Paper here: patrickgerard.co/static/proje...
03.03.2026 01:18
👍 1
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
Paper here: patrickgerard.co/static/proje...
Excited to share that our paper on Density-Guided Response Optimization has been accepted to ACM FAccT!
We show that local density in embedding space encoded recoverable community preference signal, and this can be used for alignment without explicit preference annotations.
New post (thanks to @annieknk.bsky.social for her edits+feedback) looking at the structural forces that make misinformation and disinformation so hard to combat, why current responses like fact-checking keep falling short, and what that means for American democracy.
open.substack.com/pub/american...
This week, Temporary Protected Status for 350K Haitians in the U.S. was set to expire, with no White House plan to renew it.
Many warned this would lead to mass roundups of people unable to safely return to Haiti.
Today, Judge Reyes blocked it from happening.
Her ruling was scathing. 👇
A federal judge stayed Noem’s decision to end Haiti’s temporary protected status, thank goodness. But it's still vital to understand how "they're eating the pets" participatory propaganda was used to motivate and justify that policy change. This article gives a detailed breakdown of that effort.
Heads up everyone - There is likely to be a large ICE operation tomorrow in Springfield OH. Check out this brilliant piece by my former USC student who explores how this anti-immigrant campaign was engineered using ancient tropes like blood libel.
Highly recommend this article showing how the "They're Eating the Pets" refrain emerged from the right's participatory propaganda machine. Extremely relevant, as many Haitian immigrants (the targets of that false rumor/campaign) lose their status Feb 3. americanunreality.substack.com/p/american-u...
Thank you, Kate. For anyone who can't read immediately: Springfield was targeted from the top and bottom for months before that Facebook post about immigrants eating pets went viral. Then the participatory propaganda machine amplified it into federal policy.
A community that was legally recruited to revive a dying Rust Belt town is now being targeted for removal -- justified by lies about eating pets.
What began as a rumor has hardened into policy. Springfield won't be the last place this happens.
The legal status that allowed ~15,000 Haitians to work in Springfield was terminated in November. It expires tomorrow at 11:59pm.
Residents who held valid work permits can now be now relabeled as "illegals." The narrative created the political permission. The policy creates the legal pretext.
It went from a Facebook post about a "neighbor's daughter's friend" to a presidential debate stage in four days. From "they're eating the cats" to deportation raids in six months.
Springfield is facing the consequences of falsehoods that originated elsewhere.
The claims that put Springfield in the crosshairs were baseless from the start -- coming from the top (Vance, debate stages) and the bottom (neo-Nazi forums), amplified through Facebook rumors and memes, now hardening into federal action.
ICE is reportedly preparing operations in Springfield and TPS expires tomorrow. We're likely about to see a surge of rhetoric justifying the raids.
I wanted to get the full timeline documented -- to show how unfounded it all is:
open.substack.com/pub/american...
On the "boots on the ground" question and Trump saying that it will mainly be about protecting oil operations.
Given this framing, we should expect a massive payday for politically connected mercenary companies, who will use this to expand their private armies.
📣📣 New paper with #JoergFriedrichs, @florianschaffner.bsky.social, @niklasstoehr.bsky.social , “Populism and governmentalism as thin-centered ideologies: Emotions and frames on social media” is out at @ejprjournal.bsky.social
Read more: doi.org/10.1017/S147...
Had a great time last week at the Oxford Internet Institute’s (@oii.ox.ac.uk) Future of Social Media Research workshop!
I presented my work on cross-platform discourse networks — moving past platform silos to a unified view of the online information ecosystem.
Presentation: tinyurl.com/gerard-oii
Happy to say this was accepted at ICWSM 2026!
Social media users adopt the toxic behaviors of ingroup members
An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
(Second Conspiracy Pattern)
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
& If you're working on cross-platform analysis, information operations, or platform safety—would love to chat about this stuff.
Everything is open. DMs are open too :0
My website here: patrickgerard.co
Plz take a look for yourself!
🎛️ Dashboard: patrikgerard.github.io/cross-plat-n...
📄 New Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2510.09464
Really curious what patterns you find when exploring the data
When emergence occurs, users have 290% more active cross-platform neighbors discussing the narrative than when it doesn't.
This proximity signal makes cross-platform prediction tractable—no diffusion modeling required.
Now, the paper findings:
We can exploit cross-platform connections to reformulate information diffusion across platforms into a problem of simple social proximity.
Instead of modeling complex spread dynamics, we ask: do users have cross-platform neighbors already discussing this?
Dashboard theme selector interface titled "Mapping the Cross-Platform Information Ecosystem" with subtitle "Pick a high-level theme to narrow the narratives." Shows 10 selectable theme cards arranged in a grid: "All" (currently selected with blue border), "Candidate Image & Competence," "Conspiracy & Deep State," "Corruption & Legitimacy," "Economic Conditions & Blame," "Election Process & Integrity," "Foreign Affairs & Security," "Identity & Polarization," "Immigration & Border," "Mainstream & Event Reactions," and "Media & Information Trust." Each theme card appears as a dark button with white text on a dark background.
The dashboard covers major 2024 election themes:
Conspiracy & Deep State
Election Process & Integrity
Immigration & Border
Economic Conditions
Candidate Image & Competence
Media & Information Trust
Foreign Affairs & Security
Another mainstream example: Energy independence debates—claims about US energy self-sufficiency, push for domestic drilling vs. green transition.
Broadly distributed, especially Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴.
The difference in distribution patterns compared to the conspiracy narratives is striking.
Compare this to the Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling—July 2024 decision granting broad immunity to Trump.
Discussion emerges across ALL platforms—heavy TikTok 🔴 and Twitter 🔵 from the start, but also Telegram ⚪ and Truth Social 🟣.
Mainstream events show way different patterns.
(Second Conspiracy Pattern)
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
Screenshot from PBS News article dated October 5, 2024. Text reads: "Bizarre stories proposing that the government used weather control technology to aim the hurricane at Republican voters quickly racked up millions of views on X and other platforms. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., endorsed the idea, posting Wednesday on X: 'Yes they can control the weather. It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done.'" This excerpt validates the cross-platform emergence of the HAARP conspiracy tracked in the dashboard.
(External Validation)
PBS reported (Oct 5) on far-right groups spreading weather control theories, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene endorsing the idea that "they can control the weather."
You can see this explosion into mainstream platforms on our dashboard.
Link: tinyurl.com/pbs-weather
(Conspiracy Pattern - HAARP)
Take the HAARP/weather control conspiracy around Hurricane Helene—claims that government technology steered the hurricane toward Republican voters.
Starts dominated by Telegram ⚪, sustained there
Small Twitter/X 🔵 and TikTok 🔴 presence early
Then TikTok 🔴 explodes
Platform legend showing four social media platforms with their icons and color indicators: Twitter/X (blue bird icon, blue dot), TikTok (video camera icon, pink/magenta dot), Telegram (paper plane icon, white/beige dot), and Truth Social (speech bubble icon, purple dot). These colors correspond to the platform representations shown throughout the dashboard visualization.
Tracking 5.7M posts across X, TikTok, Telegram, and Truth Social during the 2024 election:
Legend:
🔵 Twitter/X
🔴 TikTok
⚪ Telegram
🟣 Truth Social
Circle size = post volume
Ring color = dominant platform
Watch how narratives shift across platforms in the unified online information ecosystem...
