Speaker: Sarah Gilbert, Research Associate, Cornell University
Title: Keeping it human: Learning from volunteer moderators to preserve knowledge on the internet
Time: 3-4 p.m.
Date: Sept. 30, 2026
Location: Computing and Information Science Building, Room 250
Click here to attend via Zoom
Abstract: For better or worse, online communities play a vital role in facilitating public access to knowledge. These epistemic communities rely on human contributions, but are under threat from generative AI, as an incursion of AI-generated content risks eroding trust all while AI-systems draw attention away from the communities themselves. However, millions of volunteers are working in the background, largely invisible, to preserve knowledge on the internet.
This talk presents work from nine years of ethnographic research with a Reddit community called r/AskHistorians, providing longitudinal insight into sociotechnical threats faced by the community—from Reddit’s culture and demographic to its algorithms and recommender systems, and now generative AI. Through a series of stories, this talk will demonstrate how the community’s volunteer leaders advance its public history mission by subverting Reddit’s tech and culture to counter hate and misinformation, contribute knowledge and expertise, promote epistemic justice, and fight for a better digital future. Collectively, these stories provide important lessons for preserving open knowledge on the Internet.
Bio: Dr. Sarah Gilbert is a Research Associate at Cornell University and Research Director of the Citizens and Technology Lab where she uses collaborative methods to empower online communities and promote data ethics. Dr. Gilbert’s award-winning work has been published in premier computer science conferences such as CSCW, and in top journals such as Big Data & Society, and Transactions on Computer Human Interaction. She has been quoted in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBSNews, and advises state, federal, and international policy-makers on issues related to data access and ethics.
