Category Archives: cyberpsychology

Hard-Wired Wetware IV: The Case Against Rebalancing: Why The Asymmetrical Integration Model (AIM) May Be Self-Correcting

This paper interrogates the normative extension of the Asymmetric Integration Model by examining whether asymmetrical integration may represent a dynamically stabilised equilibrium rather than a structural failure. It explores market feedback, legitimacy constraints, optimisation adaptation, and functional specialisation as endogenous corrective mechanisms, arguing that asymmetry may be constrained by competitive and economic forces rather than requiring deliberate architectural rebalancing.

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Hard-Wired Wetware II: the Post-LLM Web Asymmetric Integration Model (AIM) Defined

The post-LLM web is not replacing humans with machines. It is integrating humans into machine-generated scale. This paper formalises the Asymmetric Integration Model (AIM), arguing that as synthetic systems produce abundant conversational substrate, human participants supply the scarce resource of consequence-bearing legitimacy. Contemporary platforms are shifting from attention extraction toward asymmetrical affective integration.

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CyberDIVA and the Architecture of Online Harm

A reflection on the CyberDIVA conference at Aston University, examining cyber violence against women and girls, the fragmentation of the UK response ecosystem, and the architectural incentives shaping harm in modern digital environments. The article connects operational realities to broader structural questions around platform design, AI integration, economic alignment and the need for systemic accountability in an increasingly asymmetric web.

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Snapchat’s Settlement Is Not the Story: The End of “We’re Just Platforms” Is

Snap’s quiet settlement of a social media addiction lawsuit is not a legal footnote, but a signal that the long-standing claim of platform neutrality is failing. As courts begin to scrutinise design-driven harm, exploitation does not disappear; it evolves. In a post-AI social environment, the greatest risk is no longer overt addiction, but systems that simulate agency and authorship so convincingly that dependency feels like sovereignty: posing a deeper threat to dignity than compulsion ever did.

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Structuring Cyberpsychology: From Foundations to Practice

This article sets out the structure of a cyberpsychology curriculum designed to address the coherence gap identified in Cyberpsychology Today. Rather than treating cyberpsychology as a loose collection of effects, this framework organises the field from foundational theory through to applied practice. The phases that follow are not arbitrary. They reflect the minimum conceptual spine required to study how persistent, mediated digital environments shape human psychology, and how that knowledge can be responsibly translated into research, policy, and real-world intervention. What follows is not a manifesto, but an architecture for learning.

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