FRAMEWORK
My research examines how systems; psychological, algorithmic, and institutional shape harm, consent, recognition, and autonomy.I study the convergence of counseling psychology, tech ethics, digital life, and trauma studies. My work centers those who are made hypervisible, misread, or erased by dominant design standards: disabled people, neurodivergent users, sex workers, racialized communities, and others navigating structural pressure to self-regulate, perform, or disappear in order to remain safe or legible.I ask how harm is produced not only through intention, but through system design; through optimization, generalization, and affective inference. I examine how surveillance, risk modeling, and compliance logic restructure identity, disrupt relational trust, and reshape the conditions of being known.This work is grounded in trauma-informed, justice-oriented research. I draw from human–computer interaction, design justice, and psychology to imagine systems where care is not an afterthought but a design principle.I do not study individual platforms. I study the infrastructures that normalize harm: content moderation pipelines, clinical documentation tools, biometric filters, and generative media systems. My work examines how consent is collapsed, how difference is treated as deviation, and how memory is overwritten in the name of efficiency.This work documents the collapse of consent, the distortion of memory, and the psychological toll of optimization. This work does not seek to improve harmful systems; it seeks to understand the logics that make them feel inevitable.
ABOUT
I'm a psychology researcher, writer, and systems critic exploring the emotional and structural consequences of digital life.
Hi, I’m Sig Byrd.
I hold a B.A. in Psychology from Florida International University (cum laude), and I am currently completing my M.S. in Psychology with a concentration in Professional Counseling Psychology. My research sits at the intersection of counseling psychology, tech ethics, and trauma studies. I investigate how psychological, algorithmic, and institutional systems shape our understanding of identity, harm, and autonomy.My work examines the friction between human experience and technological design, with a particular focus on how platform logic, optimization culture, and affective computation restructure relationships to care, embodiment, and consent. I draw from human–computer interaction, trauma-informed design, and justice-oriented psychological frameworks to explore how digital systems impact mental health, self-concept, and relational trust.I center communities that have been historically misrepresented or excluded by dominant design and data practices, including BIPOC users, disabled and neurodivergent individuals, sex workers, and others whose lives are often flattened or pathologized by systems not built with them in mind.My approach is grounded in both academic training and lived experience. In order to critically engage with the technologies I study, I taught myself Python, UX/UI principles, and language model architecture. I build local LLMs not for commercial deployment, but as research tools to explore what becomes possible when care, refusal, and safety are integrated into the structure of machine systems.I approach this work not only as a researcher, but as a systems-aware clinician in training, committed to illuminating how technological infrastructures influence our inner lives and our collective sense of safety, dignity, and voice.
WRITING
A selection of abstracts and conceptual works in progress at the intersection of psychology, technology, and systems ethics.These pieces span academic, clinical, and public-facing modes of inquiry, with a shared focus on how digital systems shape harm, embodiment, and accountability. Each project explores how optimization logics, platform infrastructures, and data-driven design practices impact psychological well-being, relational trust, and the conditions of consent.
Research at the intersection of psychology, technology, and systems ethicsThese projects span conceptual, empirical, and clinical domains. Together, they explore how optimization culture, digital infrastructures, and data-driven systems shape harm, embodiment, and autonomy particularly among marginalized users.⸻The Internet is a Graveyard of ConsentAI, Sexual Sovereignty, and the Rise of the Rendered
Conceptual Article | Selected for Mozilla Festival 2025
Introduces the rendered as a framework for understanding synthetic sexual exploitation through generative AI systems trained on non-consensual data. Situates consent collapse within optimization logic, model architecture, and platform incentives.
Themes: generative AI, digital violence, epistemic harm, feminist tech ethics⸻Viral BodiesGenerative AI, Fatphobia, and the Economy of Shame
Article in Development
Analyzes how AI-generated videos use real footage to simulate fatphobic humiliation for monetized virality. Introduces composite harm as a framework for psychological and reputational injury under platform economies.
Themes: body image, deepfake culture, fat studies, digital trauma⸻The Soft ProphetTech Messiahs, Post-Consent Systems, and the New Digital Sovereignty
Conceptual Article | Target: AI & Society
Examines charismatic tech leaders as architects of post-consent digital systems. Analyzes how platform governance, aestheticized stewardship, and epistemic detachment obscure structural harm.
Themes: AI governance, platform power, optimization ideology, technocolonialism⸻Therapists in the FeedDigital Literacy and the Ethical Challenge Facing Counseling Psychology
APA 2025 Poster | Division 17
Critiques how analog training models leave clinicians unprepared for the ethical complexities of digital life. Argues for the integration of digital harm, platform awareness, and AI exposure into counselor education.
Themes: mental health tech, clinical ethics, digital literacy, platform trauma⸻Who Protects the Protectors?Counseling Psychologists Navigating Political Threats and Structural Ethical Challenges
APA 2025 Poster | Division 17
Explores the emotional and ethical toll of documentation under surveillance, coercive policies, and hostile regulation. Draws on political trauma theory to call for structural protections and ethical code reform.
Themes: political trauma, documentation ethics, clinician safety, resistance psychology⸻Academic Stress and Disabled Students in Higher EducationQuantitative Study | Co-authored with AART (FIU)
Empirical investigation of how academic stress, institutional belonging, and accommodation quality relate to GPA and psychological well-being for disabled and neurodivergent students.
Themes: accessibility, disability research, quantitative methods, educational equity⸻Sensory Social Justice in the AcademyForthcoming Book Chapter | Elsevier Handbook of Evidence-Based Neuroinclusive Teaching
Advocates for a neuroinclusive, sensory-friendly redesign of higher education grounded in disability justice. Proposes design shifts for embodied access and environmental transformation.
Themes: sensory justice, neurodivergence, disability studies, inclusive pedagogy
Let’s CollaborateI’m currently open to research roles, collaborations, and speaking opportunities in AI governance, systems ethics, digital mental health, and human-centered design.I’m especially interested in work that bridges psychology, technology, and justice and always open to building something strange, rigorous, or difficult to define.If you’re working on something that resonates, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s talk.