Speaker 1: Pushkin, this is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. I do think
Speaker 1: we'll look back in ten years or twenty years at
Speaker 1: this era of the Internet and be like, it's so
Speaker 1: crazy and kind of cute that we thought that you
Speaker 1: could connect all of human society through one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty or two hundred and thirty character snippets of text.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, Eli Pariser was running move
Speaker 1: on dot org and thinking about how to reach people
Speaker 1: through the Internet. It was during that time that Pariser
Speaker 1: realized something important. The algorithms being used by companies like
Speaker 1: Facebook were standing between his work and the wider audience
Speaker 1: he was trying to reach. Pariser introduced the world to
Speaker 1: the idea of filter bubbles and warned that they could
Speaker 1: be isolating us from ideas and perspectives we might not
Speaker 1: already agree with. It. Now seems that many of the
Speaker 1: algorithms used by social media companies, not just Facebook, have
Speaker 1: contributed to the political polarization we're experiencing today. We saw
Speaker 1: a kind of worst imaginable case scenario on January six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much of the blame for that do you think
Speaker 1: goes to the social platforms? The social part of It
Speaker 1: allowed people both to coordinate and find each other and
Speaker 1: then to create this kind of shared reality. People showed
Speaker 1: up not totally knowing if they were playing a role
Speaker 1: and they were coast playing or if they were actually
Speaker 1: ready for battle, and that's a very volatile situation these days.
Speaker 1: Pariser was working with Professor Talius Stroud from the University
Speaker 1: of Texas on a project called Civic Signals. They're looking
Speaker 1: at the social cues that are rewarded are punished across
Speaker 1: social media and how online platforms might elevate different signals
Speaker 1: to design healthier digital spaces for all of us. When
Speaker 1: you think about all of the civic spaces in a community,
Speaker 1: there are very few that are like, here's the place
Speaker 1: where you go when you want to walk up to
Speaker 1: strangers and tell them what you really think about the
Speaker 1: most intense political beliefs that you have. Instead, we've got
Speaker 1: basketball courts and tennis courts, which are really about like
Speaker 1: coexisting across lines of difference. Paris Are believes that social
Speaker 1: media can be redesigned to support social cohesion. My solvable
Speaker 1: is creating digital spaces that we have a stronger social
Speaker 1: fabric that help us come together as a community. As
Speaker 1: a society. ELI, this interview is going to begin, unusually
Speaker 1: with an apology from me to you. I don't know
Speaker 1: how well you even remember this, but about a decade ago,
Speaker 1: when your book The Filter Bubble came out, we did
Speaker 1: public debate, one of those stage debates, and you argued
Speaker 1: that you were right, and I argued that you were
Speaker 1: wrong about filter bubbles. And I realized some years ago
Speaker 1: that in fact, you were completely right and I was
Speaker 1: completely wrong. I appreciate that I stopped clocks and all
Speaker 1: of that. It's nice to be right once in a while.
Speaker 1: We saw a kind of worst imaginable case scenario on
Speaker 1: January six, yeah, with an insert violent insurrection at the Capitol.
Speaker 1: How much of the blame for that do you think
Speaker 1: goes to the social platforms? I mean, it's it's only
Speaker 1: been a short time, But what have we learned about
Speaker 1: that event in relation to the kind of social media
Speaker 1: polarization that you've been focused on. I'm not a person
Speaker 1: who would say one hundred percent. There are other forces
Speaker 1: at work that are driving the kind of autocratic moment
Speaker 1: that we were up against, and that are driving violent
Speaker 1: extremism in the United States. But I think the social
Speaker 1: part of it allowed people both to coordinate and find
Speaker 1: each other and then to create this kind of shared
Speaker 1: reality which was one part fantasy and one part real, right,
Speaker 1: Like people showed up not totally knowing if they were
Speaker 1: playing a role and they were coast playing right, or
Speaker 1: if they were actually ready for battle. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: let's dig into that a little bit, because they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're a bunch of things that are interesting and super
Speaker 1: alarming about them. I mean, one of them is this,
Speaker 1: you know, this point you make about extremists having a
Speaker 1: way to get together. But the other aspect of it
Speaker 1: you were kind of i think alluding to qan On
Speaker 1: and the you know, in the nature of it, it's
Speaker 1: not a classic conspiracy theory that comes out of politics.
Speaker 1: It is more like, you know, some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: science fiction narrative that has elements of fantasy and game right,
Speaker 1: And part of the fun of it is that you
Speaker 1: get to co create that reality. Right. It's it's not
Speaker 1: just that you're being handed this narrative. Is that you
Speaker 1: get to find the clues and you get to piece
Speaker 1: together the pieces along with a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like if you've ever watched a film
Speaker 1: where a bunch of investigative journalists like discover the big
Speaker 1: dark secret at the center of a country or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's actually that same feeling that these conspiracy theories drawn,
Speaker 1: which is like we're a team together, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of pulling the curtain back and showing the world what's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thinking about how to reform social media, which is something
Speaker 1: you've been thinking about a long time. One of the
Speaker 1: key problems is how you prevent that. I mean, we'll
Speaker 1: get into in a minute. You know, some of your
Speaker 1: ideas about fostering you know, more positive democratic ideas, small
Speaker 1: d democratic ideas in a minute, But at the very least,
Speaker 1: you want to stop violent extremists from organizing activity. How
Speaker 1: do you do that? It's starts with what drives people
Speaker 1: toward violent extremism, right. A lot of that is a
Speaker 1: sense of purposelessness and powerlessness and a lack of other
Speaker 1: forums in which to feel like you have some agency,
Speaker 1: and so you have to address things on that level.
Speaker 1: But I also think, yeah, the platforms that we have
Speaker 1: are so ill equipped still to really address these problems.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a reason that empires historically have
Speaker 1: have fallen, and that you know, well, which is that
Speaker 1: having a huge human system of civilization dependent on the
Speaker 1: decisions of one individual is an inherently fragile way to
Speaker 1: organize social functions. And that's essentially what we have in
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter both. Yeah, Well, the the algorithm problem
Speaker 1: that they are trying to maximize for amount of use,
Speaker 1: length of use, depth of use. But the other thing
Speaker 1: I keep harping on is their seeming inability for them
Speaker 1: to have real standards and hold to them. In the end,
Speaker 1: these companies respond to public pressure and when the public
Speaker 1: pressure is great enough, they eventually do something about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, with the banning of Donald Trump, you
Speaker 1: could argue that he violated their standards, but realistically, if
Speaker 1: he violated their standards in January, he violated them, you know,
Speaker 1: since he's been on the platform. Similarly, there are other cases,
Speaker 1: you know, other dictators around the world who are you know,
Speaker 1: who make more extreme and violence threats to Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and aren't going to be kicked off anytime soon because
Speaker 1: Facebook isn't being pressured about it. Now, Facebook does seem
Speaker 1: to be taking some steps in the directions of standards.
Speaker 1: It's set up this Supreme Court an idea I think
Speaker 1: that my colleague Noah Feldman originally originated and they're they're
Speaker 1: not ruling on this whether Donald Trump stays permanently banned,
Speaker 1: But what do you think about the capacity of social
Speaker 1: media platforms to do the right thing? I mean, are
Speaker 1: they capable of it? To me? You know, all of
Speaker 1: that points toward just the fragility of this model. It's
Speaker 1: a bad way to organize things. Now. It's a bad
Speaker 1: way even if you give him, even if he's a
Speaker 1: very wise person, and it's especially you know, it gets
Speaker 1: almost comically problematic when you imagine, you know, God forbid,
Speaker 1: you know, he gets fit hit by a bus and
Speaker 1: you have all of a sudden, the estate of Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg making these decisions. Nothing against Priscilla Champ, but like
Speaker 1: you get into this very weird world of you know,
Speaker 1: some of the most important decisions about speech, about how
Speaker 1: we are related are in this the hands of this
Speaker 1: you know, very small group of people who may not
Speaker 1: have any direct expert chise. And even with a Supreme court,
Speaker 1: you know, what does it totally mean to have a
Speaker 1: supreme court but not a legislature or an to an
Speaker 1: executive you know, those things generally go together. For a reason. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could argue the analogy that
Speaker 1: the Mark Zuckerberg is the executive and the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is deciding whether his decisions are compatible with the Constitution,
Speaker 1: I eat the rules that are set in place, and
Speaker 1: they do have, it seems, the ability to overrule him.
Speaker 1: So if they decide that Trump wasn't fairly banned, they
Speaker 1: can unban him. And Mark Suckerberg is said he'll be
Speaker 1: bound by that. He's said that, but he isn't. Actually,
Speaker 1: they're not able to enforce that over if he said no,
Speaker 1: there's no recourse. There's no like sergeant at arms of
Speaker 1: Facebook who's going to come and push the button to
Speaker 1: put Trump back on. So what else would work or
Speaker 1: what would work better in terms of governance for these
Speaker 1: social media companies. I mean, if they have a Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: as you say, do they need did they need other
Speaker 1: branches of a government? How should they be structured to
Speaker 1: be more accountable? That question? And if governance is really important,
Speaker 1: And I'm not suggesting that every company, every platform needs
Speaker 1: to have a kind of democratically elected board, but I
Speaker 1: do think in the long run, these kinds of spaces
Speaker 1: work best when they are accountable to the communities that
Speaker 1: they serve, and part of what is missing right now
Speaker 1: is any kind of feedback loop that requires them to
Speaker 1: do that. In some ways, we in the United States
Speaker 1: have it the best because at least a lot of
Speaker 1: the folks who work at these companies live here. But
Speaker 1: if you talk to folks in other parts of the world, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just very little resources or interest in figuring out
Speaker 1: how do we make a platform like that serve folks
Speaker 1: in South America or in Malaysia, And so really thinking
Speaker 1: about models where there is some sense of collective ownership
Speaker 1: collective governance is a piece of the p And one
Speaker 1: of the things that my partner in this effort, Talia Strout,
Speaker 1: and I have been thinking about is what lessons we
Speaker 1: can take from physical public spaces that might inform digital ones.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about some of the public infrastructure
Speaker 1: things that could create a positive impact, positive influence here. Sure, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's useful again to start with, well,
Speaker 1: what works in physical space and why. And I've been
Speaker 1: very captivated by work that Eric Kleinenberg and other sociologists
Speaker 1: have done showing, you know, for example, the value of
Speaker 1: having parks in a neighborhood. It's not just about health
Speaker 1: or about having a nice place to go with some
Speaker 1: green trees. It's about those are the places where people
Speaker 1: form a sense of familiarity with each other, where they
Speaker 1: encounter other people in the community who they otherwise might
Speaker 1: not seek out and are like it's okay, I can
Speaker 1: I can deal. And ultimately where they form a sense
Speaker 1: of collective identity where you know, they have this shared
Speaker 1: reference point. You know, if you were to operate a
Speaker 1: park like a business, some of those functions would fall away.
Speaker 1: And so to me, you know, part of this is
Speaker 1: about how do we build institutions that serve those functions
Speaker 1: in digital life that are not going to be met
Speaker 1: by you know, companies looking to maximize their their profits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even with parks, it's a it's a really good example.
Speaker 1: There are parks that really work from the point of
Speaker 1: view of creating that kind of set and ones that
Speaker 1: really don't. You know, the ones that don't or you know,
Speaker 1: if people feel they're dangerous or they're dirty, or they're
Speaker 1: you know, their crime taking place. And the ones that do,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're even you know, people who study this
Speaker 1: kind of thing point all sorts of really subtle design decisions.
Speaker 1: I remember when they were opening Brian Park in New York,
Speaker 1: they made a big thing out of the chairs not
Speaker 1: being anchored down, and so people show up in the
Speaker 1: park and they can adjust the chair, and someone would
Speaker 1: before sitting in the chair adjusted, you know, even like
Speaker 1: you know, a few inches. But somehow that you know,
Speaker 1: gives them a sense of kind of ownership of the space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, never would have occurred to me. But what
Speaker 1: are the social media equivalents of those that kind of
Speaker 1: thinking about about public spaces. Well, so you're referring, I think, Tom,
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful book that I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time kind of thinking about the public life of small
Speaker 1: urban spaces, which was written by William White in the seventies.
Speaker 1: And he actually, you know, here's this great character who
Speaker 1: like ran around New York with a video camera or
Speaker 1: a film film camera, filming you know, Bryant Park for like,
Speaker 1: you know, a day and trying to figure out like
Speaker 1: when are people here, why are they here, what are
Speaker 1: they doing? And he noticed this thing about the chairs
Speaker 1: and the and how it offered people this sense of
Speaker 1: dignity that they could like establish their relationship to each other.
Speaker 1: Thank you, by the way, excellent giving me that the
Speaker 1: real reference of what I was passing on. Well, it's
Speaker 1: funny because I've I've used that example literally because it
Speaker 1: is this small design decision that has these big consequences.
Speaker 1: One of the things that White and Jane Jacobs and
Speaker 1: a bunch of the other folks who have really thought
Speaker 1: about public space note is so part of it is
Speaker 1: about the design, and I think there are ways to
Speaker 1: think about how you offer people that sense of dignity
Speaker 1: and that sense of Another thing that he writes about
Speaker 1: Bryant Park that Brian Park has varying degrees of publicness.
Speaker 1: So this will mean more to people who have spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in New York. But there's areas
Speaker 1: where you're in public, but you're really pretty private. You're
Speaker 1: sitting at a chess table, you're not kind of making
Speaker 1: a big scene of yourself, and then if you walk
Speaker 1: out into the middle of the field, everyone can see
Speaker 1: you and you can do your big spectacular thing. And
Speaker 1: so it offers people this way to vary intuitively modulate,
Speaker 1: like how much do I want to be seen? How
Speaker 1: much do I want to be watching others and social media.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very unintuitive and it's sort of a binary, right,
Speaker 1: Like I can be seen potentially by everyone on the
Speaker 1: Internet or no one. But having that sense of kind
Speaker 1: of intuitive modulation isn't isn't part of the picture. The
Speaker 1: other thing that folks like White and Jane Jacobs have
Speaker 1: pointed to is like, part of this is about design,
Speaker 1: and part of it's about people and programming. When you
Speaker 1: look at spaces that are flourishing, there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of people who kind of take some ownership or some
Speaker 1: stewardship of those spaces, their activities that happen there that
Speaker 1: draw people in. It's not just like a blank canvas.
Speaker 1: And this for me was one of the big kind
Speaker 1: of aha moments in this work that I've been doing
Speaker 1: right now, because it's such a contrast to the kind
Speaker 1: of Twitter notion of like let's build the minimal communications
Speaker 1: platform and see you know what emerges from that. This
Speaker 1: is really saying like, no, you've got to be really conscientious,
Speaker 1: and this is what people observe about parts that are
Speaker 1: really working, and especially that are working to be kind
Speaker 1: of inclusive and equitable. You're thinking very actively about like
Speaker 1: what's going to get which communities out and how do
Speaker 1: we build the right kinds of activities and spaces that
Speaker 1: are going to serve those communities. And ultimately a lot
Speaker 1: of the time it comes down to co design. So
Speaker 1: how are we actually working with the people in this
Speaker 1: community together to come up with what we want this
Speaker 1: space to be? You know, that to me is pretty
Speaker 1: far from what it feels like to be on Facebook
Speaker 1: or start a Facebook group. Yeah. When I think about
Speaker 1: pro social behavior on digital media, the thing that springs
Speaker 1: first to mind is Wikipedia, which is a company that's
Speaker 1: it's a not for profit. It has a very large
Speaker 1: number of very dedicated volunteers. You know, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of this, all sorts of partisanship and stuff,
Speaker 1: but there are also people who are very committed to
Speaker 1: weeding it out. And often when you go to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: you find exactly what you're looking for, gives you the references,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you find things that are like incredibly good.
Speaker 1: And you know, volunteers have done this out of a
Speaker 1: sense of you know, they enjoy doing it, but it's
Speaker 1: it's for public good. How do you cultivate that? Well,
Speaker 1: if you agree with me about Wikipedia, yeah, are there
Speaker 1: other examples and how do we spread that ethic. I
Speaker 1: totally agree about the promise of Wikipedia, and I think
Speaker 1: it's also worth really noting again that you know, Wikipedia
Speaker 1: is so amazing in so many ways, but even now
Speaker 1: the ratio of male to female editors is like two
Speaker 1: to one, and that's after a lot of hard work
Speaker 1: by the Alcohen CEO Katherine Maher to like pull in
Speaker 1: more female editors. And it had real consequences in terms
Speaker 1: of what stories, you know, what articles got put on Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: because you would have these kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: ninety page treatises on some Maga character that was a
Speaker 1: venture us to like dudes who are nerds, and you know,
Speaker 1: not the most basic information about Mary Cury or whoever.
Speaker 1: So the point there is, I think the fallacy was
Speaker 1: we'll just let everyone, anyone edit without a whole lot
Speaker 1: of structure, and we'll find our community. And that kind
Speaker 1: of worked, but it kind of didn't. And so I
Speaker 1: guess the point is until they really started thinking seriously
Speaker 1: about how do we get women editors, how do we
Speaker 1: get editors from the global South, there were these big
Speaker 1: gaps in what that product was. And so to me,
Speaker 1: it's sort of just saying social problems are a bigger
Speaker 1: part of the challenge than the technology problems. Where do
Speaker 1: you see social media working? I mean, what are the
Speaker 1: positive examples to build on in your mind? What's interesting
Speaker 1: is when you get away from the need to show
Speaker 1: a kind of like exponential up into the right growth curve,
Speaker 1: there are lots of wonderful examples of communities that are
Speaker 1: really functioning. One that I like to think about is
Speaker 1: a platform in Vermont Front Porch Forum, which is it's
Speaker 1: basically like a heavily moderated daily newsletter for your geographic area,
Speaker 1: and anyone can post. You have to prove that you
Speaker 1: live there. But if you write a nasty note or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's sent back to you with a nice little like, hey, Eli,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're having a moment. Can you rewrite this?
Speaker 1: And because you can only post once a day, like,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to maintain a flame war for like
Speaker 1: seventeen days running. It's possible, but you really got to
Speaker 1: be into it, you know. I think that's a really
Speaker 1: interesting example of like if you increase moderation and you
Speaker 1: don't focus on engagement over you know, minutes and seconds,
Speaker 1: but you're thinking about long term you can actually create
Speaker 1: these really different kinds of conversations. And in Vermont, even
Speaker 1: as Facebook use has gone up, two thirds of a
Speaker 1: Vermont households are on front porch forum. So again it's
Speaker 1: like if you were just trying to maximize engagement, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the most effective way. Like flame wars are
Speaker 1: great for engagement, but they're not actually very good for
Speaker 1: substantive community conversation. I mean two thirds of households. That
Speaker 1: sounds incredible, you know, is that just because things are
Speaker 1: like that in Vermont and they're very specific minded and
Speaker 1: people get along with each other. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: try to do that in Florida, Arizona, you know, do
Speaker 1: you think the same thing can work? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think both. I really feel like it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. And I think this is one
Speaker 1: of the challenges that we have with our tech environment
Speaker 1: right now. It's just I really think there is no
Speaker 1: one algorithm that is going to work for three billion humans.
Speaker 1: It seems like that's just a very hard task from
Speaker 1: the start. So figuring out how you build some of
Speaker 1: the local character and local community into the spaces that
Speaker 1: we're all relating in actually seems really important. But that said,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, making healthy, flourishing communities is both
Speaker 1: really difficult and not that difficult. And the part that
Speaker 1: is not that difficult is you just need people who
Speaker 1: are willing to spend a lot of effort making it
Speaker 1: good and doing the hard work of like setting up
Speaker 1: the events, managing different groups of people that may be
Speaker 1: antagonistic to each other, building a sense of community identity.
Speaker 1: And I feel like in the physical world there are
Speaker 1: people who have those jobs. They're like the park you know,
Speaker 1: activities coordinator, or the librarian or the social worker. They
Speaker 1: like do those functions. We rely on, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of volunteer moderators who have other jobs to do that
Speaker 1: in digital life, and so I think that's the part
Speaker 1: that's like, it's not that hard. It's just a lot
Speaker 1: of work and it's expensive, and if you're trying to
Speaker 1: create something that has a great growth curve, it's the
Speaker 1: first thing that you take out of the balance sheet.
Speaker 1: But there's a gap between people's express preferences and they're
Speaker 1: revealed preferences. When you ask people, they often say they
Speaker 1: want to hear a big range of viewpoints. They want
Speaker 1: to be informed citizens, They want to participate in a civil,
Speaker 1: constructive dialogue, and yeah, they'd like to be on a
Speaker 1: social media platform that does that. But in fact, when
Speaker 1: I mean from on Front Porch, sounds like it's an exception,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the attempts I've seen to try
Speaker 1: to create those more socially constructive forums flounder because people
Speaker 1: don't find them as enjoyable. You know, when it comes
Speaker 1: down to it, that's that's spinach, and there's there's candy
Speaker 1: over a Twitter, right, and and you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: someone who who wants to take candy away from anyone,
Speaker 1: But I really think it's about actually increasing the diversity
Speaker 1: of the options that we have for different ways of
Speaker 1: relating to each other. Those two pieces can coexist, just
Speaker 1: like you know, you have parks and then you have
Speaker 1: amusement parks or whatever. Do you see positive things happening
Speaker 1: anywhere in commercial social media either? I mean, these platforms
Speaker 1: all have a different personality, and some of them at
Speaker 1: least seem much less virulent. But you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you admire on Vermont Front Porch. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you see like the indications of that breaking out any
Speaker 1: work in the commercial world. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there are pieces all over the place. Talian I did
Speaker 1: some so basically part of our work was trying to
Speaker 1: identify the fourteen kind of qualities of healthy digital public spaces,
Speaker 1: what we're calling kind of the signals, and we did
Speaker 1: this survey where we asked people about different platforms and
Speaker 1: how they felt the platforms were doing on those signals.
Speaker 1: Reddit got pretty high marks on a number of these
Speaker 1: kind of community functions from its users relative to a
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter or some of these others. I think
Speaker 1: that scans became as Reddit has been much more thoughtful
Speaker 1: from the beginning about kind of how do you build
Speaker 1: a sense of norms that are enforceable around these sub communities.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that you don't have the Donald
Speaker 1: or you know, some of these other you know, pretty
Speaker 1: toxic subreddits, but it does mean that at least, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a person who wants to take on the
Speaker 1: task of building a community, you have some of the
Speaker 1: tools that you need in order to do that well
Speaker 1: and it doesn't become a kind of free for all
Speaker 1: or you know, only the most high engaging posts, when
Speaker 1: there's definitely like a step forward from what you can
Speaker 1: see in some places on Twitter. Yeah. I started working
Speaker 1: on the internet in nineteen ninety six at Slade, and
Speaker 1: we had something called the Fray, which was an early
Speaker 1: you know, open discussion board, and you know, we saw
Speaker 1: had a preview of a lot of them. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that was most apparent was the more
Speaker 1: knowledge that was required to participate in the discussion, the
Speaker 1: better that discussion was. So something on which everybody had
Speaker 1: an opinion, ie, you know, presidential election politics generally would
Speaker 1: tend to degenerate pretty quickly. But if we had a
Speaker 1: we did have a you know, threat about the weekly poem,
Speaker 1: you know, and there was that was that was optimal.
Speaker 1: I mean, the only people who participate in that were
Speaker 1: people who liked poetry. A lot of them knew something
Speaker 1: about it. It was a great conversation. But similarly, something
Speaker 1: that involved technical expertise you'd have a pretty good discussion
Speaker 1: about because the people who were sort of know nothings
Speaker 1: and just wanted to be disruptive didn't really have so
Speaker 1: much of a way to participate. Right. I think it's
Speaker 1: important to say that good social media both means you know,
Speaker 1: having difficult conversations in a different way, but it also
Speaker 1: means finding other conversations to have that aren't the incendiary
Speaker 1: political ones. When you think about all of the civic
Speaker 1: spaces in a community, there are very few that are like,
Speaker 1: here's the place where you go when you want to
Speaker 1: walk up to strangers and tell them what you really
Speaker 1: think about the most intense political beliefs that you have.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing for a reason, mostly, which is
Speaker 1: it's very unpleasant and it doesn't work out well. Instead,
Speaker 1: we've got basketball courts and tennis courts and community centers
Speaker 1: and all these other places which are really about like
Speaker 1: coexisting across lines of difference, not about like digging into
Speaker 1: the places of deepest disagreement. And I think figuring out
Speaker 1: how to build more of those spaces digitally is just
Speaker 1: as important as solving the problem of like how do
Speaker 1: we argue argue better or more civilly. Yeah, well, you're
Speaker 1: starting to sound like Marshall McLuhan, which you know very
Speaker 1: much agree with that there are things about the mode
Speaker 1: of communication that end up dictating the tone and they've
Speaker 1: the content. Yeah, I mean, I think we'll look back.
Speaker 1: I do think we'll look back in ten years or
Speaker 1: twenty years at this era of the Internet and be
Speaker 1: like in a sort of amused way, like it's so
Speaker 1: crazy and kind of cute that we thought that you
Speaker 1: could connect, you know, all of human society through like
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty or two hundred and thirty character
Speaker 1: you know, snippets of text. That's like a really hard
Speaker 1: medium to connect people together. And you know, when we're
Speaker 1: all living in whatever weird you know, augmented reality world,
Speaker 1: I think we'll look back at this with some amusement. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: if you're not waiting around for Facebook and the other
Speaker 1: social media companies to solve this problem on their own,
Speaker 1: and I don't think either of us are. I wonder
Speaker 1: what you can do to help solve the problem. How
Speaker 1: can listeners fight polarization and social media and contribute to
Speaker 1: more more constructive kinds of interactions. There's two pieces. One
Speaker 1: is the value for everyone of those people who take
Speaker 1: kind of ownership of making a space hospitable and welcoming
Speaker 1: and doing the hard work of mediating between the different
Speaker 1: people who are there and figuring out who's not there
Speaker 1: who should be taking on those jobs at a kind
Speaker 1: of social fabric level really matters. So that's I think
Speaker 1: one place to go. I think the other places I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about this kind of explosion that we're moving
Speaker 1: into of other models for digital social spaces with parks
Speaker 1: and with libraries. They're also mundane and every day that
Speaker 1: we can forget that it took these real social movements
Speaker 1: in moments of great upheaval to set up those kinds
Speaker 1: of institutions, and I think now is this moment where
Speaker 1: we need some new kinds of institutions to deal with
Speaker 1: the upheavals who we're facing now. And so I'm just
Speaker 1: really excited about people joining that. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a project that you don't have to be, you know,
Speaker 1: a coder to be able to contribute to how was
Speaker 1: Eli pariser He and Alia Stroud codirect the Civic Signals project.
Speaker 1: Will include a link to their work in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Will also include links to the writers that Eli mentioned,
Speaker 1: so that you can learn more about ways to get
Speaker 1: involved designing and supporting more civically minded social media is
Speaker 1: one part of the solution to the divisions we face.
Speaker 1: Large companies, with their proprietary algorithms, will continue to impact
Speaker 1: the health of the metaphorical air and water of our
Speaker 1: so called digital cities. Next week, our polarization series continues
Speaker 1: with a conversation with Cornell professor Nathan Bettius. He thinks
Speaker 1: that just as Americle works to ensure its food safety
Speaker 1: and air quality, it ought to enforce health standards around
Speaker 1: algorithms too. I hope he'll join us for that conversation.
Speaker 1: Solvable Senior producer is Jocelyn Frank, Research in Booking by
Speaker 1: Lisa Dunn. Catherine Girardot is our managing producer, and our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia Loebell. Solvable is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 1: and review us really helps to get the word out.
Speaker 1: You can find Pushkin podcasts wherever you listen, including on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app and Apple Podcasts. I'm Jacob Weisberg.