Manuel Tonneau

Can we detect #hatespeech at scale on social media? To answer this, we introduce 🤬HateDay🗓️, a global hate speech dataset representative of a day on Twitter. The answer: not really! Detection perf is low and overestimated by traditional eval methods arxiv.org/abs/2411.15462 🧵

Thanks also to @JohnHolbein1 whose numerous posts on demographic probing in the social sciences inspired this work and to Matthew Kearney for the useful benchmark dataset.

Lots more info in the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2601.18486 I had a blast working on this with my wonderful coauthors @sehgal_neil @niyati_malhotra @vicorozc Ana Maria, Lakshmi @sharathguntuku @vjhofmann. Feedback welcome!

Demographic cues (eg names, dialect) are widely used to study how LLM behavior may depend on user demographics. They are often assumed interchangeable 🚨We show they are not: different cues yield different model behavior for the same group and different conclusions on LLM bias🧵

New paper out in @PNASNexus We show how skewed social media data can still be used to reliably estimate unemployment, not just nationally but down to the city level. 📈 doi.org/10.1093/pnasne… 1/N

ICYMI: Listen to @ManuelTonneau @oiioxford’s interview with the @SOEPTech podcast talking about his new research into hate speech, online platforms and disparities in content moderation across different European countries. More here: bit.ly/4ntsiRU

Conversational AI is fast becoming a key information source for humans worldwide, including during election cycles. But what are the effects on users' epistemic health? 🧠 🚨Today we released new @AISecurityInst evidence that brings cautious optimism for LLMs vs internet search

@TheMediaLeader highlights new insights from @ManuelTonneau, @deeliu97, Prof. @ralphschroeder and Prof. @computermacgyve, whose research found that 16mn EU-based users of X “do not have moderators for their national language” — equivalent to 14% of the platform’s EU user base.

Millions of users are posting to social media and other platforms in languages with zero moderators, even within the EU. That's the topline finding from a working paper leveraging newly mandated transparency data under the DSA led by @ManuelTonneau osf.io/preprints/soca…

@oiioxford @JWI_Berlin @UCPH_Research @UMassAmherst @umsi @meedan

Finally tagging scholars whose work inspired this piece: @monaelswah @FarhanaShahid_ @NicProllochs @CatalinaGoanta @s_cresci Your feedback is most welcome!

Social media platforms operate globally, but do they allocate human moderation equitably across languages? Answer: no! -Millions of users post in languages with 0 mods -Where mods exist, mod count relative to content volume varies widely across langs osf.io/amfws