted—reverses the trend. arxiv.org/abs/2410.23267
It works! #cscw2024 paper by @popowski.bsky.social
.
It works! #cscw2024 paper by @popowski.bsky.social
.
Commit: Online Groups with Participation Commitments
In spite of efforts to increase participation, many online groups struggle to survive past the initial days, as members leave and activity atrophies. We argue that a main assumption of online group de...
arxiv.org
November 1, 2024 at 5:56 PM
This paper argues that online spaces become ghost towns because it's too easy to lurk without contributing, and that asking people to regularly re-commit—or the incoming messages start getting muted—reverses the trend. arxiv.org/abs/2410.23267
It works! #cscw2024 paper by @popowski.bsky.social
.
It works! #cscw2024 paper by @popowski.bsky.social
.