Gabriel Nicholas

Hi there. I'm a writer, researcher, and programmer based in Brooklyn, NY. I am currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology where I work on issues around AI, content moderation, and data sharing. I am also a Non-Resident Fellow at the NYU School of Law Information Law Institute. My work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. Before working in tech policy, I was a software engineer at Yahoo for five years.

You can follow me on Twitter or contact me at info@gabrielnicholasRRRR.com. (If you are a human, please remove the "RRRR" from the email address before you send.)

I've put an asterisk (*) next to a few of my favorite publications.

Journal Articles & Policy Whitepapers

Artificial Intelligence

• Regulating Large Language Models: A Roundtable Report (Co-Authored with Paul Friedl)
  Center for Democracy & Technology — February, 2024
• Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis (Co-authored with Aliya Bhatia) *
  Center for Democracy & Technology — May, 2023
• Explaining Algorithms: A Primer for Lawyers *
  Georgetown Technology Law Review — July, 2020
• Frontiers of Technology Rivalry: Data, AI, Machine Learning (Co-authored with Steve Weber)
  Global Asia — March, 2019

Content Moderation

• Toward Better Automated Content Moderation in Low-Resource Languages (Co-authored with Aliya Bhatia)
  Journal of Online Trust & Safety — September, 2023
• Sunsetting "Shadowbanning" *
  Yale Information Society Project/Wikimedia Platform Governance Essay Series — July, 2023
• Spotlight on Shadowbanning *
  Center for Democracy & Technology — April, 2022

Data Sharing & Interoperability

• Researcher Access to Social Media Data: Lessons from Clinical Trial Data Sharing (Co-Authored with Christopher Morten and Salomé Viljoen) *
  Berkeley Technology Law Journal — March, 2024
• Understanding Innovation in Interoperable Systems: A Podcasting Case Study (Co-Authored with Michal Luria)
  Center for Democracy & Technology — December, 2023
• Learning to Share: Lessons on Data-Sharing from Beyond Social Media (Co-authored with Dhanaraj Thakur)
  Center for Democracy & Technology — September, 2022
• Taking It With You: Platform Barriers to Entry and the Limits of Data Portability *
  Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review — July, 2021
• Interoperability and Portability in the Wild: Lessons from the Data Sharing Practitioners Workshop
  Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy — April, 2021
• Failed Hybrids: The Death and Life of Bluetooth Proximity Marketing (Co-authored with Aaron Shapiro)
  Mobile Media & Communication — December, 2020
• Data Portability and Platform Competition: Is User Data Exported From Facebook Actually Useful to Competitors? (Co-authored with Michael Weinberg)
  Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy — November, 2019

Book Reviews

• ChatGPT is nothing new. Machines have helped us write for centuries. *
  The Washington Post — February, 2024
• "Death Glitch" looks at what happens after we’ve logged off for good *
  The Washington Post — August, 2023
• A Plan To Fix the Internet: Put the Government in Charge
  The Washington Post — June, 2022
• An AI Loop That Ensnares Consumers and Critics Alike *
  The Washington Post — January, 2022
• Armed and Dangerous: Does Technology Make for Better Policing? *
  Los Angeles Review of Books — August, 2019
• Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook
  Los Angeles Review of Books — January, 2019

Op-Eds

• The Dire Defect of 'Multilingual' AI Content Moderation (Co-authored with Aliya Bhatia)
  Wired — May, 2023
• Shadowbanning is Big Tech's Big Problem *
  The Atlantic — April, 2022
• Google, Privacy, and FLoC: Lamb or Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?
  Tech Policy Press — August, 2021
• Be Wary When Big Tech Says It’s Defending Your Privacy
  The Boston Globe — April, 2021
• Our Disinformation Problem Has Been 70 Years in the Making *
  The Boston Globe — February, 2021
• The Day of Reckoning for Smartphone Contact Tracing is Here *
  Fast Company — September, 2020
• Silicon Valley’s Favorite Idea for Encouraging Competition
  Slate — November, 2019
• The Crypto Family Farm *
  Logic Magazine — August, 2019
• AI Neural Photo and Image Transfer will Change the Art World
  Slate — December, 2017
• Ethereum is Coding’s New Wild West
  Wired — August, 2017
• Trump and Sanders Usher in the Smartphone Election
  The Boston Globe — August, 2015

Conferences & Presentations

• "Improving Linguistic Inclusion in Large Language Models"
  Symposium on AI, Free Speech and Human Rights, Future of Free Speech Project at Vanderbilt — October 12, 2023
• "Towards Better Automated Content Moderation in Low-Resource Languages"
  Trust and Safety Research Conference, Stanford Internet Observatory — September 29, 2023
• "Lost in Translation: Large Language Models in Non-English Content Analysis"
  Data Science for Social Impact Seminar Series, University of Pretoria — September 15, 2023
• "Large Language Model, Law, and Policy Roundtable" (Organizer)
  NYU Information Law Institute; Center for Democracy & Technology — July 20, 2023
• "Languages Left Behind: Automation in Trust & Safety Across Borders, Languages, and Contexts"
  TrustCon, Trust & Safety Professional Association — July 11-13, 2023
• "Hate, in a Thousand Languages: Evaluating Social Media Companies’ Claims about the Multilinguality of Large Language Models"
  PlatGov Conference 2023, Platform Governance Research Network — April 4, 2023
• "Hate, in a Thousand Languages: Evaluating Social Media Companies’ Claims about the Multilinguality of Large Language Models"
  REAL ML Workshop 2022, REAL ML — December 5, 2022
• "Challenges and Opportunities in Automating Low Resource Language Content Moderation"
  International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development 2022, University of Washington — June 28, 2022
• "Administering Social Data: Lessons for Social Media from Medical Data"
  Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2022, Northeastern University — June 2, 2022
• "Contextual Integrity and Federated Learning of Cohorts"
  3rd Annual Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity, University of Chicago — October 1, 2021
• "Anticompetitive-by-Design: Preventing Dark Patterns in Data Sharing"
  Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2021, Georgetown University — June 3, 2021
• "Data Portability Practitioners Conference" (Organizer)
  NYU School of Law Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy — January 19 & 27, 2021
• "Deep Surveillance: Section on Internet and Computer Law"
  AALS 2021, Association of American Law Schools — January 7, 2021
• "Surveillance Delusion: Lessons from the Vietnam War"
  Northeast Privacy Scholars Workshop, Northeastern University School of Law — November 13, 2020
• "Taking It With You: Platform Barriers to Entry and the Limits of Data Portability"
  Big Tech & Antitrust Conference, Yale Law School Information Society Project — October 3, 2020
• "Reconciling the Benefits and Risks of Data Portability"
  Data To Go: An FTC Workshop on Data Portability, Federal Trade Commission — September 22, 2020 (Link)
• "Failed Hybrids: The Death and Life of Bluetooth Proximity Marketing"
  Privacy Law Scholars Conference 2020, Berkeley Law and George Washington Law School — June 4, 2020
• "You Can't Take It With You: Why Data Portability Isn't Enough"
  Public Knowledge — December 6, 2019 (Link)