Alex StamosVerified account

@alexstamos

Trustworthy tech at the Stanford Internet Observatory () and the Election Integrity Partnership (). Helping companies via

San Francisco, CA
Joined May 2009

Tweets

You blocked @alexstamos

Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @alexstamos

  1. Retweeted
    May 14

    With news of yet another mass shooting with video and manifesto, re-upping this thread (versions of which I've been sadly posting for a decade). Many mass shooters are inspired by coverage of past shootings. Don't cover it on their terms. Responsible reporting is essential.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  2. Retweeted
    May 13

    Presumably, just spitballin’ here, the SpaceX and Tesla teams are a bit more methodologically rigorous.

    Undo
  3. Retweeted
    May 13

    Excited to be presenting work by , , and myself analyzing the ransomware payments ecosystem (based on $101M in payments from !) See agenda at Read the preprint at . Some takeaways 👇

    Show this thread
    Undo
  4. Retweeted
    May 13

    If this acquisition is halted because Elon didn’t fully understand the real dynamics of bots - and the highly factional experience of twitter - that’s a whole case study in itself.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  5. Retweeted
    May 13

    🤖 “the bots” discourse has long been sus. They exist; back in 2015 researchers (incl me) were writing taxonomies (amplifiers vs creators etc) and tactical analyses. We still see their presence in state ops and spam. But Twitter took action over the years…and presence ≠ impact

    Undo
  6. Retweeted
    May 12

    I’ve been seeing design really come to the forefront of social media “reform” convos over the last few weeks; feels like it’s finally getting the attention it deserves. There were a few years where convos about it were seen as “technosolutionism” but it’s a key research area.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  7. Retweeted
    May 11

    I'm trying to get my head around what it even means for Texas's batty social media law to go into effect. My sympathies to the platform lawyers making the same calculations.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  8. May 10

    This is what is so wonderful about working in these fields and what is so exhausting. There is a seemingly infinite supply of "really bad guys" who are shockingly smart, resourceful and sometimes evil. You never finish the bridge; you rebuild it every day.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  9. May 10

    There is no press release when you pass 1 million cars or a party when you amazingly land a rocket on a barge. A good day in security or T&S means you go home happy that you stopped something and come back the next day to find out that your adversary did a complete end-run.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  10. May 10

    8) Unlike engineering challenges where you are fighting against the laws of physics, chemistry and the difficulty of making complex systems reliable, with both infosec and Trust and Safety your adversaries are intelligent actors who are highly motivated to defeat your solutions.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  11. May 10

    7) The Twitter T&S team is not a bunch of censorious liberals as he assumes. If he actually spoke to them, he would realize that they are trying to balance a lot of important equities at scale and that each decision involves hard tradeoffs that don't easily fit in a tweet.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  12. May 10

    6) Elon wants to encrypt DMs, which I think is fantastic. That is directly in conflict with the proposed European laws. US-based platforms have to be opinionated on privacy and human-rights issues if they want to protect their users.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  13. May 10

    5) Even if you only follow the law in democracies, he will be facing a real challenges in building a global platform with such a large mismatch between the US and the UK's Online Safety Bill and EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Acts.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  14. May 10

    4) Twitter and other platforms are mostly saturated in the developed world. If he wants to triple Twitter's user base, that will require even more dealing with the challenges of autocracies and developing democracies.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  15. May 10

    3) "Just following the law" outside of the US is tricky if you have any respect for human rights; some of the worst actors online are authoritarian states that use the dual tools of online propaganda and censorship to control their populace, including Elon's partner the KSA.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  16. May 10

    2) While there are laws setting baselines on child sexual exploitation, explicit threats/incitement and copyright infringement, the vast majority of the non-controversial 99.9% of Twitter moderation decisions can not and will not be guided by law in the US (1st Amendment).

    Show this thread
    Undo
  17. May 10

    I think there are lots of ways Elon could improve content moderation at Twitter, but he first has to accept some basic facts: 1) The controversial, US-specific disinformation and incitement decisions he keeps bringing up are < 0.1% of Twitter's content moderation/T&S actions.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  18. May 10

    It’s like watching a baby play with a blender from behind a plexiglass barrier.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  19. May 10

    Watching Elon try to openly recreate several decades of trust and safety work by tens of thousands of people from first principles is likely to give me a stroke.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  20. Retweeted
    May 10

    I wrote about how the end of Roe will change the encryption debate. tl;dr: * encryption advocates: quit letting US LE exclude itself from the threat model * tech cos.: get your shit together * lawmakers: if you're pro-choice, you can't be anti-encryption.

    Undo

Loading seems to be taking a while.

Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

    You may also like

    ·