Renée DiResta
I'm Renee, and I study adversarial abuse online – ways that people attempt to manipulate, harass, or target others, across the constantly evolving landscape of digital platforms. Sometimes this involves tracking state actors running influence operations with the intent of increasing their political power, or tearing a rival's society apart. Sometimes it's investigating spam and scams...which also aim to influence people, but are usually motivated by money rather than ideology. Spammers are among the earliest adopters of novel technology! Sometimes my work involves studying child safety issues, and increasingly their intersection with generative AI.
The internet is an ecosystem, and these things are interconnected: new technologies transform old problems.
I'm interested not only in exploring how problems manifest, but in what we can do about them. And so, I write about content moderation; not only explaining how it presently works, but envisioning how it might better maximize free expression while minimizing abuse. I write about design: our tools shape how we interact with each other, and we should want them to serve us as well as possible. And finally, I translate research into regulatory policy suggestions; it's critical to ensure sure that powerful companies remain accountable.
Everyone should understand how our tech ecosystem works, the impact that it has on society, and the role we each play within it. To that end, I try to write accessible (and entertaining!) explainers and books to help make sense of it all.
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