Reading the Seattle Public Schools vs. Big Ad Tech complaint (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.317950/gov.uscourts.wawd.317950.1.0.pdf), I think of Paul Romer's Ad Tax. It's the simplest mechanism that we might all agree on (except for politicians on the dole). Write your rep. https://adtax.paulromer.net

If only subscriptions were portable. #fediverse

A huge problem with criticism and regulation of powerful systems (in this case, internet services) is accepting their premises, strategies, and market structures and trying to reform them on their own terms. Another great piece by @pluralistic: https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/

Just added a debug mode to the new OpenCheck Mastodon recommendation engine and I'm making it available to all. It has neat feature: perspective-taking -- you can look at *other* people's recommendations. Initially I built this feature for me to sanity check what others are seeing, but I think it's interesting for everyone. Given follows are all public, I don't think there's a privacy issue here, but happy to consider if anyone thinks there is. To unlock debug model, add '?debug=1' to the URL

Feature Drop! A very simple node2vec-based recommendation engine for finding new Mastodon follows is now live: https://opencheck.is/recommendations. Simple one-click follows. Uses node2vec over the combination of the #ScienceTwitter graph and the growing Mastodon follow graph collected on OpenCheck. As a sanity check, I'm my own top recommendation! Note: you must have an OpenCheck account -- register at https://opencheck.is/register; must have ORCID currently, will open up if there's interest)

The OpenCheck directory has been positively boring... until now. Thanks to the openness of the #fediverse I can easily #webfinger people and lazy-load their pictures and bios on to the page. Birdsite-only users are SOL. https://opencheck.is/people/topic/Artificial_intelligence

How do you show your OpenCheck identity verification on your Mastodon profile like @fgypas? Here's how!

Minor update on the https://opencheck.is public directory: Academics can now disable irrelevant topics from your account page. This affects how you show up in the system. You currently can't add topics, as the system is meant to be verifying where you have expertise (to some extent), and we're using OpenAlex as a neutral third party (imperfect as that is for now).

I'm launching the public directory of the Scientists of Mastodon soon on https://opencheck.is. Currently 703 registered scientists with ORCIDs. The directory will be organized by topic, as extracted from your papers by OpenAlex (https://docs.openalex.org/about-the-data/concept). But you need to flip a toggle to give permission to be in the directory. Login and flip it! https://opencheck.is