ALEJANDRO CUEVAS
I write amusing things every Friday at ->
I’m a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), primarily with Manoel Horta Ribeiro. I received my Ph.D. from CMU in Societal Computing working with Prof. Nicolas Christin. In 2024-25, I worked as a research consultant at Microsoft Research with Madeleine Daepp.
I study illicit uses of technology through academic voyeurism and gonzo social science: I uncover research questions by observing underground communities and markets. Reently, I’ve been particularly interested in how AI can facilitate influence operations, disinformation, scams, nonconsensual media generation, and attention farming. I employ a variety of methods, ranging from large scale measurements and natural experiments to controlled lab studies and qualitative inquiry. Where possible, I also design and test systems and interventions to combat these illicit uses. For my dissertation, I studied how reputation and other profile signals in online platforms can be used to enable or stifle abuse (e.g., scams, hate, disinformation, etc.).
Prior to spending my time in the shady corners of the Internet, I worked in a variety of topics within security: vulnerability reproduction, deep learning for binary analyses, anonymous communications, moving target defenses, usable security, and computer security from legal and organizational perspectives. I am a recipient of the Cylab Presidential Fellowship (2022-2023), and the IEEE S&P Distinguished Paper Award (2018).
I obtained my Bachelor of Science from The Pennsylvania State University as a Schreyer Scholar and a member of The Presidential Leadership Academy. I completed my honors thesis under the supervision of Prof. Peng Liu and Prof. Dinghao Wu as a member of the Penn State Cyber Security Lab. In 2023, I was an intern at Microsoft Research’s Plural Technology Collaboratory, mentored by Glen Weyl and Madeleine Daepp.
I am also the co-founder of Redoux, a fragrance brand born in NY. We have been featured in the NY Times, Vogue, WWD, etc. We received the inaugural Glossier Grant in 2021, 2x Architectural Digest Cleverest Awards (2022, 2023), and an Essence Best in Beauty Award 2024.
CV
Contact
cuevas [at] princeton [dot] edu
News
06-10-26I will be attending a conference on pornography research in Minneapolis, organized by the AIBM
04-29-26I gave a talk at UCSC’s security seminar
With Francesco Salvi and Manoel Horta Ribeiro
(Under Submission)
We conduct two preregistered experiments (n=2,012) in which participants selected a book to receive from a large eBook catalog using either a traditional search engine or a conversational LLM agent powered by one of five frontier models. In some conditions, an LLM attempted to persuade participants to buy a certain book. LLM-driven persuasion nearly triples the rate at which users select the sponsored product.
The Impact of Age Verification Laws on the Consumption of Pornographic Content in the US
With Mohamed Moustafa Dawoud, Zhibin Shen, Ram Sundara Raman, Manoel Horta Ribeiro
(In Progress)
We leverage individual-level panel data derived from mobile browsing activity to study the impact of age verification laws on adult content consumption (from compliant and non-compliant sites) in the US.
With Madeleine Daepp, Robert Osazuwa Ness, Vickie Wang, Bharat Nayak, Dibyendu Mishra, Ti-Chung Cheng, Shaily Desai, and Joyojeet Pal
(Under Submission)
We characterize the use of Gen AI to manipulate public opinion through fieldwork in two countries characterized by their abundance of computational propaganda.
Policy Had Limited Impact on the Price and Supply of Channels
With Pranav Gadde and Manoel Horta Ribeiro
(Under Submission)
We investigate the causal impact of YouTube’s July 15th inauthentic content policy update on the supply, demand, and pricing of YouTube channels in two secondary markets: Fameswap and Accs-Market.
ICWSM 2027
ICWSM 2026
USENIX Security 2026
Coverage: Indicator, Fast Company
NDSS USEC 2026