Matt DeVerna
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matthewdeverna.com
Matt DeVerna
@matthewdeverna.com
8.9K followers 780 following 160 posts
Postdoc with Stanford's Tech Impact and Policy Center
(@techimpactpolicy.bsky.social). Formerly IU / Observatory on Social Media.

Computational social science, human-AI interaction, social media, trust and safety, etc.

🧨 matthewdeverna.com
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matthewdeverna.com
October 15, 2025 at 9:34 PM
matthewdeverna.com
@bgoldberg.bsky.social and a rockstar team of technologists in industry and academia share some thoughts on

🚨AI and the Future of the Public Square🚨

Deserves a bit more attention (imho).

arxiv.org/abs/2412.09988
April 18, 2025 at 2:13 PM
matthewdeverna.com
While writing my dissertation, I was reminded of this recent preprint led by @ryanmoore.bsky.social. The parallels between deception research and misinformation research are quite incredible.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
Screenshot of a title page. The title is: Extending Truth-Default Theory to Misinformation: Lessons for Misinformation Scholarship from Deception Research. The authors are Ryan C. Moore and Jeffrey T. Hancock from Stanford University. Screenshot of an abstract that reads: This paper connects deception research, specifically truth-default theory (TDT), to misinformation research. Through TDT’s propositions and supporting empirics, we demonstrate how the central questions in misinformation research can benefit from deeper engagement with deception scholarship and in particular TDT. Findings in the misinformation literature that have been surprising or unexpected (e.g., relatively few people are exposed to and share misinformation online) are predicted and explained by TDT. Robust conclusions from TDT about deception in human communication (e.g., people are truth-biased) are challenged by findings from misinformation research, prompting deeper investigation. Deception detection research paradigms have important lessons for misinformation research about the design of misinformation-detection tasks that should be considered when interpreting results (e.g., true-false base rates, prompted vs. unprompted veracity judgments). Analytic approaches from TDT (e.g., analyzing accuracy for truthful and deceptive messages independently) provide a framework for misinformation research to better understand the detection of misinformation and more holistically evaluate the outcomes of misinformation interventions, and TDT’s lessons on how to improve deception detection accuracy also suggest strategies for interventions which improve the detection of misinformation without undermining trust in credible news and information.
April 11, 2025 at 12:04 AM
matthewdeverna.com
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/o...
March 25, 2025 at 12:59 AM
matthewdeverna.com
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
A screenshot of a Washington Post fact-checking article. Headline: "$50 million for condoms in Gaza? There’s no evidence for the White House claim." Subheading: "The figure would rain 1.5 billion condoms on an area only double the size of the District of Columbia." Date: Updated January 29, 2025 Byline: Analysis by Glenn Kessler Image Description: A photograph of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaking at a press briefing. She has blonde hair, is wearing a magenta blazer, and appears to be mid-speech with a serious expression. The background is blurred, suggesting a formal press setting. The photo is credited to Jabin Botsford of The Washington Post.
January 31, 2025 at 5:11 PM
matthewdeverna.com
💥 Don’t miss our next OSoMe Awesome Speaker: @dfreelon.bsky.social! 💥

He'll be discussing 🚨 Computational Research in the Post-API Age 🚨 — which seems more and more relevant as time goes by...

📅 Feb 6, 12 PM ET | 💻 Online
🔗 Register: iu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
January 29, 2025 at 9:44 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Want to understand your Google Cloud costs? It will only take THREE AND A HALF HOURS... 🙄
December 22, 2024 at 4:44 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Join us virtually 🚨TODAY @ 12 Eastern🚨 for a talk by @mrjimmyblack.com.

"Understanding the Prominence of Alternative Social Media Platforms"

Register here: iu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Learn about the series here: osome.iu.edu/events/speak...
December 4, 2024 at 2:24 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Barely made it
November 26, 2024 at 1:06 PM
matthewdeverna.com
@jay.bsky.team any plans to allow folks to get notifications when selected accounts post? Used this a lot in the other place. Would be wonderful if there were options for “all” vs “popular” posts, which did not exist in the other place.
A cellphone screenshot showing the functionality on X that allows users to get notified when a specific account posts. In this case it is shown for the official CNN account.
November 25, 2024 at 11:53 PM
matthewdeverna.com
This paper is super cool and deserves more attention.

Plurals: A System for Guiding LLMs Via Simulated Social Ensembles (arxiv.org/abs/2409.17213)

Comes with a Python package to guide LLM agents. Even allows incorporating nationally representative ensembles.

Package: github.com/josh-ashkina...

🧪
Screenshot demonstrating how to use the Plurals Python library to create a nationally representative ensemble of agents modeled by different large language models (LLMs). Includes installation instructions (pip install plurals), API key setup, and example Python code to ask agents a task question about improving bike commuting. Diagram and code demonstrating how to create a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of agents for story development using the Plurals Python library. The diagram includes SettingAgent, CharacterAgent, PlotAgent, and Moderator nodes with directional arrows indicating dependencies. The example code shows how to define a story prompt about a mystery set in 1920s Paris, focusing on the theft of an artwork from the Louvre, and specifies agents with unique roles (plot, character, and setting) using GPT-4 to collaboratively generate story elements. Python code example showing how to create and process a directed acyclic graph (DAG) for collaborative story development using the Plurals library. The code defines a creative writing moderator with GPT-4, tasked with synthesizing plot, character, and setting elements into a cohesive story. It specifies edges representing the interaction pattern between agents ('setting' to 'character', 'setting' to 'plot', and 'character' to 'plot') and creates a Graph object with agents, edges, a story prompt, and the moderator. The DAG is processed to generate a final story outline, which is printed at the end.
November 22, 2024 at 9:41 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Make sure you join the Observatory on Social Media TOMORROW for Kristina Lerman's talk, "Collective Psychology of Social Media: Emotions, Conflict & Mental Health in the Digital Age" at 12pm ET

Register: iu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Abstract/Series info: osome.iu.edu/events/speak...
Flyer for the 'Awesome Speakers' virtual event hosted by the Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe) at Indiana University. The flyer features the event title, date (November 13, 2024), and time (12 PM - 1 PM ET). It describes the event as a platform for scholars to discuss social media manipulation and misinformation. The featured speaker is Kristina Lerman from the University of Southern California. Attendees are encouraged to register and view the full list of speakers at osome.iu.edu/events.
November 12, 2024 at 4:13 PM
matthewdeverna.com
We use a traditional method as well as PDI to reconstruct the same cascade in various ways and explore how much the distribution of cascade properties are affected by different approaches, finding substantial differences.
October 31, 2024 at 9:19 PM
matthewdeverna.com
For example, *half* of the content in a user's "For you" feed on X comes from accounts they do not follow! (blog.x.com/engineering/...) so it seems unlikely that these methods are still reliable.
October 31, 2024 at 9:18 PM
matthewdeverna.com
If the reconstruction had no effect, the set of influential accounts in both networks would be identical. Instead, we find the overlap is only 10-35%! (Fig c and f below)
October 31, 2024 at 9:17 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Through case studies on Twitter and Bluesky, we find that something as simple as identifying influential accounts is massively affected when using networks constructed from reconstructed versus naïve (platform-provided) cascades.
October 31, 2024 at 9:16 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Traditional analyses often assume that reshared content directly stems from the original poster. But the reality is messier—users encounter posts in many different ways, so we suspected this simplification might distort our understanding of what takes place on these platforms.
October 31, 2024 at 9:15 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Our new working paper shows how a single choice by many social media platforms—to treat all resharing as if from the original poster—can drastically reshape our understanding of the social dynamics on those platforms.

doi.org/10.48550/arX...
October 31, 2024 at 9:14 PM
matthewdeverna.com
🚨🚨 Tomorrow!! 🚨🚨

@katestarbird.bsky.social is giving a talk as part of the OSoMe Awesome Speakers virtual event.

Title: Facts, frames, and (mis)interpretations: Understanding rumors as collective sensemaking

Details/Registration here: osome.iu.edu/events/
April 3, 2024 at 5:45 PM
matthewdeverna.com
Make sure to join us for another OSoMe Awesome Speaker!

More info/registration here: osome.iu.edu/events
March 27, 2024 at 6:23 PM
matthewdeverna.com
A view of my Threads feed from the new app “Yup!” which integrates and cross-posts BlueSky, Threads, and Twitter…
November 22, 2023 at 1:24 PM
matthewdeverna.com
New working paper out today: "Artificial intelligence is ineffective and potentially harmful for fact checking."

doi.org/10.48550/arX...

We study the *interaction* between AI (ChatGPT) fact checks and humans. ChatGPT performs reasonably well, but we still observe some potential for harm.
August 22, 2023 at 11:52 PM