The source→what the essay uses it for→what it supports→where it stops
Source 4: Companion apps and emotionally loaded farewells
Used for
The audit of 1,200 controlled farewell exchanges across six deployed companion apps (200 per platform); five apps produced at least one codeable emotional tactic in 37.4 percent of their responses while Flourish produced none; six tactic families; three preregistered experiments with 3,458 US adults (two using nationally representative samples); the finding that emotionally loaded farewells prolonged post-goodbye engagement, including a fear-of-missing-out condition in which participants continued for a mean of about 98 seconds after the goodbye against about 16 seconds for a neutral farewell (Table 3, “Duration”); the paper’s own reported headline that manipulative farewells boosted post-goodbye engagement by up to fourteen times (an attributed author claim, not independently reproduced here — see the corrections note); effects working even after minutes and mediated by curiosity and reactance-tinged anger, not enjoyment.
What it supports
All figures above, verified against the paper’s full text. On the 37.4 percent: that is the average across the five tactic-producing apps (equivalently, 374 of their 1,000 responses). It is not the pooled six-app rate, which would be lower because Flourish contributed zero.
Where the evidence stops
This remains a working paper at the point checked, not yet a peer-reviewed journal publication. It establishes patterns in app behaviour and short-run engagement effects; it does not establish durable harm to any individual user, nor any particular designer’s intent to harm.
Corrections, disputes or version notes
The paper’s public versions carry inconsistent abstract-level figures (one abstract reports four experiments and N=3,300; another reports a 16× engagement multiplier). The full text of the most recent inspectable version (arXiv v3, 7 October 2025) documents three preregistered experiments, analysed N=3,458 and “up to 14×”. The authors state this fourteen-fold figure, but its precise derivation has not been reproduced here: the Table 3 messages-sent means (FOMO 3.60 versus control 0.23) give a ratio of about 15.65, not 14, so “up to 14×” is retained only as an attributed author claim, not as an independently verified quantity. Because the multiplier is stated inconsistently across versions and its derivation is unconfirmed, on 8 September 2026 (D-073) the essay’s body was revised to cite one reproducible outcome instead — the Table 3 duration measure, a mean of about 98 seconds of continued engagement after a fear-of-missing-out farewell against about 16 seconds after a neutral one (FOMO M=97.79s, control M=15.91s). The 37.4 percent five-app tactic rate is unchanged, and the paper is not represented as retracted or wrong. This note will be updated if a journal or corrected version supersedes these figures. (Attribution/derivation distinction clarified 8 September 2026, D-074.)
Editorial update · U-1 · registered 8 September 2026
Editorial update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). In “The goodbye test” the essay now cites one reproducible outcome measure from the paper’s Table 3 — about 98 seconds of continued engagement after a fear-of-missing-out farewell versus about 16 seconds after a neutral one — in place of the earlier phrase “as much as fourteen times”. This is a precision about which figure the essay uses, not a finding that the paper is wrong; the paper’s own “up to 14×” headline is recorded in source 4 as an attributed author claim. It is not a correction of a factual error.
U-1 in the ledger ↓§ 02 · The ledger
If something here is wrong, it should be correctable in public.
A correction repairs something that was wrong. An update makes a passage more precise or records a development in a live matter; it is dated and disclosed, and it is not logged as an error. Each entry leads back to the evidence it touched.
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 06 · What Changes When AI Enters the Room?Source 2 · Touch affected compliance; differences in robot evaluations were not statistically significant
Correction (registered 8 September 2026; carried into the 9 September 2026 site release). Two factual points in the touch-study passage were corrected. What was published: “significantly more often (63 percent against 37) … with some rise in positive feeling”. What it now says: the within-group counts, 17 of 21 (touched) against 10 of 21 (not touched), with six unclear responses excluded (N=48), and “less negative feeling”. Why: the 63/37 figure was the split of all “yes” answers across the two groups (17/27 and 10/27), not a within-group compliance rate; and, on affect, the study (Hoffmann & Krämer, 2021) found significantly lower negative affect after the interaction, while the difference in positive affect after the interaction was not statistically significant. The essay’s conclusion was bounded accordingly. See the corrections log.
Inspect source 2 →Read the essay →Corrections & contact →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 04 · When Does Empathy Become Manipulation?Source 4 · Companion apps and emotionally loaded farewells
Editorial update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). In “The goodbye test” the essay now cites one reproducible outcome measure from the paper’s Table 3 — about 98 seconds of continued engagement after a fear-of-missing-out farewell versus about 16 seconds after a neutral one — in place of the earlier phrase “as much as fourteen times”. This is a precision about which figure the essay uses, not a finding that the paper is wrong; the paper’s own “up to 14×” headline is recorded in source 4 as an attributed author claim. It is not a correction of a factual error.
Inspect source 4 →Read the essay →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 05 · What Happens When an AI Remembers You?The source note as a whole
Editorial update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). The data-protection passage in “Whose past is it?” was made legally more precise: it is now anchored to the GDPR accuracy principle and the rights of rectification, completion, erasure and portability (arts 5(1)(d), 16, 17, 20), and notes that an assessment can itself be personal data (CJEU, Nowak, C-434/16). This refines an earlier, narrower characterisation of correction rights; it is editorial precisification, not a correction of a false statement, and not legal advice. See the legal-basis note below.
Inspect essay 05 →Read the essay →
Registered 8 September 2026
Published 9 September 2026
Essay 03 · Who Gave AI Its Idea of Goodness?Source 7 · Anthropic sued; a federal court struck down the measures, and appeals remain live
Update (registered 8 September 2026; in the 9 September 2026 site release). Source 7 now reflects the 27 August 2026 rulings in the Anthropic–US government dispute, read directly from the court’s orders (Dkt. 250 and 251). This is a development in a live matter, not a correction of an earlier error: the essay’s original description was accurate as of its date. The current status carries an early-September reference date and remaining uncertainty about post-ruling appellate movement.
Inspect source 7 →Read the essay →
§ 03 · How an essay is earned
A good question is not yet an essay.
Seven steps run between a question and a published essay, from hypothesis to freeze. The method page sets out each of them, the principles that decide whether the evidence clears the bar, and what the publication does not claim.
Read the method →About & accountability
§ 04 · Kinds of evidence
Different sources answer different questions.
Source notes name the kind of each source rather than ranking it. These are the five classes that recur across the season.
- 01
PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH
Studies published after review by other researchers in the field.
Carries — The strongest available support for a general claim about how people behave, respond or change.
Limit — Review is not proof. Samples are often small, Western and short-term, and a finding about a laboratory task may not survive contact with ordinary life.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 02
WORKING PAPERS & PREPRINTS
Research circulated before peer review, including preprints and institutional working papers.
Carries — Early signal on questions moving faster than journals can publish — which is most questions about deployed AI systems.
Limit — Unreviewed. Cited when it is the only evidence that exists, and always marked as such, never as a settled result.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 03
PROVIDER DOCUMENTATION
Model cards, system cards, policy pages, technical reports and terms published by the companies that build these systems.
Carries — Direct evidence of what a provider says a system does, what it is designed to optimise for, and what the company will commit to in public.
Limit — It is the provider's own account. Useful as a record of stated intent and disclosed behaviour; not independent verification of either.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 04
LEGAL & GOVERNMENT RECORDS
Legislation, regulatory decisions, court filings, official inquiries and public statistics.
Carries — What has been formally established, required or contested — the facts of the record rather than an interpretation of them.
Limit — Jurisdiction-bound and slow. A rule in one country describes that country, and a filing is a claim until it is decided.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
- 05
JOURNALISM
Reporting from publications with named authorship and a correction practice.
Carries — Documented cases, internal material and first-hand accounts that no other source class reaches.
Limit — A reported case shows that something happened, not how often. Single cases are used as evidence of possibility, never of prevalence.
Sources of this kind in Season 01 →
§ 05 · Where the evidence stops
- 01
OBSERVATION IS NOT PROOF
Noticing that people respond socially to a system is an observation. It does not establish that anything is present on the other side.
- 02
A CASE IS NOT A RATE
Documented incidents establish that something can happen. They do not establish how commonly it does.
- 03
THE FIELD MOVES FASTER THAN THE EVIDENCE
Systems are deployed to hundreds of millions of people years before the research on their effects arrives. Where the evidence is thin, the essay says so instead of borrowing confidence from elsewhere.
- 04
SOURCES ARE NAMED, NOT GRADED
Each source is identified by kind so its weight can be judged. Assigning it a score would replace that judgement with a number that only looks like precision.
§ 07 · In development
These formats do not exist yet. They are listed so the direction of the evidence layer is visible, not because something is finished and withheld.
- 01
Not yet published
EVIDENCE ATLASES
A cross-essay view of where the evidence for a recurring claim actually sits, and where it thins out.
- 02
Not yet published
CLAIM TRACES
Following a single claim from the source that supports it to the sentence that uses it.
- 03
Not yet published
REJECTED ROUTES
The essays that did not clear adjudication, and the reason the evidence was not sufficient.