CivilServant is now the Citizens and Technology Lab

In 2019, CivilServant joined Cornell University and became the Citizens and Technology Lab

Learn more about CAT Lab
Reddit Mods: Let's Test Ideas for Preventing Harassment and Fact-Checking the News
Nathan Matias Joins the Cornell University Department of Communication
Estimating Counts of Events in Behavioral Product Testing
Kittens, Baklava, and Bubble Tea: How Wikipedians Thank Each Other
Do Social Media Platforms Have Effective Ad Policies? We Audited Google & Facebook
Quitting Facebook & Google: Why Exit Option Democracy is the Worst Kind of Democracy
How Anyone Can Audit Facebook's Newsfeed
Attributing Cause in Algorithm Audits:
Human causes of problems are hard to distinguish from technical ones.
Is It Just Me? Pooling Experiments to Audit Common Impacts of Social Tech
Meet CivilServant's New Data Engineer: Max Klein
Meet CivilServant's New Research Manager: Julia Kamin
Gathering the Custodians of the Internet: Lessons from the First CivilServant Summit
Do Downvote Buttons Cause Unruly Online Behavior?
Does Responding to Harassment Work? Help us Find Out!
Remaking Large-Scale Behavioral Research for Democracy: New Paper at CHI 2018
Moderators: Join us at MIT on Jan 27-28 for our first Community Research Summit! Apply by Dec 15
Citizen Behavioral Design: CivilServant Selected as an Innovation by Design Award Finalist
The Obligation To Experiment: Tech should test the effects of their products. We should too.
Who Gets to Use Facebook's Rainbow 'Pride' Reaction?
Fact-Checking Can Reduce the Spread of Unreliable News. It Can Also Do the Opposite: r/worldnews Experiment Results
Rule-Posting Prevents Problems & Increases Participation: /r/science Experiment Results
Resource Guide of Academic Research about Online Harassment and Responses
Online Communities Collect Their Own Data To Make The Internet Fairer & Safer (The Atlantic)
When Do Groups Collectively Organize? Understanding the reddit Blackout
Who Do Moderators Work For? Moderation as Janitorial Work, Civic Participation, and Oligarchy
A Toxic Web: What the Victorians Can Teach Us About Online Abuse (The Guardian)
High Impact Questions and Opportunities for Moderation Research & Action (civic.mit.edu)
Reporting, Reviewing, and Responding to Harassment on Twitter (with WAM!)

Make Discoveries Together

Do you have questions about how best to create a fairer, safer, more understanding internet? CivilServant helps online communities test your ideas for improving online experiences. We also conduct industry-independent evaluations of the impact of social technologies in people's lives.

With each new test, communities add to public knowledge of what works in online moderation. We have a strong commitment to research ethics; all experiments are designed with and for communities. Learn More about CivilServant.

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