Writing & press
Reports and articles, plus interviews and appearances where the work gets discussed.
Better Access: Data for the Common Good
Co-authored with Nathaniel Persily, Laura Edelson, Brandon Silverman, Rebekah Tromble, Alex Abdo, Leticia Bode, Mark Scott and others. Defines four categories of high-influence public platform data and sets a baseline framework for independent researcher access. Featured in the Tech Policy Press series "Seeing the Digital Sphere."
France: TikTok still steering vulnerable children toward depressive and suicidal content
ATI named as technical partner. Automated test accounts representing 13-year-olds in France found TikTok's recommender more than doubled the share of sad or depressive content recommended. Amnesty filed a formal complaint with French regulator Arcom under the Digital Services Act on the strength of this research, and it supports an eleven-family class action against TikTok.
Poland: LGBTI community on X
Index EUR 37/0098/2025. ATI as technical research partner.
Submission to Ofcom on researcher access to information from regulated online services
Contributor. Filed January 17, 2025.
Public Data Access Programs: A First Look
Joint research with the Mozilla Foundation — the first systematic evaluation of 19 major platforms' data access programs, scored against 47 criteria across five categories.
Driven into the Darkness: How TikTok Encourages Self-harm and Suicidal Ideation
Technical research using 30+ automated accounts representing 13-year-olds in Kenya and the USA, plus manual accounts in Kenya, the Philippines, and the USA.
Three Shades of Greenwashing
ATI data collection, with Dr. Geoffrey Supran — a study of how European fossil fuel, car, and airline companies market themselves as environmentally friendly.
Daily Wire ad targeting investigation
Junkipedia used as the reporting basis.
On the shutdown of CrowdTangle
Front-page reporting on Facebook winding down the main tool researchers used to study the platform. The start of a five-year argument that runs through the Mozilla study and the KGI Better Access framework.
Hunter Biden and QAnon narratives
Junkipedia used as the reporting basis.
Reporting on Parler, TikTok's algorithm, QAnon, and vaccine misinformation
Roughly October 2020 through March 2022 was the peak period of national expert commentary. Individual items still to be catalogued.
Electionland 2020
Junkipedia used as the reporting basis, not merely cited.
Information Disorder
A twelve-signal framework for identifying junk pages.
The Software We Wrote to Understand Junk News
On building NewsTracker inside a newsroom.