Most likely translation: Twitter doesn’t have the organisational (legal/technical) resources to comply with the DSA & moderate illegal content. *All* research on the DSA transparency db confirms that Twitter’s compliance is abysmal. Our research here:
Dear EU Twitter users. Under EU consumer law (Digital Content Directive), a service provider needs to inform consumers "reasonably in advance" if there are modifications in the digital content that negatively impact the consumer's access of the service.
🎉I'm hiring!
🫶Are you interested in social media research?
🫶Do you want to explore how to improve fairness in advertising on social media?
🎉Then come and do a PhD with me at
@UURechten
in my
@ERC_Research
HUMANads Starting Grant! 2 positions are now open👇 Please share ♥️
Remember the ChatGPT fake case law? These are ChatGPT fake footnotes in a university admissions essay. When confronted in the interview, the applicant even described one of the "publications" at length to my face, which was impressive yet suitable for a different study (drama)
Thanks
@this_is_mallory
for sitting through this to shed light on misinformation as a consumer harm. This is why *explicit* prohibitions are needed for transactions which can jeopardize consumer health (such as the French influencer law). This can be an unfair commercial practice
Still pinching myself. Extatic to be able to continue my research on influencer marketing & content monetization for the next 5 years with an
#ERCStg
! After 10 fantastic years at
@lawinmaastricht
I'll be doing the research on
#HUMANads
at
@UniUtrecht
as associate professor 🎉
🎉ERC Starting Grant competition results are out!
Over €619 million for the best ideas of young leading researchers - and the 1️⃣st set of grants awarded under 🇪🇺
@HorizonEU
.
Find out who, where and why 👉
#EUfunded
#FrontierResearch
#ERCStG
@jennadrenten
I always ask my class at the beginning of term ‘do we have any influencers in the room’ and the answers (and their accounts) never cease to amaze me
First day at Utrecht University, above the rivers. Super excited though I’ll have to culturally adjust to karnemelk for lunch and no carnival holidays. Thank you to the kind photographer who showed me around the city last week
@vanessamak
!
TikTok is testing a feature that involves influencers engaging with a brand seemingly advertising it, but where instead of money, they receive ‘free views’. What a great example of how platforms are not mere intermediaries of native ads, but they design engagement.
‘The effectiveness of digital ads is wildly oversold. A large-scale study of ads on eBay found that brand search ad effectiveness was overestimated by up to 4,100%. A similar analysis of Facebook ads threw up a number of 4,000%’
The AI Act did not just fall out of a 🥥🌴but it exists in the context of what came before it: European consumer protection. In this chapter, I compare the initial version of Art 5 AI Act & Art 5 UCPD to highlight similarities and differences.
In their ToS applying to EU/UK/CH, Twitter binds itself to an obligation of RESULT consisting in notifying users 30 DAYS IN ADVANCE of applying the new rules. I haven't received a notification from Twitter about the new rules and when they enter into effect. Has anyone else?
Historical moments for the implementation of the DSA. The DSA Transparency Database is up, and is a game changer for content moderation. A few thoughts on what we can learn from the database architecture and how we can further study it.
The Digital Service Act set clear rules to protect freedom of speech and healthy, well-informed public debate.
Today, we’re launching the DSA Transparency Database.
It will make all content moderation decisions by online platforms operating in the EU accessible ↓
#DigitalEU
With the
@EU_Commission
, in the past 6 months
@sophiehbishop
& I have been developing the ✨1st European legal training for influencers/content creators✨& EU consumer law. We're launching the Influencer Legal Hub on 16 October. Join us!
Mr Ngozi is a Nigerian/British content creator who acts out human-computer interactions on the web, such as accepting cookies. For whoever wants to make their privacy/HCI lectures more entertaining 👇🏽
Heard & saw so many academics migrating to Mastodon, worrying about Twitter futures. It should makes us rethink the role of social media in science dissemination & networking. If the Twitter academic bubble dies, where else will I find cool people whose papers I should read
If you don’t have access to the EU TikTok interface, let me show you the absolute revolution that’s happening in the content reporting section: there’s a new category (*apart* from all the rest), called ‘Illegal content’
"With this scale comes significant responsibility."
wahwah, I guess when there's no other choice, change can happen?
People physically in the EU, please do report how these new changes actually look like, I am super curious - but currently not in the EU.
‘Careless speech’ is neither a novel harm nor a harm specific to LLMs. It’s about time to be very critical about endless calls for *more* regulation, since we fail to use our centuries old legal principles & are scrambling to interpret the crushing wave of regulatory inflation
NEW: Experts at
@oiioxford
have identified a new type of harm created by Large Language Models (LLMs) which they believe poses long-term risks to democratic societies and needs to be addressed by creating a new legal duty for LLM providers.
More info ⬇️
This year I experimented with a new task in my Regulating Big Tech course (LLB, 3rd year). As a midterm assessment I used to assign a short essay (2,5k words) where students can critically reflect on course topics. With genAI, I knew I had to update the task. Here’s how it went🧵
Grant agreement finally signed! More info on the
@ERC_Research
StG
#HUMANads
opportunities to engage in building multidisciplinary knowledge and awareness about content creators and native advertising on social media coming up soon!
@beuc
@euroconsumers
@Forbrukerradet
@egelynbraun
if EU/EFTA/UK consumers are getting their content moderated before the notification is sent and before 30 days have passed - this will become a wide-spread violation of the Digital Content Directive.
This week in my contract classes we dealt with legal capacity, eg minors or incapacitated adults. What better, relatable example than
#FreeBritney
one would think. But one would be wrong, because my students don’t know who Britney Spears is. 🤦🏻♀️
#ifeelold
The Influencer Legal Hub has finally launched! After a fantastic kick-off with a well-attended webinar, you can now find a comprehensive video training & further resources (including our
@humanadserc
research) at our official
@EU_Commission
link👇
.
Introducing ⭐️
#Influencer
Legal Hub⭐️
A new online platform full of useful training videos & materials.
To help influencers & content creators learn more about EU
#ConsumerProtection
laws & how to comply with them.
#InfluencerMarketing
In these dire days, here’s some light in your feeds. A room of amazing Ukrainian women & children in Maastricht, knitting to forget their strife & stay away from heartbreaking news. If you can, pls support them. First items are ready & we’re gearing up for a big King’s Day sale!
It’s almost a week since we got Clop ransomware at the UM. It’s been pretty stressful, but also inevitable, given the massive increase in ransomware (and other forms of attacks) targetting universities.
@BogdanCovrig
and I mapped some of the other incidents.
‘Today i’m gonna tell you about my disempowering experience of being deleted by a bunch of platforms.’
@bloggeronpole
giving content moderation realness with her Instagram & TikTok autoethnography!
✨CfP✨You know how sometimes you see edited volumes published & think damn my research would have been a great fit? Doing an experiment with a CfP for book chapters. If you work on influencer labour, have a look at this book proposal & join our project✨
✨Join us✨It is my absolute pleasure to share this stellar line-up of scholars who will be dissecting contractual implications for social media fairness for the
@ERC_Research
#HUMANads
symposium that
@jacobvdkerkhof
& I will be hosting soon!
Almost out! 1st EU comprehensive law, comms & ethics look at social media
#influencers
edited with my dear friend
@SRanchordas
. With exceptional contributions on disclosures, aspirational work, research design, platform governance & contract supply chain!
‘The Regulation of Social Media Influencers’ volume
@SRanchordas
& I edited & the EU Parliament report on influencer marketing
@sophiehbishop
& I co-wrote are covered by the
@EU_Commission
’s anniversary publication ‘The New Consumer’. 50 years of consumer protection in the EU!
📣 New Digital Services Act paper out in
@CompLawSecRev
! Bram Duivenvoorde & I analyzed the DSA provisions on advertising. We discuss | targeted ads | native ads (influencer marketing) & the in-between, & connect illegal content to the EU consumer acquis.
Our paper on
#darkweb
data markets led by
@zarras
was accepted at
#ifipsec2022
! We collected & analysed an original dataset (2020) of 28,546 product descriptions (offers) from 12 dw markets in a large web measurement study. Here’s what we found 🧵
It’s difficult to understand (especially for other disciplines) just how deep the replication crisis is in social psychology, but until the field sees serious reforms, law-makers should be very careful with their reliance on behavioural insights.
The first
@ERC_Research
#HUMANads
event is happening on 4 October in collab with
@UU_GDS
🥰
@kfvanes
& I are hosting a multidisciplinary dialogue (legal & media studies perspectives) on content monetization & influencers. Join us in Utrecht or online!
Today on
@AJEnglish
I shared some thoughts about Twitter’s new content monetization policies. The gloves are coming off - social media has always been a transactional space, now we just have to start paying money for its services (and not just pay with our data). 1/2
Let me translate this from a content monetization angle: Twitter is going freemium. You can be angry & appalled, but this was to be expected. Social media has never been a public square, it’s always been a commercial service. Now the commercial is just getting more obvious
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
- Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
- Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
- New unverified accounts to 300/day
Damn that omicron is really vile. Still recovering from 2,5 weeks of a cocktail of infections, and counting my blessings for not having to be hospitalized. I can’t even begin to imagine how this is for unvaxxed people. If I owe you an email/paper, will do soon. Stay safe folks
Thank you
@AJEnglish
Newshour for having me today to discuss the recent AI safety pledge in the US. Particularly social media companies should have done this a long time ago, but instead normalized media manipulation even for monetization purposes
Can’t believe it’s already been 14 years in 🇳🇱! Came for the education and stayed for the research. Academia is becoming a bit more complicated every year (much like the world as such), but with good vibes from your bestie it’s still a pretty great place
Happy 13th & 14th year in the Netherlands for these two immigrants 🇵🇹🇷🇴 & best friends. It wasn’t & isn’t easy but we’re grateful for what this country has been giving us.
The next installment of my quest of trying to repair consumer products breaking down is an electric toothbrush. After 10 YouTube videos I could successfully disassemble it to place distance between 2 magnets that stopped working. Almost looks like a lightsaber 😍
#righttorepair
More than a year in the making, the Maastricht Law&Tech Lab is now a beautiful reality where we aim to reignite interdisciplinary dialogue between computer science&law (and yes other disciplines in the long run). The schedule is almost ready and intellectually delicious. Join us!
Our
@UURechten
dean Ivo Giesen just kickstarted the
@ERC_Research
#HUMANads
Radical Reforms symposium. So honored we can host a fantastic line-up of (mostly) private law scholars to engage on the contractual implication of social media! Here’s a live presentation🧵:
This was
@thijs_kelder
’s first day as a PhD researcher in the HUMANads ERC project at
@UURechten
@UU_GDS
! He’ll compare the legal rules on political/commercial advertising by influencers on social media, with fellow supervisors Janneke Gerards & Bram Duivenvoorde. Welcome Thijs!
And this doesn’t even touch upon ads which infringe terms of service due to their *content*, such as this ad disguised as a news item I reported as misinformation and was still targeting me for weeks afterwards
HOLY SHIT.
@WSJ
is reporting that ~80% of the ads
@YouTube
serves across the web have violated their own terms of service — and are therefore subject to refunds.
This is...a devastatingly huge deal.
@GoogleAds
is about to be out billions of $$.
Folks, this French influencer law is the loud start of an era of consumer protection-oriented content moderation. Some more insights that
@LauraAade
& I were shocked about:
❗️Non-EU influencers targetting French consumers need to *appoint an EU LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE* in the EU
The French influencer policy reform has become positive law as of today's adoption. It's has many interesting aspects that complement current consumer protection regulation, as well as many not so great additions that can be criticized. A quick 🧵
Off to the printers! The 2nd edited volume on influencer regulation in the
@Elgar_Law
series is 💫The Hashtag Hustle💫 Our outstanding contributors draw from media studies, marketing & law to describe & qualify labour in the influencer economy 1/n
The Influencer Republic (paper with
@G_De_Gregorio
) has finally been published in the
@Ger_Law_Journal
! In it we discuss the regulatory tensions between freedom of expression & consumer protection re political v commercial speech.
Really good paper on a very important topic: the involvement of influencers in the dissemination of dis/misinformation. Interestingly, the study debunks the myth that influencers spread misinfo. But these results are very much dependent on the dataset:
📣 New paper with
@klueserthan
!
The
@nytimes
wrote an article (🔗 below) about a secretive industry hiring Social Media Influencers (SMI) to seed false narratives. But to what extent do SMIs engage with misinfo? We went to find out!
👉 Pre-print:
Today I was advised by a passport control officer at Otopeni airport (Bucharest) that I should revert to the haircut I had in my passport photo. I passed the passport check, but not the haircut vibe check
I had the pleasure of writing the editorial for
@eu_cml
issue 5/2021 and share some thoughts on what I think will be the re-discovery of European consumer protection. It has been heavily criticized in the past, but its relevance for digital market governance is undeniable.
Inspired by
@neilmrichards
' Twitter activity,
@CatalinaGoanta
wrote an editorial on European consumer law as the hero of our times, exploring how it can be re-discovered as a source of inspiration for other jurisdictions in dealing with online harms and content regulation.
Preparing the first Internet law & governance course ever at
@lawinmaastricht
! Any examples of courses, open source syllabi, assessment approaches, anecdotes which anyone might know/can share?
Full house today at our knitting workshop for the Faculty Festival (Law, Economics & Governance)
@UniUtrecht
. Great to see so many colleagues interested in handwork! A very close-knit community 🧶 Next sesh: Molengraaff Institute in 2 weeks. Many thanks
@_elainemak
&
@AS_DAmico
🙌🏼
This is insane. Once more, no notification whatsoever, which is a blatant violation of EU consumer law. Also, it’s time to clarify how much security is necessary for a digital consumer service to be in conformity with industry standards
Effective March 20, 2023, only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to use text messages as their two-factor authentication method. Other accounts can use an authentication app or security key for 2FA. Learn more here:
First day of the new academic year at
@UURechten
! A warm welcome to our 109 students in the masters Law&Technology in Europe & a big thank you to
@ThalesBertaglia
for the html primer/demo in the tech week of
@SophiaAmico
’s course!
There’s a new filter on TikTok that looks more realistic than ever, and the usual signs of there being a filter (some objects revealed during movement) are not there anymore. Applying filters to videos should be automatically disclosed in the caption (like with audios).
Join
@TomDivon
@TaylorAnnabell
and me for a series of 3 webinars aimed at unpacking the basics of the DSA for media scholars. Regulation has seen a lot of interest in media studies lately, but it’s not always easy to accurately pierce complex legislation. Here’s our plan🧵
DSA > Platforms > Regulation > Policies > Content > Influencers > Monetization > Let's start to make sense of this legal terrain!
@CatalinaGoanta
@TaylorAnnabell
& I aim to equip media scholars with access & clarity to nuances in our mini-series 🤩 come join us 🤩 link for reg 👇🏿
Honored by the invitation to give a keynote for the
@EESC_INT
Study Group on Influencer Marketing to discuss research insights from law, computer science & behavioural studies, with the
@ERC_Research
#HUMANads
team in attendance!
And we’re official. Fun times ahead! Very grateful for the support of not only a fantastic community that already includes SIX(!) computer scientists officially at
@lawinmaastricht
and innovation-friendly leaders like
@janmsmits
and
@Rianneletschert
!
Our
@ERC_Research
#HUMANads
project website is up and fully updated with all our publications, event organization and participation. Can't wait to share even more resources shortly! Have a look if you want to see what kept us busy this past year 👇
I have reached the peak of my career, can go ahead and retire now: discussing TikTok drama from a legal perspective. Great piece by
@linzasaur
on Internet culture, more particularly the
#modernwarrior
debate combining gender (identity), race, cancel culture & monetization.
A must read book on 3x liability for AI by
@A__Beckers
& Gunther Teubner: ‘vicarious liability for autonomous software agents (actants); enterprise liability for inseparable human-AI interactions (hybrids); and collective fund liability for interconnected AI systems (crowds).’
Ok folks from
@lawinmaastricht
, prepare for a Minecraft summer so we can build our faculty and channel the power of gaming for
@MaastrichtU
's digital community! We also welcome interdisciplinary visiting fellowships from colleagues abroad and/or their children :)
Successfully infiltrated the critical media studies community at
#GDC_UVA22
. Eternally grateful to
@sophiehbishop
for being a lighthouse of inspiration & building a bridge to this lovely crowd. &thanks to
@tpoell
& colleagues for hosting such an exciting intellectual experience!
Made it to Hamburg after 4 trains, let’s go
@iacl_net
2023! On Friday,
@LauraAade
& I will present our insights on the problem of qualifying TikTok under EU consumer protection definitions of platforms. Thank you
@silvertje
&
@sophiehbishop
for changing my life with your methods
Just landed in Hamburg for
@iacl_net
conference to present our findings with
@CatalinaGoanta
on social commerce & consumer protection. We will explore TikTok affordances related to e-commerce and their alignment with existing legal qualifications ✨
What better way to celebrate 2 years at
@UniUtrecht
@UURechten
than a wonderful panel on social media, disinformation and democracy with the occasion of the institutions for Open Societies’ Community Day 🫶 many thanks to our wonderful colleagues for organizing this whole day!
My first piece ever for
@ConversationUK
is live! Reflecting on deceit in native advertising via the Liver King story. Influencer marketing on social media may be a thing of the past decade, but the legal principle is old: don't lie (to your followers).
So proud of
@danaesavi
’s amazing work and our great collab with
@nikaletras
! Our paper on detecting hidden advertising on Twitter, led by Danae, just got the Society & NLP Area Chair Award at
@aaclmeeting
!
This year
@thijs_kelder
& I will be offering the elective course ‘Influencer Law Clinic’ in the Law&Tech masters at
@UURechten
for the second time. It’s important for creators to understand that legally they are startups with *a lot* of consumer regulation to abide by
⬇️⬇️ I’ll be adding to this in the spring with my
@ua_jcm
course, “social media storytelling.” Students need to learn how to professionally make content and not figure it out on the fly. We have plenty of fictional and nonfictional storytelling online that draws form influence.
⭐️Media scholars⭐️ Another vacancy available in my
@ERC_Research
HUMANads project hosted at
@UURechten
&
@UU_GDS
! This time
@sophiehbishop
& I are looking to supervise a postdoctoral researcher, for work on content monetization & platform governance
Editing a report on Dutch child and family influencers and this work is pretty depressing. Trying to remain neutral and consider the positive aspects of posting a 45 min vlog of your 4 children *every day*, but it’s hard. What’s the public academic opinion on this?
Back in London after 3 years to attend Mateja Durovic’s ‘Private Law and New Technologies Conference’ at TELOS, where I’ll be presenting my
#HUMANads
@ERC_Research
research on hidden native advertising & systemic risks under the Digital Services Act
📰My response essay to
@G_De_Gregorio
N Elkin-Koren & M Perel's article on social media as contractual networks is finally out in the
@IowaLawReview
. Grateful to the authors for their stimulating piece & the fantastic student editors for their guidance.
Last time I was at
@UChicagoLaw
5 years ago, I was wrapping up my PhD at a law&econ summer institute. Today I’m thrilled to be back for
@omribenshahar
& Ariel Porat’s Personalized Law book launch & to present an essay on good faith as an ancient alien in digital contracts!
For a primer on advertising, influencers & consumers, check out this IMCO study to which influencer culture encyclopaedia
@sophiehbishop
and I had the opportunity to contribute and provide a state of the art description of the creator economy vis a vis consumer law compliance.
For all the non-social media experts who firmly believe TikTok should be banned because of security issues: this is how real, sophisticated cybersecurity spyware *market research* looks like on platform users 👏🏼by👏🏼Facebook👏🏼
My awesome PhD student
@alexsotropa
& I have been appointed as members of the National Council for Digital Transformation advising the Authority for the Digitalization of Romania. Very excited to get started. Important to remember that not all digitalization is equal in the EU.
This Oversight Board decision is huge. Content moderation is generally seen as the application of community guidelines, which are ‘speech’-based. Advertising policies (eg Branded Content) are seen as a separate, ‘commerce’-based moderation layer
Today, the Board overturned Meta’s decision to leave up an Instagram post discussing a user’s experience with ketamine.
This case indicates that Meta’s restrictions on branded content promoting drugs and attempts to buy, sell, or trade drugs may be inconsistently enforced.
There’s a mini influencer marketing revolution on TikTok right now. A mega beauty influencer is accused of lying in an ad (not properly disclosed) where she made superlative claims about a mascara product while wearing false lashes
I've seen a lot of these cases. Apart from fraud, what I find really sad is the link between low digital literacy skills & the use of ChatGPT: the explanations of what they wrote or how they used ChatGPT (if they admit) 'border on the fantastical' to quote
@mikarv
Plz tag young researchers:
@monika_lesz
& I are the happy hosts of one of the virtual Summer Institutes on Computational Social Sciences! We’ll stream
@msalganik
&
@chris_bail
& complete empirical research tasks focused on legal data! Apply until 5 May: