J. Nathan Matias 🦣

Social & computer scientist who works alongside communities on science for a safer, fairer, more understanding Internet.

Founder, Citizens and Technology Lab · Visiting Scholar, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia · Assistant Prof at Cornell · Guatemalan-American · Co-founder of @transparenttech

Enjoys taking photos & listening to books/poetry on very long bike rides.

natematias.com: https://natematias.com
Citizens and Technology Lab: https://citizensandtech.org
Coalition for Independent Technology Research: https://independenttechresearch.org/

Last Notes

2025-08-24 15:14:47 UTC

10 months ago, a company across the world put my neighbor's access to medical care at risk, giving us 2 weeks notice that software behind our 40 electric car chargers would be shut down.
This is the story of how my neighborhood broke free from this potential disaster.
https://natematias.com/portfolio/2025-08-22-unchaining-from-broken-software-tethers/

2025-08-15 01:22:26 UTC

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didn’t even know it was possible on MacBook airs! Good luck- we who are about to install Linux on Mac hardware salute you! 🫡

2025-08-09 19:39:52 UTC

The Authors Guild has launched a certification program for asserting that a book has been human authored
https://authorsguild.org/human-authored/

2025-08-02 17:55:14 UTC

Nearly at the half way point of my Everesting roam attempt, as a fundraiser for @npub18wl…wxmu. It has been an extraordinarily beautiful day!
If you care about journalism and cross border understanding, consider donating- thanks!
https://globalvoices.org/2025/07/24/fundraiser-climbing-a-virtual-everest-with-the-global-voices-community/
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/960/446/925/127/537/original/9136105b451a69ba.png
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2025-04-08 20:54:02 UTC

Things I didn't realize about being a scientist when I was a gradstudent: to do research that makes a difference in the world, I would have to write 20 different versions of the same argument over the next decade or more.

2025-01-30 01:15:59 UTC

Today when explaining open source and free software for the first time to a student, I also had to explain that Richard Stallman is NOT safe and any organization that hosts him is also not safe.
It pains me that so many organizations enabled Stallman for so long, more interested in protecting abusers than advancing software freedom.
The Free Software movement didn't have to be Omelas, and many good people fought for it to be better, but that's what the FSF chose. 😢
https://stallman-report.org/

2025-01-15 19:57:24 UTC

Today in the pace of evidence-based policy: it took 45 years from the first evidence that Red Dye #3 causes cancer to the point where it would be banned in the US.
Thinking of how many cases of cancer were caused by so many years of delay, and a high decision threshold for such bans.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-bans-red-no-3-artificial-coloring-beverages-candy-rcna185479

2025-01-07 13:56:36 UTC

I founded CAT Lab on the simple and not always obvious idea that corporations can't be trusted to consistently pursue the common good, which is why we need industry-independent, public-interest science.
Every day I am more convinced this was the right move.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/meta-facebook-instagram-threads-mark-zuckerberg-remove-fact-checkers-recommend-political-content

2024-12-04 00:21:46 UTC

An important new article on misinformation and outrage by Killian Mcloughlin, William Brady, Aden Goolsbee, Ben Kaiser, Kate Klonick, and M.J. Crockett was just published.
I'm planning to write a thread/post about what we learn from this study and what (importantly) we don't. What questions would you want to see answered?
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adl2829

2024-11-13 00:14:12 UTC

Still smiling after a *wonderful* trip into Vermont a few weeks ago to catch up with two people I admire and appreciate on the perfect day.
- finally meeting @npub1prs…eh8y after many years on Metafilter
- catching up with @npub1gc8…h8sc
What makes a perfect day? Slow time with thoughtful, caring people. And oh yes, the leaves were pretty too I guess <grin>
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/472/748/442/970/156/original/2ff185b227c6340b.jpeg
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2024-10-10 20:59:03 UTC

Last week, I got a deeply worrying and frustrating message that the EV chargers in my neighborhood would have their software shut down — with about 10 days notice.
Enel X had decided to leave the North American market, which means leaving us in the lurch. Today, a group of us together with Consumer Reports, have asked the FTC to investigate the company's behavior, in our personal capacities.
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/consumer-reports-u-s-pirg-and-60-self-reported-owners-of-juicebox-ev-chargers-call-on-the-ftc-to-investigate-enel-x-after-abruptly-discontinuing-sales-and-support-of-its-ev-chargers/

2024-09-14 15:38:15 UTC

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Despite very well-meaning employees on the inside, it never came to anything—except taking political pressure off companies for the cost of a press release, a few meetings, and an extraordinary amount of time from internal staff who were also left in the lurch. That was the year I decided to focus on independent research—I wasn't going to be fooled by tech firms again.

2024-09-14 15:38:04 UTC

Ten years ago, a coalition of Reddit, Imgur, and Twitch promised to collaborate with external scientists, even as they faced social pressure for failures in online safety. I was one of the scholars whose name they used to whitewash their reputation.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/18/reddit-imgur-twitch-derp-social-data

2024-09-04 00:35:37 UTC

Rising Voices at @npub18wl…wxmu is doing amazing work to organize folks working to expand internet and indigenous language resources. Here’s a short video about a project by one group in Chiapas Mexico
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_eQuUWy8nC/?igsh=MWU4eXRyMXZhdXhrZQ

2024-08-25 01:25:34 UTC

Deeply troubled to see that the % of Black, Hispanic, Native American / Pacific Islander students at MIT has gone down by 10 percentage points in the past year.
This is not unexpected, but still a blow. Seeing this makes me even more committed to the work of education for all that brought me into higher education in the first place.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rxvd2z6ldo

2024-07-31 21:17:28 UTC

Today I learned that undocumented immigrants in the US pay roughly $96.7 billion in taxes every year https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article290533609.html#campaignName=fresno_abeja_newsletter&linkType=nmeintro

2024-07-04 18:12:58 UTC

Hiring a data science contractor/gradstudent to compile some US historical air quality data (roughly one day of work, maybe less?) Send me a PM with contact info & portfolio if you're interested.
As someone with a respiratory disability, I need to to make decisions about the relative risk of travel to speak at universities.
To help, I need to link average air pollution in a given month with the locations of universities, ideally with a Jupyter notebook that helps me do analysis.

2024-06-26 23:18:26 UTC

"In part, safety science has not worried much about power at all."
Sidney Dekker & James Nyce ask:
- why has the study of safety avoided the study of power?
- how do safety scientists think about power?
- how can the social science of power inform safety science?
https://sidneydekker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/SafetyInPower.pdf