Event: Reconciling Social Media & Democracy, Oct. 7th

While various solutions to problems at the intersection of social media and democracy are under consideration, from regulation to antitrust action, some experts are enthusiastic about the opportunity to create a new social media ecosystem that relies less on centrally managed platforms like Facebook and more on decentralized, interoperable services and components.

This Thursday, October 7th, Tech Policy Press hosted a mini-symposium to explore some of these ideas and critique them. (See some recommended pre-reading below).

Program at a Glance:

1:00 PM The Necessity of Intervention & Applying a Critical Lens

• Francis Fukuyama
• Nathalie Maréchal
• Daphne Keller
• Richard Reisman (moderator)

Transcript

2:30 PM Quarantining Misinformation

• Joan Donovan
• Robert Faris

Transcript

3:00 PM Competitive Compatibility

• Cory Doctorow

Transcript

3:30 PM Building the Future

• Tracy Chou
• Michael Masnick

Transcript

4:20 PM Reforming the Business Model

• Ramesh Srinivasan

Transcript

5:00 Close

Recommended reading:

Journal of Democracy articles:

• Making the Internet Safe for Democracy, Francis Fukuyama
• The Future of Platform Power: Solving for a Moving Target, Francis Fukuyama
• The Future of Platform Power: Fixing The Business Model, Nathalie Maréchal
• The Future of Platform Power: Making Middleware Work, Daphne Keller
• The Future of Platform Power: Quarantining Misinformation, Robert Faris, Joan Donovan
• The Future of Platform Power: Reining In Big Tech, Dipayan Ghosh, Ramesh Srinivasan

Tech Policy Press posts on the Journal of Democracy debate:

• Scholars Reckon with Democracy and Social Media, Richard Reisman
• Unbundling Social Media: A Taxonomy of Problem Areas, Richard Reisman

Other speaker’s articles:

• Adversarial Interoperability: Reviving an Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age to Slay Today's Monopolies, Cory Doctorow
• Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech, Mike Masnick
• Here’s how to fix online harassment. No, seriously, Tracy Chou
• Unbundling Social Media Filtering Services – Toward an Ecosystem Architecture for the Future [preprint], Richard Reisman