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
2:30 PM Quarantining Misinformation
3:00 PM Competitive Compatibility
3:30 PM Building the Future
4:20 PM Reforming the Business Model
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
Justin Hendrix is CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a new nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. Previously, he was Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. He spent over a decade at The Economist in roles including Vice President, Business Development & Innovation. He is an associate research scientist and adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Opinions expressed here are his own.
