Amy Zhang

Amy Zhang

@axz.bsky.social

Associate professor of social computing at UW CSE, leading @socialfutureslab.bsky.social social.cs.washington.edu

11.4K followers865 following568 posts

Amy Zhang reposted

Torsten Goerke (verified 🤜 🤛) 🎛️🎹🔊🎚️🎧📟🔌🐸
@tgoerke.bsky.social

We selected this recent article for our Journal Club on Civic Participation. It will be interesting to hear my colleagues' perspectives. Also, because of how science publishing works, the article is dated: it was written when ATProto meant microblogging and everything else was "third-party".

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...
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Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Broadening out, I argue for more research doing what I tentatively call sociotechnical institutional design - drawing on theory and observation of institutions in social science (team, org, community, gov) - and using those as inspiration for design and integration of new tech.

Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

This is exactly what CSCW has done so well for many years: doing social science theory and methods but then closing the loop to also rethink sociotechnical systems. As an example, I present our work that takes inspiration from case law to reimagine how we do AI alignment.

Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

The CSCW community has long studied questions of coordination and alignment in human teams. As AI agents become more embedded into our work, what can we take from this research and what doesn’t transfer? I present a number of systems prototyping this out.

Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Then in the main CSCW conference, we have a paper on the politics of decentralized social media protocol designs: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1... See you there? Please reach out if you're around!

dl.acm.orgSeeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer InteractionCalls to decentralize feed-based social media have been driven by concerns about the concentrated power of centralized platforms and their societal impact. In response, numerous decentralized social media protocols have emerged, each interpreting “...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Life update: I'm going on sabbatical at Google DeepMind and will be based out of SF bay area for the next year. I would love to hang out if you're around! Excited to dream up new research directions & collaborations. Meanwhile I'll continue to lead my lab @socialfutureslab.bsky.social at UW CSE.

Amy Zhang reposted

Laurens
@laurenshof.online

decentralisation moves the centralisation one layer up, as it ever does i do agree with these recommendations tho

Tony Zhou@tyzhou.bsky.social

Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...

Amy Zhang reposted

Conflictedairr
@conflictedairr.blacksky.app

Hey #blackskygamers quick plug and source of information & insight for you all that have questions on feeds here on Bluesky. In the quoted post below I’m proud to say I’m one of the many feed creators @tyzhou.bsky.social & the University of Washington decided to speak with on the topic of feeds 🧡

Tony Zhou@tyzhou.bsky.social

Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...

Amy Zhang reposted

hilling
@hillingsama.bsky.social

The hardest part is not getting feedback. I’m so happy when you guys have told me you use the feeds I make! Even if it’s because there’s a problem you noticed, then I can both try to fix it and also I know it’s being used 😆 And I’m always happy to make more!

Tony Zhou@tyzhou.bsky.social

Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

We were interested in studying the Bsky custom feed ecosystem, with a focus on feed creators, as arguably the first real instantiation of the vision of middleware providers for social media services like recommendation. The idea always seemed great in theory, but how sustainable is it really?

Tony Zhou@tyzhou.bsky.social

Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

How should we think about user data, access control, and accountability? What tools or infrastructure + other support do middleware providers need to thrive? These questions have not all been sorted out yet since it’s still fairly new. But our interviews point to ways to improve on the status quo.

Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

See paper for lots more details on our findings and takeaways! And thanks to the feed creators and third party devs out there who sat down to speak with us!!

Amy Zhang reposted

Tony Zhou
@tyzhou.bsky.social

Bluesky gives users the power to choose their algorithms, but how does this actually work in practice? In our new preprint, we explore the ecosystem of Bluesky custom feeds and the feed creators behind them! 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2609.12958

arxiv.orgMiddleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators Build, Maintain, and Sustain Custom Feeds on BlueskyScholars have long proposed third-party middleware as an alternative to centralized algorithmic feeds: feeds built and distributed by independent feed creators. This vision saw no large-scale instanti...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Rediscovered my old "love songs" Spotify playlist today (slowly curated from 2012-23). If you like millennial indie, here ya go: open.spotify.com/playlist/1Ni... Some greatest hits, some random gems too thanks to the Spotify discover weekly algo over the years (now just kids music for me 🥲).

Amy Zhang reposted

Petter Törnberg
@pettertornberg.com

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

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Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Finally, we also had a paper with collaborator @tskuo.bsky.social at CMU on enabling collective design of community bots via a system that surfaces provocative hypothetical cases as a way to stress-test and iterate on bot policy: arxiv.org/abs/2509.25492

arxiv.orgBotender: Supporting Communities in Collaboratively Designing AI Agents through Case-Based ProvocationsAI agents, or bots, serve important roles in online communities. However, they are often designed by outsiders or a few tech-savvy members, leading to bots that may not align with the broader communit...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Next, @kjfeng.me built a system for LLM policy prototyping - where domain experts can collaboratively work in small groups to author, evaluate, and iterate on LLM policy - out of needs we found running workshops in OpenAI's Democratic Inputs to AI program. arxiv.org/abs/2509.19680

arxiv.orgPolicyPad: Collaborative Prototyping of LLM PoliciesAs LLMs gain adoption in high-stakes domains like mental health, domain experts are increasingly consulted to provide input into policies governing their behavior. From an observation of 19 policymaki...
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Because of Canada’s inability to grant him a visitor visa in time 😒 Leijie will be presenting remotely instead of attending in person as he had planned. But please feel free to reach out with questions. We plan to put all our findings online in a couple more weeks.

Amy Zhang reposted

Tzu-Sheng Kuo 郭子生
@tskuo.bsky.social

🔮 How can we empower online communities to design AI agents tailored to their unique needs and norms? In our #CHI2026 paper, we introduce #Botender, a system that enables collaborative design of AI agents through 🔥case-based provocation🔥

Amy Zhang reposted

Benjamin Mako Hill
@mako.cc

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper (led by @groceryheist.cc) that explains why people often engage in multiple groups with overlapping topic and membership, and which helps explain why competition between online groups seems to be rare. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

mako.ccWhy do people participate in similar online communities?Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

Can’t say I really consider myself an expert in this area given the many exemplary leaders I see around me, but it was a great time chatting on this podcast! Thanks for having me!

Gates Cambridge@gatescambridge.bsky.social

The third series of our So, now what? podcast explores complex questions relating to leadership, starting with leading ethically in unethical times - www.gatescambridge.org/about/news/n... #leadership #ethics @uniofcam.bsky.social @gatesfoundation.bsky.social @axz.bsky.social

gatescambridge.orgNew series explores complex leadership questions - Gates CambridgeThe third series of our So, now what? podcast explores complex questions relating to leadership, starting with leading ethically in unethical times.

Amy Zhang reposted

Mike Masnick
@masnick.com

Remember when the internet wasn't awful? We can go back to that. Some friends and I have released the Resonant Computing Manifesto: a call to bring back such a time, to see if we can bring back a world where technology works for us, rather than against us. resonantcomputing.org

resonantcomputing.orgThe Resonant Computing ManifestoTechnology should bring out the best in humanity, not the worst—a manifesto for resonant computing built on five principles that reject hyper-scale extraction for human flourishing.
Amy Zhang
@axz.bsky.social

I'll be at #neurips2025 briefly for the workshop weekend, specifically the Algorithmic Collective Action workshop and Regulatable ML workshop (where @kjfeng.me was selected to give an oral for his workshop paper on regulating agent UIs!). LMK if you're around!

Amy Zhang reposted

Rebecca Crootof
@crootof.bsky.social

As many know, @bjard.bsky.social and I have been drafting a Technology Law coursebook for a few years. We've used it to teach classes at three institutions, including Yale Law School, and others have used chapters in their techlaw classes. We're excited to share the current version more broadly!

Amy Zhang reposted

dame
@dame.is

it's been a long time coming, but i'm happy to share that my latest creative project is finally here... @anisota.net is an experimental social client (and game!) for Bluesky and the AT Protocol i built it for me because i'm kinda weird and needed an equally weird way to experience social media 🕯️

Anisota@anisota.net

Welcome. Anisota is here. Step inside. 🕯️ anisota.net 🕯️

anisota.netanisota for Bluesky & ATProtoa new, experimental way to experience social media