Jessica Vitak

I'm thinking of responding to every spammy text I get to donate with this chart.

Step one in convincing people to live with robots with cameras on their faces? Disguise them as cute home decor.

Virginia Tech Computer Science is hiring tenure-track faculty at our main campus in Blacksburg, and HCI is a focus area. I'm on the search committee and at #CSCW2026 this week. Happy to answer questions. website.cs.vt.edu/About/facult...

I hope to see some of you at #cscw2026 this upcoming week. I’m excited to not be running the show this year, but know it’ll be awesome because General Chairs @guofreeman.bsky.social and Xinru Page are amazing!

It may have taken 30 years, but what goes around eventually comes around. How’s that taste Yankees fans? —From a lifelong Orioles fan

We are less than a week away from #CSCW2026 in Salt Lake City! This year’s program includes 139 paper presentations, 14 workshops, 10 panels & SIGs, a doctoral consortium, 93 posters, and 9 demos. See you there! 👋 #CSCW #HCI #AI #HumanAIInteraction

Wow. LinkedIn's algorithm really did not want people to see @sarahagilbert.bsky.social's important article on preserving human connection from AI. Out of 10,200 impressions on my posts last week, LinkedIn only showed @sarahagilbert.bsky.social's article to 65. www.techpolicy.press/millions-of-...

I think I’ve found my perfect side hustle. Charcuterie boards are out. Cookie trays are in!

This pup has not forgotten about egg prices. Eggs are very important to him. Doesn't matter why, but it took weeks to save for this one. Thought this was a top priority. Starting to wonder if maybe that wasn't true. 12/10 (credit: u/iztek)

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

I took the advice to at least photograph them all before disposing, and spent some time reflecting on how awesome it is that I have gotten to travel all over the world to share my research over the last 20 years. I also discovered some lanyards are not built to last and I’m now covered in blue dust.

What does one do with 15+ years of conference name tags and lanyards? It feels oddly painful to just throw them out but I can’t keep them.

Everybody needs to go hear Naomi Oreskes explain how Monsanto manipulated the science to obscure health concerns about Roundup — including ghost-writing papers that became touchstones in their denialism.

... also on Sunday, @vitak.bsky.social and I will be presenting a tutorial on a data ethics decision support tool based on almost a decade of empirical research around research ethics for public/pervasive data! #FAccT2026

While we're celebrating today, we want to give a special shout-out to the six HCIL faculty who were recently promoted: **Associate Prof w/Tenure: Ge Gao, Huaishu Peng, Leo Zhicheng Liu, and Caro Pierce-Wiliams **Full Prof: Sheena Erete & Eun Kyoung Choe Congrats all! 🎉

Today we hold our 43rd annual HCIL symposium to celebrate the amazing research being conducted in the US' oldest HCI lab. Read more and download the program (with abstracts for all the talks) here: hcil.umd.edu/hcil-symposi...

"If she has her own house, what will she need me for?" I don't know, dude, maybe be cool and fun to be around and be happy for her success instead being whiny little sad-ass troll about it? www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

very normal behavior by KA$H here (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Nearly 5 ago while covering AI & data at Protocol, I noticed the massive Infrastructure Act funded controversial surveillance tech inside vehicles - stuff that attempts to detect driver impairment or distraction. It was already closer to reality in the EU at the time.

The April 2026 @acm-sigchi.bsky.social research ethics column by @cfiesler.bsky.social, @vitak.bsky.social, and me asks: "is it ever ethical to violate a platform’s Terms of Service to conduct research?" (Spoiler: it's complicated) sigchi.org/news/newslet... 1/3

HCIL at #chi2026! Read more about the lab’s contributions here: hcil.umd.edu/posts/chi-20...

I’ll be at #chi2026 this week in Barcelona. Looking forward to chatting with many awesome HCI peeps!

Reminder that the call for workshops is open, with a deadline of this Thursday, March 26th. Workshops are split between Sunday and Monday this year, so you have some options for how to use one or both of those days. soups.page/workshops.html

We're very proud of all our @hcil-umd.bsky.social members who had papers, workshops, and posters accepted to this year's #chi2026. Read more about UMD's research at CHI here: hcil.umd.edu/posts/chi-20...

So odd that @vitak.bsky.social and I have similar opinions re the privacy & ethical issues of microchipping employees. We both comment here: fortune.com/2026/03/10/w...

Azerbaijan just closed airspace "in the south of the country" per Bloomberg macro squawk. Losing that link would have a massive impact on Europe-Asia (incl the Indian subcontinent and ANZ) air travel.

Do you like the work we do? Come and hang out with us. Call for International Doctoral Students: Funded Short-Term Research Visit at the Social Media Lab socialmedialab.ca/2026/02/24/c...

We enjoyed demoing the PERVADE Data Ethics Decision Support Tool, designed to support reflexive research ethics education, at @sigcse-ts.bsky.social in St. Louis. @vitak.bsky.social and @michaelzimmer.bsky.social got great feedback from #TS2026 attendees.

I am SHOCKED. Shocked I tell you!

Heading to @sigcse-ts.bsky.social in St. Louis with @vitak.bsky.social & @cfiesler.bsky.social to get feedback on the @pervade-ethics.bsky.social PERVADE Data Ethics Decision Support Tool, designed to support reflexive research ethics education. sigcse2026.sigcse.org/details/sigc... #SIGCSE #TS2026

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

::screams into the void::

Join us at 12:30pm ET Thursday, 2/12, in the HCIL Lab (HBK 2105) or online for our weekly brown bag speaker series. We'll hear from Dr. Gabriel Kaptchuk on "On Using Differential Privacy" Visit hcil.umd.edu/bbl-speaker-... for more information.

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken. Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Open your eyes people. Just because they don't have gas chambers doesn't mean these detention centers aren't concentration camps. If you were horrified reading accounts of the Nazis during WW2, you should be horrified now.

In his forthcoming book, Your Data Will Be Used Against You, George Washington University Law School professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson explores how sensor-driven technologies, social media monitoring, and artificial intelligence can be weaponized against democratic values and personal freedoms.

Join us at 12:30pm ET Thursday, 2/5 , in the lab (HBK 2105) or online for our weekly brown bag speaker series. This week we'll hear from two researchers about their UIST papers! Visit hcil.umd.edu/bbl-speaker-... for more information

📢 CSCW is piloting a rolling submissions experiment. 🔸 More flexibility for authors 🔸 Emphasis on paper quality over deadline pressure 🧪 Important: Only a small number of papers will be invited to participate, and authors can nominate their work for possible selection. cscw.acm.org/2026/rolling...

Signal will never message you like this. If you get a message like this, SOMEONE IS TRYING TO HACK YOUR SIGNAL. DO NOT GIVE THEM THAT CODE.

From the NY Post. You know they are really scrambling when they are running "The gun was no angel" stories.

I finally returned a book to the university library today after renewing it every six months for the last 7-8 years. It was time. Be free Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy. Be free!