Congratulations, @jolukito.bsky.social 🥳 and congratulations, DDC!

Thank you, Jenn 💛 And thank you for all the work you did to put together such a stellar program!

Thank you, Sorelle! I wish our terms had overlapped more 💛 And I'm definitely not going anywhere. I just need a multi-year break from any service before I'm insane enough to put together a bid for FAccT Colombia 😊

I vividly remember attending the first FAccT and thinking it would be a *dream* to publish in it, so having served as EC has truly been an immense honor ❤️

After these five years, I am exhausted, but I am also very grateful to a community that has shaped my scholarship and my career in crucial ways, and I am very glad the time I have devoted to service has gone to a community doing such important work.

As a community, we are a bunch of people who deeply care, who are trying hard in all of our imperfect ways, and who have found others to build a counterweight to powerful entities who are harming communities in multitude of ways.

All this said, FAccT is awesome, I can’t think of any other space where many of the crucial conversations I see at FAccT would take place, and I hope folks in Athens are currently partying together, feeling in community, and charging up for all the fights we have ahead.

Over the years, I have seen countless people who drift away from the community after they finish their term serving, and I get it—I do feel the need to go into a hole and recharge before I can give more to this community.

3. This last one feels a bit odd to bring up, it feels a bit self-serving, but I suspect that's why none of us ever talk about it, so I'll say it regardless. FAccT as a community has many wonderful things, but I’d argue that it is very ungrateful to the people who do service for it.

Ensuring our mode of conversations and engagement is directed towards community building and strengthening is so crucial at a time when many in power will be rooting against us.

2. Intentionality in community building: This is an issue faced by most coalitions that seek transformative change—we are so trained to be critical, it is very easy to tear ourselves down. This is also another space where our research can inform our practice.

While counterfactuals are hard to estimate, I’d argue that the transition from twitter-mediated to bluesky-mediated conversations has had a palpable effect. Intentionality and agency in shaping our online spaces is a realm where our research touches our own community organizing.

1. Algorithmic-mediated conversations: As a community who is critical of algorithms, we ought to reflect on how algorithmic rewards have deeply shaped discourse and relationships in our community.

After 5 years of FAccT service, I see so much value in FAccT. Precisely for this reason, I want to take a moment to highlight elements that I believe the community needs to learn to better navigate, especially during a time when it is likely to face a hostile environment.

You can also read the paper here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...