Notices by Nathalie Van Raemdonck (eilah_tan@aoir.social)

funniest story of 2025 so far is how the impending TikTok-ban is causing a migration/exploration of Americans to the Chinese app Rednote, where they're having so much more cultural exchanges than they would have had if TikTok would stay around. What a boomerang!

A great reading list on Xiaohongshu (the real name for RedNote) was shared earlier by Dr Qian Huang, have a look! https://qianxeniahuang.super.site/resources/xiaohongshu-literature
She also made the appeal to refer to and share the spotlight with those researchers who have acquired expertise on this platform for the past 11 years, so it's also a good referral list in case anyone gets media requests for comments! https://bsky.app/profile/qianhuang.bsky.social/post/3lfsaeja7bc23

it's funny how much of this #Threads #Fediverse federation feels like a forced marriage between royalty so their kingdoms combined can create a stronger empire against their common enemies...

So this AI company Moxie marketed its robot friend to children with learning disabilities and difficulties to develop social skills. It just announced it's going out of business and the robot will stop functioning as it primarily works on cloud services. So many special needs children will lose their first ever friend...
I can only hope parents will manage to jailbreak it and keep it going like in Ted Chiang's "the lifecycle of software objects" short story, but what an awful vendor lock-in 😢

amidst giants writing out their thoughts on Bluesky, I'm humbly sharing a piece I was asked to write about power concentrations on Bluesky for a more layman policy audience. The piece was originally in Dutch https://www.sampol.be/2024/11/iedereen-naar-bluesky , but I translated it for those interested ! https://www.brussels-school.be/research/publications/power-consolidation-bluesky-and-fragmentation-public-discourse-sky-more-blue
In it I detangled the “is the network decentralized” question and added reflections how the governance structure also consolidates power with certain users within the platform.

Hello AoIR! Time to make my #introduction on this server! PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, currently in between Barcelona (where my partner lives), and Brussels (where part of my heart lies).

I'm doing my PhD research on the mutual shaping of platform affordances and social norms (yay collective perspectives!) I mostly started this PhD to justify my social media addiction and have an outlet for all the insights I've gathered on the memes and the ✨ lore ✨ .

I moved to Mastodon last year in the first migration wave when AoIR.social wasn't active yet, found my initial home at HCI.social, the closest community I could find with internet researchers, but I finally overcame my procrastination and moved to an instance where I would enjoy the local timeline more.

Don't hesitate to hit me up if you're new here and have any questions about Mastodon and the Fediverse! (i'll be presenting some of my research perspective concerning the Fedi at #AoIR2023!)