Lucas Wright

Lucas Wright

Resident Fellow at Yale Law School

Lucas Wright

Overview

I’m a Resident Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, specializing in the sociotechnical study of digital platforms and artificial intelligence. My research focuses on the intersection of online trust and safety, the impact of emerging technologies on civil liberties, and the evolving landscape of AI regulation.

My work aims to understand how digital technologies, and the social fields that develop around them, shape social dynamics and to inform policy that fosters safer, more equitable online environments. I employ a mix of qualitative methods, including interviews and textual analysis, as well as quantitative methods, such as online field experiments and observational quasi-experiments, to explore these complex issues.

My writing has appeared in Social Media & Society, FAccT, Platforms & Society, Tech Policy Press, and Quartz and has been covered in the Wall Street Journal.

Recent News

  • July 2026 I began a one-year appointment as a Resident Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Effective August 2027, I will begin an appointment as an Assistant Professor of AI Media and Policy at Northeastern University. If you’re in New Haven or Boston and want to meet, please reach out!
  • November 2025 I have a new article out in Platforms & Society on trust and safety software vendors.

Research Interests

My primary research interests include:

  • Trust and Safety: The practices, challenges, and impacts of online content moderation, the emergence of a class of safety professionals alongside new regulations, and the role of third-party vendors in maintaining digital safety.
  • AI Regulation and Ethics: The development and enforcement of policies governing AI, particularly concerning algorithmic bias, accountability, and audits.
  • Digital Governance Discourse: The broader frameworks and language used to describe online safety, and how these influence the kinds of expertise and policy tools governments and companies make use of (which a particular focus on rhetoric of security).
  • Political Economy of Platforms: Critical analysis of how platform design and business models influence user behavior and public discourse.

About Me

I was born and raised in a small town in central Pennsylvania, in a barn that was (mostly) converted into a house. While I didn’t realize it at the time, I developed an interest in the governance of online communities in middle school when I ran a “guild” in the online roleplaying game Guild Wars. I later moved to Washington, D.C. to attend American University where I majored in political science and was first introduced to technology policy through internships at the Government Accountability Project, Change.org, and the Brookings Institution.

Before beginning my Ph.D. at Cornell, I earned my MSc from Oxford University in the Social Science of the Internet, where my thesis examined the development and use of the AutoModerator Reddit bot. I also spent several years working on issues of digital governance and rights as a civil society researcher, producing original research on online counterspeech and a series of blog posts for the Dangerous Speech Project.

In my free time, I enjoy biking, cross-country skiing, and playing chess. You can regularly find me playing at the Ithaca Chess Club. I am also particularly fond of Lichess.org, a non-profit, volunteer-moderated, open source chess website that hosts millions of games a day. While you’re here, you can try to find the best move in their daily chess puzzle on the board below.