I work in the philosophy of the internet. I am especially interested in rapid technological change and its impacts at the interpersonal, community-wide, and societal levels. I work toward clear conceptual understandings of complex problems by applying methods from social epistemology, political epistemology, the philosophy of technology, and norm psychology.
My ongoing work includes my dissertation project and related works: an account of chronically online communities, analyses of lived experiences of disability and ableism, and a norms-based account of the erosion of American local journalism. Each of these projects investigates assumptions and dynamics of contemporary social life.
My dissertation defends a philosophical account of online life that focuses on online communities, the online environment they inhabit, and the threats they face. This is a first step in a more general research program oriented toward understanding online sociality as a different form of social life, rather than a pale imitation of offline sociality—which is, in turn, my focus in the philosophy of the internet.
My first chapter, “On the Impact of Chronically Online Communities,” develops a descriptive account of Chronically Online Communities. This category includes such disparate groups as die-hard Taylor Swift fans and QAnon true believers. I argue that these communities have distinct social-epistemic features and exert powerful influence on offline life, and thus merit attention from social epistemologists and ethicists, especially those interested in internet-based phenomena. From neologisms to social norm shift to political upheaval, Chronically Online Communities shape life far beyond their home environment.
My second chapter, “The Internet Is a Place,” provides an account of social platforms as online environments structured by gamified choice architecture. Gamification is the inclusion of elements of game-design in non-game contexts, which affects behaviors and motivations. Choice architecture describes the array of options presented to an agent. So, gamified choice architecture lays out options and influences agents with game-like elements. Treating platforms as places shaped by gamified choice architecture reveals that commonly identified ills of the social internet are interrelated environmental hazards, rather than discrete phenomena. Given these hazards, I ask: How ought we navigate such treacherous environs? Community social and epistemic norms suggest promising pathways (and instructivelyless-than-promising ones).
My third chapter, “Touching Grass Won’t Fix This: Enshittification As Everything Problem,” examines the problem of enshittification (sometimes called “platform decay”), a specific pattern through which platforms are made phenomenally worse and more exploitative. I argue that popular proposed solutions to enshittification (namely, to disconnect from the social internet) mischaracterize enshittification as an individual problem. Instead, enshittification is in the same category as climate change or structural oppression: an everything problem. To respond well to enshittification, we need what Brownstein, Madva, and Kelly (2025) call a “both/and” approach, simultaneously focusing on the individual and structural levels to create positive social change. I emphasize how Chronically Online Communities can resist enshittification.
I will continue focusing research on online sociality, eventually pitching this work as a trade book suited for general audiences. Other dissertation-related articles already in progress include standalone analysis of the relationship between gamification and enshittification , an examination of the community-level impact of AI-generated content and the proliferation of bots, and an account of how online social norms shape offline behavior, particularly moral ascriptions and peer sanctioning. In a public opinion landscape marked by technological fears and moral panics, an analysis of the value of preserving the goods online life can offer is especially timely.
I have been chronically ill and disabled for the entirety of my academic life, which has shaped my perspective and required me to adapt to my own fluctuating capacity. Insights from the philosophy of disability have therefore been highly influential across my research. Part of my interest in ChOnCos, for example, arises because many disabled people, including myself, depend on online sociality for support and community. This attunement will continue to shape my research priorities. I also have several ongoing projects that foreground the philosophy of disability.
“Moral Ableism: The Ableist Conflation in Ethical Theories” makes a metaphilosophical contribution. I coin the term “moral ableism” to describe a foundational assumption of the disvalue of injury, pain, and debility, and locate it within each of the three major ethical theories. I argue that moral ableism arises from what Joel Michael Reynolds has called the “ableist conflation” of disability with suffering. I argue that not only is moral ableism a justice issue (as is all ableism), but it leads to mistaken conclusions about value and disvalue.
“Barriers to Coalition” argues that ableism, perhaps uniquely among forms of marginalization, is characterized by fear of oneself becoming disabled. This creates a normative investment in active ignorance toward the needs and priorities of disabled people. This active ignorance directly precipitates acts of ableist injustice, even among groups which consider themselves to aim at social justice (and, via lateral ableism, among groups of disabled people who fail to include those with a wide array of disabled experiences).
This project countermands a common misunderstanding of the decline of the American local journalism landscape. The prevailing wisdom: Local news outlets have collapsed because they failed to compete in the era of digital media, so the reader-audience shifted to social media platforms instead. The true story is more complex. I argue that the erosion of local journalism has not been a natural process of technological obsolescence, but a targeted maneuver: a new standard business model actively kills local newspapers in favor of low-investment, high-profit content mills.
Because local journalism can be considered as an epistemic institution, a political institution, and a social institution, its erosion has precipitated three interlocking feedback loops of norm-shift in the epistemic, political, and social spheres, resulting in greater affective polarization, more mistrust, and a local-national collapse.
My norms-based account has several upshots. First, if norm-shift precipitated this problem, norm shift may be able to slow and reverse the erosion. Second, the reader-audience are drawn to social media platforms for their local news even when low-quality information abounds on these platforms because the loss of local journalism produces a loss of social connection. So: Reader-audience members seek to meet not just epistemic needs, but social ones when they seek out information.