Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
Speaker 1: that reimagined citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This season is all about tech and how it can
Speaker 1: bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you the people using technology for so much more than
Speaker 1: revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us citizen.
Speaker 1: So last time, we covered some major ground with Prof.
Speaker 1: G Mr Scott Galloway. Scott did a lightning round of
Speaker 1: issues plaguing the tech ecosystem. Mainly, he touched on the
Speaker 1: lack of regulation. The government has got to get on
Speaker 1: tech and we well, we've got to get on the
Speaker 1: government to do us damn job. And we also heard
Speaker 1: more about my journey. We charted through my personal experiences
Speaker 1: in the tech landscape, and we learned that I'm an
Speaker 1: even bigger tech nerd than you already knew. I shared
Speaker 1: with you my visions of what was possible for technology
Speaker 1: over the years, like changing how we tell stories, how
Speaker 1: we make comedy, how we organized politically. But we ain't
Speaker 1: done yet because we talked about the problems right, but
Speaker 1: now we have to talk about the people who see
Speaker 1: things differently now, Scott, he argued, for a more traditional
Speaker 1: path of regulation. But I think we need something new,
Speaker 1: something that connects us to values that might feel disconnected
Speaker 1: from the current tech landscape. Some of you might remember
Speaker 1: my walks during the pandemic, a little bit of the
Speaker 1: rich audio environment O pregate. Then out here in these
Speaker 1: streets that was a menacing hound. Heck, I still walk
Speaker 1: in my neighborhood almost every day, being outside, seeing people
Speaker 1: live their own live lives, checking in on the shops
Speaker 1: of York Boulevard. All that provides a lens to view
Speaker 1: the world differently. It's grounding, but it's the road where
Speaker 1: I see other black people walking, and that's the somewhat
Speaker 1: rare sighting over here. I'm in a heavily Latino Latino
Speaker 1: neighborhood in a time where distance literally equal safety. Being
Speaker 1: in a public space can provide a basic way to
Speaker 1: see humans being human. Neighborhood very special. To see a
Speaker 1: fellow Negro, it was like a family reunion with people
Speaker 1: I've never met before. So thus black people hill now
Speaker 1: where I'm walking right now, I call coy Rod Because
Speaker 1: what if we applied this sense of connection, community and
Speaker 1: humanity to technology. Our current platforms encourage us to engage.
Speaker 1: But how's that working out for us? But Scott Galloway
Speaker 1: mentioned social media platforms inflame our arguments and tear at
Speaker 1: our social fabric. Here's a simple truth. The giant tech
Speaker 1: companies are not in the business of what we refer
Speaker 1: to as citizen ng But using some imagination, is there
Speaker 1: reversion of social media that can serve the same function
Speaker 1: as our public spaces, like those parks and community centers,
Speaker 1: those things we came to rely on this last year.
Speaker 1: This all feels daunting, but I've got hope. This moment
Speaker 1: calls for a lot of kind of creativity and boldness
Speaker 1: and public imagination. Eli paris Or believes that through new
Speaker 1: design principles, we can change our digital spaces so that
Speaker 1: they bring us together instead of tearing us apart. And
Speaker 1: that might seem insanely ambitious, but the plan he lays
Speaker 1: out is far from impossible. Eli makes his case after
Speaker 1: the break, Eli, Hello, welcome to How to Citizen. How
Speaker 1: are you doing? I am doing well? How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well? Especially? Eli Pariser is a triple threat, author, activist,
Speaker 1: and entrepreneur. He was the executive director of move on
Speaker 1: dot org and Eli has been a pioneer working to
Speaker 1: create democracy friendly spaces, the ones we sorely need in
Speaker 1: the digital landscape for decades. Right now, he's running a
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization called New Public, and he's putting into practice
Speaker 1: the methods we need to citizen better online. So when
Speaker 1: we sat down, we started our conversation by strolling down
Speaker 1: digital memory lane. I want to rewind the clock a bit, because, um,
Speaker 1: you've been around technology for a while, as have I.
Speaker 1: I can remember the early days with when everything was monochromatic,
Speaker 1: green blinking curses, Unix and DOSS, when you had to
Speaker 1: like manually serve the Internet, you know, like one site
Speaker 1: at a time, just grabbing it. And you had an
Speaker 1: early what we would now call viral moment when you
Speaker 1: were about twenty the attacks and I and Leven had
Speaker 1: just happened. What did you do? Yeah, so I had
Speaker 1: just gotten out of college, and you know, it occurred
Speaker 1: to me that this was one of those moments in
Speaker 1: history where things can go very different directions, and there
Speaker 1: was this opportunity for the world to come together around
Speaker 1: what I thought was really like kind of a global
Speaker 1: problem of terrorism or there was this world where you know,
Speaker 1: people kind of seize it and use it for their
Speaker 1: own political ends and things go badly, and so I
Speaker 1: set up this little website calling for multilateralism. Quick explanation.
Speaker 1: Multilateralism is when multiple nations agree on some common goal
Speaker 1: or mission, in this case, for the potential war on terror.
Speaker 1: And there was this guy at the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: had written up this petition. We put it on the website,
Speaker 1: and then I like logged off, you know, I needed
Speaker 1: my phone line for a phone call, and I didn't
Speaker 1: check my email for like four days. So I log on,
Speaker 1: you know, the Monday morning after, and there's this kind
Speaker 1: of loading bar downloading my email, and it says like
Speaker 1: four thousand messages left to download and then forty thousand
Speaker 1: messages left it down. It's just this kind of crazy
Speaker 1: and comprehensible thing, like what what happened? And it was
Speaker 1: an early viral email basically like it it had spanned
Speaker 1: the globe. I thought, if we got a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred people to sign it, like that would be something
Speaker 1: that would be good. But I just didn't even imagine
Speaker 1: that we'd have fifty thou people as it ended up
Speaker 1: like five thousand people, you know, signing onto this thing.
Speaker 1: Five hundred thousand people. Yeah, and and from all over
Speaker 1: the world. It was like a hundred and nine two countries.
Speaker 1: And that was crazy. I was a twenty year old
Speaker 1: college student. I had no political connections or capital, I
Speaker 1: had no resources. I had not spent a cent. I
Speaker 1: just put this website up. And so you know, in
Speaker 1: those moments you can kind of see why it might
Speaker 1: feel like this is just this is a democracy tizing technology.
Speaker 1: What kind of email storage did you have in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, because that's a lot of email. I appreciate
Speaker 1: I appreciate the follow up questions. This is really the
Speaker 1: kind of detail I think people are interested in. It's
Speaker 1: like I was on outlook. By the way you painting
Speaker 1: this two thousand one picture is taken me back there
Speaker 1: as well. I'm remembering the simplicity of the websites, the
Speaker 1: crudeness of the HTML, the optimism. M uh that again,
Speaker 1: the terrible design comes back to me a lot. This
Speaker 1: was like peak ugly Internet, but also peak beautiful Internet,
Speaker 1: because we didn't care what it looked like. What was
Speaker 1: the potential that you saw in this period? The idea
Speaker 1: was that information is power and knowledge is power, and
Speaker 1: here's this technology that's making information and access to some
Speaker 1: degree free and also allowing people to conceivably the public
Speaker 1: could break through with the leads because they could demonstrate
Speaker 1: to each other, hey, we all care about this issue.
Speaker 1: And as an organizer you start to see that as
Speaker 1: a moment where people are willing to do more because
Speaker 1: one of the biggest impediments to citizen power is just
Speaker 1: feeling like I'm alone and in my concerns, and so
Speaker 1: that ability to like quickly find like, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: there's millions of other people who are concerned like me
Speaker 1: about what's going on. It seemed like it could change
Speaker 1: the dynamics of what was happening in politics, and in
Speaker 1: the same way, you know, change some of the economic dynamics.
Speaker 1: If I had been placing you know, five thousand phone
Speaker 1: calls around the world at that time, yes, long distance
Speaker 1: was still expensive, like that would be a real undertaking.
Speaker 1: But here was this thing that was like completely horizontal
Speaker 1: and free. The main reason that I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you, besides this trip down Lexicon memory Lane, which
Speaker 1: has been joyful, is this work you're doing with New Public,
Speaker 1: this new platform organization, trying to connect and inspire the
Speaker 1: people who build the Internet tools we use and the
Speaker 1: people who design them to use them to make better
Speaker 1: digital public spaces, Healthier public spaces for us to interact
Speaker 1: with each other that don't descend into some of the
Speaker 1: horrors that so many of us have experienced. In your definition,
Speaker 1: what is new public? So New Public started as kind
Speaker 1: of a research project I was working with and co
Speaker 1: founded it with Talia Stroud. There's this communications professor in
Speaker 1: the University of Texas who studies how media organizations and
Speaker 1: communities can get engaged better in civic life, and we
Speaker 1: started to ask this question that was kind of taking
Speaker 1: the conversation about tech and flipping it a little. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of conversation about misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and
Speaker 1: all of that is really critical and important work that's happening,
Speaker 1: But somewhere in there, I think you could end up
Speaker 1: playing a lot of whack a mole if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a north star of where you wanted to get. Like,
Speaker 1: in other words, a good Internet is like a conducive
Speaker 1: space for people to come together, especially across difference. And
Speaker 1: so our original project was like, can we start to
Speaker 1: put some definition on what the qualities of the spaces
Speaker 1: that we would really want would be, and then we
Speaker 1: can evaluate, like can our existing platforms even possibly help
Speaker 1: us get there, or do we need something else. We
Speaker 1: came out with something called the Civic Signals, which are
Speaker 1: basically kind of fourteen qualities that we saw show up
Speaker 1: again and again across different academic disciplines and also in
Speaker 1: interviews and in surveys that we did with people in
Speaker 1: twenty countries around the world, and the qualities that they
Speaker 1: want to see in their digital spaces. And if we
Speaker 1: think about digital platforms as spaces rather than just as
Speaker 1: markets for information, how does that change, you know, how
Speaker 1: we might think about designing them. And we realized, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this problem of designing spaces where strangers can relate to
Speaker 1: each other can behave well, like, this is an old problem.
Speaker 1: This is an urban planning problem, and it's a problem
Speaker 1: that's been around, you know, as long as human settlements
Speaker 1: have been around. And so why aren't we bringing all
Speaker 1: of that kind of understanding to some of the questions
Speaker 1: that seem so intractable online. I really like this idea
Speaker 1: of asking people what they want in a platform, in
Speaker 1: a space, trying to define a north star. I think
Speaker 1: so many of us have gotten used to settling for
Speaker 1: whatever is seemingly available before us. What's the elevator pitch
Speaker 1: for what new public is trying to do in establishing
Speaker 1: that north thought. So we're basically like an incubator that
Speaker 1: draws on the research that we've done to help support
Speaker 1: community leaders and technologists who are trying to build better
Speaker 1: digital spaces. And our belief is that it's when those
Speaker 1: two ways of thinking come together, kind of the social
Speaker 1: intelligence and the design and engineering intelligence, that you really
Speaker 1: find sustainable and durable solutions. But we've adopted this saying
Speaker 1: from a Nobel Prize winning economist Eleanor Ostrom about no
Speaker 1: panaceas it ain't pretty, but society is complex. People are
Speaker 1: complex and forced to have simple solutions to complex problems
Speaker 1: not a good idea. And she studies like how human
Speaker 1: beings manage commons well, and it turns out like all
Speaker 1: over the world actually contra you know, tragedy of the commons.
Speaker 1: There are lots of examples where communities really do manage
Speaker 1: commons well, but there is no one master key, there's
Speaker 1: no one master pattern to commons management. It always happens
Speaker 1: in a very specific way to that community, to that
Speaker 1: set of problems. And when we think about the way
Speaker 1: that we're structuring the Internet right now, you know it
Speaker 1: is built around there is a Facebook algorithm and maybe
Speaker 1: millions of lines of code. It exists for everyone in
Speaker 1: the world, you know, everywhere. We think that's impossible. You
Speaker 1: can't get to something that really works for everybody with
Speaker 1: one master protocol or approach. So if there are no panaceas,
Speaker 1: no universal solutions, how do you give people the tools
Speaker 1: to build the right kinds of solutions for the particular
Speaker 1: problems and the particular communities that they're in. There You're
Speaker 1: on again about democratizing and civic power and helping people
Speaker 1: to find their own futures. But no, it's like I
Speaker 1: do think our current digital environment is like subtly so undemocratic.
Speaker 1: Your option is to be part of Facebook or not
Speaker 1: be part of it, and not being part of it
Speaker 1: at this point has some social costs, or not being
Speaker 1: part of LinkedIn has some social costs. But you don't
Speaker 1: get to like weigh in on a design change or
Speaker 1: have any say and what the rules of speech should be,
Speaker 1: how people should work. And I think that's problematic and pernicious.
Speaker 1: I think there's a better way to do things. Now,
Speaker 1: what New public is calling for our digital public spaces.
Speaker 1: These are similar to physical public spaces like a park
Speaker 1: or library, right owned by the public, serving the public
Speaker 1: interest in these civil, social kind of political ways. And
Speaker 1: that's different from a digital private space that most of
Speaker 1: us use in a daily basis. Right those spaces that
Speaker 1: operate like a walled garden where corporate owners got total control.
Speaker 1: Not everybody has equal access, and the space is really
Speaker 1: designed for commercial or financial interests, not a public interest.
Speaker 1: So tell me why you think it's important to have
Speaker 1: digital public spaces as opposed to just a bunch more
Speaker 1: digital private spaces. So when we were doing this kind
Speaker 1: of look at the sociology of communities offline in the
Speaker 1: physical world, one thing that was very apparent was like
Speaker 1: the value and importance of places like parks and libraries
Speaker 1: in building kind of cohesion and giving people forums to
Speaker 1: raise their concerns. You know, there's just a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of ways in which, like measurably, these public places helped
Speaker 1: knit communities together. And that's because they do whole bunch
Speaker 1: of things that most private places simply can't or won't.
Speaker 1: Lending books to anyone who needs them, especially to people
Speaker 1: who can't afford to pay them. Is just not a
Speaker 1: good idea for a business, but it's a great idea
Speaker 1: for a community function. I think part of the problem
Speaker 1: when you kind of think about our online world right now,
Speaker 1: is that we're trying to cram all of these different
Speaker 1: functions that need to happen in order to have a
Speaker 1: sustainable community. And I think even if you have the
Speaker 1: wisest possible leadership and the best possible management and everything
Speaker 1: was perfect, it's just not what they're there to do.
Speaker 1: And that's okay, but we need this other thing as well.
Speaker 1: The library metaphor really strikes me, and I've been able
Speaker 1: to see the community function that the library is performing
Speaker 1: pre pandemic and during the pandemic, a literal common space.
Speaker 1: People bring their kids there. They're obviously lending books as
Speaker 1: one function, but they have production facilities, they have career advice,
Speaker 1: they have citizenship training for those who are new to
Speaker 1: the country who really want to join the commons in
Speaker 1: a technical legal sense, and you know, Amazon is not
Speaker 1: doing that. It's more than a place of transactions, right,
Speaker 1: sort of a place of people and connection and community.
Speaker 1: So when you put it that way at digital public
Speaker 1: space feels lacking because every example that my mind goes
Speaker 1: to is actually a private space. Tell me more about
Speaker 1: that than what what does a quality a well functioning
Speaker 1: public space, digital or otherwise need to thrive well. I
Speaker 1: mean the first piece is you need to be serving
Speaker 1: a bunch of community needs. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the cool things about libraries is that it's not
Speaker 1: like people go to the library because they want to
Speaker 1: be a great citizen. Like they go to the library
Speaker 1: because they need a book, or their kid needs a
Speaker 1: place to play chess, or they need a meeting room.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of really tangible needs that need to
Speaker 1: be met, and there are librarians. I think there is
Speaker 1: another sort of piece of what's missing in digital spaces.
Speaker 1: You know, what would a library be like if it
Speaker 1: was all self served and don't like, you know, instructions
Speaker 1: taped to the door, but go in at your own peril.
Speaker 1: Like it would be hard, especially with the library, because
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole bunch of people with a
Speaker 1: bunch of pretty different needs trying to get their needs
Speaker 1: met simultaneously and balancing that's challenging, and you have, you know,
Speaker 1: someone who's experiencing homelessness over here, who's trying to get
Speaker 1: their unemployment benefits, and you know, someone who's got their
Speaker 1: young kids at a story hour and without someone kind
Speaker 1: of holding that space and mediating it um, you can
Speaker 1: run into real trouble, which I would argue is like
Speaker 1: a lot of what happens online. And as soon as
Speaker 1: those conflicts start to escalate, than that experience of safety
Speaker 1: and the experience that oh I can be with people
Speaker 1: who are pretty different and it's okay, starts to dissipate
Speaker 1: more librarians is never a problem. It's always a step
Speaker 1: towards the solution. Go librarians, all right. You alluded to
Speaker 1: four categories of signals. They seem like a new etiquette
Speaker 1: or framework so we can actually have more quality digital
Speaker 1: public spaces. Break that down for me. The first and
Speaker 1: most important in many ways is this welcome category, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of platforms fall down kind of
Speaker 1: almost as soon as they've started, which is, do people
Speaker 1: feel invited to be part of the conversation here in
Speaker 1: the first place? Do they feel safe to be part
Speaker 1: of that conversation? Does the platform go out of its
Speaker 1: way to help humanize people to each other, or does
Speaker 1: it quickly reduce us to you know, our most incendiary
Speaker 1: positions or to caricatures. And I think there's a reason
Speaker 1: that in our physical life we haven't reserved a huge
Speaker 1: amount of space. That's like walk up to a stranger
Speaker 1: and tell them you're hottest. Take uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: haven't recreated Twitter in real life. Yeah, there's but there's
Speaker 1: a reason for that, which is like, it's difficult and
Speaker 1: unpleasant and mostly people don't want it. But having spaces
Speaker 1: like parks and libraries where you just see people who
Speaker 1: are having different lives than you. You're in a park especially,
Speaker 1: you're in this nice environment, and you just get to
Speaker 1: be like, okay, they're familiar, I've seen them a couple
Speaker 1: of times before. Maybe this is all okay, and we're
Speaker 1: part of something together. That's that's nice. That's really an
Speaker 1: important experience actually in in building a democratic culture. So
Speaker 1: then then we've got to connect. And connect isn't just
Speaker 1: about like everybody connect with everybody. It's about how do
Speaker 1: you support kind of good connection, especially across groups. Because
Speaker 1: we know, for example, when it comes to like economic opportunities,
Speaker 1: job postings will often literally get stuck. And how do
Speaker 1: you build these networks that like allow information, allow ideas
Speaker 1: to kind of cross boundaries. You need to build bridges
Speaker 1: between these groups, and there are ways you can design
Speaker 1: for that, and there's a whole field about designing for that,
Speaker 1: and so we kind of get into how do we
Speaker 1: support better designs for cross group contact essentially, and then
Speaker 1: there's this understand chunk, which is really, you know, not
Speaker 1: just about individual understanding, but it's about how do we
Speaker 1: build meaning together. So one of the things that really
Speaker 1: effective communities do is you kind of have this yes
Speaker 1: and element where people are kind of adding their their perspective,
Speaker 1: their point of view, and you're building something that you
Speaker 1: really couldn't build along. And I think because digital products
Speaker 1: are often built for with a kind of individual user
Speaker 1: in mind, we don't think a lot about sort of
Speaker 1: how do we facilitate these collective experiences that are really important.
Speaker 1: And then finally you get to act. And act isn't
Speaker 1: just vote or change your community selectmen. It's actually like
Speaker 1: just platforms that facilitate people coming together and doing something together.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that sociologists and social scientists
Speaker 1: and political scientists tell us is that really any time
Speaker 1: you get a group of people, especially across some difference,
Speaker 1: just to accomplish something together. That builds social trust, It
Speaker 1: builds a sense of power and capacity and agency, and
Speaker 1: that has this kind of like it feeds back on
Speaker 1: the whole thing where people then are willing to take
Speaker 1: on something more. How did you and your co founder
Speaker 1: Talia come up with these? So basically, we we talked
Speaker 1: to over a hundred experts in a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different fields, from urban planning to political scientists to community experts,
Speaker 1: and ask them what public spaces needed for a healthy
Speaker 1: society and a healthy democracy. And then we did these
Speaker 1: focus groups where we kind of took them out in
Speaker 1: five different countries around the world, talk to people and
Speaker 1: really got sense of like does this resonate, does it's
Speaker 1: not resonate? Change some things, And then finally surveyed people
Speaker 1: in twenty countries just to make sure that this was
Speaker 1: resonating and also to get a sense of how people
Speaker 1: evaluated which platforms did well on on what. And that
Speaker 1: was also really fascinating because you could see both what
Speaker 1: people wanted from the platforms that we have today and
Speaker 1: where they fell short. Where did the private spaces the
Speaker 1: companies that most of us been too much time on
Speaker 1: Where did they most fall short? Well? I mean on
Speaker 1: that welcome category, there weren't a lot of them that
Speaker 1: did very well. And just you know, do I feel
Speaker 1: invited to be here? Do I feel safe? Do I
Speaker 1: feel humanized? Like there was really not a platform but
Speaker 1: did especially well on humanization, which I think says a
Speaker 1: lot about our current digital environment. It's a powerful word, humanization.
Speaker 1: I think it's an easy one to use. So if
Speaker 1: it strikes me as very plausible that they are bad
Speaker 1: at humanization, because I don't always feel very human in
Speaker 1: in myself. If you look at a TikTok, it's like,
Speaker 1: please don't colonize this sound. If you're not black, just
Speaker 1: watch and enjoy. There's two sides to it, right, there's
Speaker 1: these moments of incredible kind of creative expression and a
Speaker 1: window and to all of these worlds that you just
Speaker 1: would never get to occupy otherwise. And then there's this
Speaker 1: sense of like, but I've got a game this for
Speaker 1: attention for clicks, and that's kind of an always on endeavor.
Speaker 1: And I think we saw this in the service too.
Speaker 1: It's like, there are real value that these platforms provide.
Speaker 1: I just think part of the problem is like we're
Speaker 1: asking too much of the platforms that we have as
Speaker 1: opposed to like inventing a world that has more opportunities
Speaker 1: for different kinds of experiences and different kinds of spaces.
Speaker 1: So you're out here trying to invent new worlds, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people concerned about the topics
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Part of their approach is regulatory. It's
Speaker 1: like we've got to limit the power, the reach, the
Speaker 1: depth of these organizations, apply new rules and new regulations.
Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like the focus of yours is much
Speaker 1: more creative and inventive the usual own language. Why have
Speaker 1: you chosen this approach and why have you chosen to
Speaker 1: work on this of all the things you could do
Speaker 1: right now? I think the regulation piece is important, But
Speaker 1: I also think without a kind of imagination for what
Speaker 1: we want, it's hard even to regulate well, let alone
Speaker 1: to start to like move towards the future that we want.
Speaker 1: And I think this moment calls for a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of creativity and boldness and public imagination. I think
Speaker 1: this is the playbook for how we've moved through times
Speaker 1: of social stress and social fracture in the past is
Speaker 1: like we've invented new kinds of organizations, new kinds of institutions,
Speaker 1: public library or a thing that we're invented, and so
Speaker 1: we're public parks like they didn't always exist with public parks.
Speaker 1: We're starting to build these things called cities. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of smoke and people don't have a place to
Speaker 1: go to exercise and get some fresh air, Like we
Speaker 1: need to think about how to do that. Oh, let's
Speaker 1: have a park that's open to everyone. I think we're
Speaker 1: kind of there with our digital life, where like it's
Speaker 1: not just about tweaking things, it's about really having the
Speaker 1: bold vision for like, what is the life we want
Speaker 1: to live, and what are the kinds of institutions we
Speaker 1: need to make that life possible. I am indeed tired
Speaker 1: of breathing the toxic smoke of the current Internet, and
Speaker 1: I would love a public park equivalent. This effort, this
Speaker 1: mission that you've given yourself is very aspirational. It makes
Speaker 1: me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It restores my faith
Speaker 1: in people, and then I have to ask, how real
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? I think, Um, we're starting to see
Speaker 1: more and more people take this on right, and there
Speaker 1: are people who have been building places like front Porch
Speaker 1: Forum in Vermont, which is kind of a great example
Speaker 1: of what social media can look like when it's detached
Speaker 1: from the pressure of kind of up into the right
Speaker 1: exponential growth expectation. So from Porch Forum, it's basically like
Speaker 1: a local discussion forum that's heavily moderated in every community
Speaker 1: in Vermont. Oh throwback term list serve. It's it's like
Speaker 1: a listener, but it's like a really well moderated listener. Right,
Speaker 1: so before you can post, someone's going to read your
Speaker 1: message and they'll send it back to you if you
Speaker 1: run a foul of the norms, which are pretty like serious.
Speaker 1: Even though you know Facebook is very popular, Twitter is
Speaker 1: very popular, all of these platforms are popular or Vermont,
Speaker 1: there's this different quality of conversation that happens when it's
Speaker 1: slow and it's thoughtful and there's an expectation that we're
Speaker 1: really going to stick to the agreements we make about
Speaker 1: how we're speaking to each other. To me, that's like
Speaker 1: one example that exists right now that I think that
Speaker 1: you can have one of those in every community, and
Speaker 1: the United States, it would probably need to be different
Speaker 1: in every community because no panicsy is I like that example?
Speaker 1: It sounds deliberate. A lot of us are hooked on
Speaker 1: what I would consider a kind of an entitled version
Speaker 1: of the Internet where I want to I get to
Speaker 1: I will that's it. I something came to my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm going to post it. It's my right to post it.
Speaker 1: And what you're describing as a different balance where there's
Speaker 1: a sense of obligation as well, Like I can't imagine
Speaker 1: if I had launched a tweet and it came back
Speaker 1: to me, this isn't good enough, this is too rude.
Speaker 1: You're gonna make somebody, You're gonna hurt somebody's feeling, like
Speaker 1: that's what a tweet is dog launch, Like, why should
Speaker 1: we care about this? There's a lot of people I
Speaker 1: can imagine and know some of them who are like,
Speaker 1: they can have my data. I'm a grown up. I
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing. I don't need like a library
Speaker 1: version of the Internet. Just control yourself and be a
Speaker 1: good person. Is it that hard? Why do we need
Speaker 1: a digital public space designed intentionally for these outcomes? Unless
Speaker 1: you're literally in the cabinet, was you have to deal
Speaker 1: with society or society is going to come deal with
Speaker 1: you and you wanted to be healthy, you wanted to
Speaker 1: be good. I think that's one perspective. I think another
Speaker 1: pieces there's just so many people who don't get to
Speaker 1: to contribute, and that's a loss for all of us.
Speaker 1: There was a great study on our science where they
Speaker 1: started kind of moving the norms toward being explicit about
Speaker 1: what kind of speech was welcome and I welcome there.
Speaker 1: And there was this question of whether that would just
Speaker 1: put off everyone, everyone would feel kind of like nannied
Speaker 1: and and shut up. But actually what they found was
Speaker 1: not only was there more speech, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: speech from women, from folks of color, from groups that
Speaker 1: would kind of tend to feel like, am I is
Speaker 1: it okay to be here? Is it okay to be
Speaker 1: speaking here? Those are the people who then felt like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I can speak up, And those conversations are better when
Speaker 1: you know you don't just have a bunch of entitled
Speaker 1: dudes talking to each other. So I think there's something
Speaker 1: that we all miss out on when we don't create
Speaker 1: spaces that are actually doing that work. What if you're wrong?
Speaker 1: What if humanity is just trash? Right? What if what
Speaker 1: if your goals and aspirations for us exceed what we're
Speaker 1: capable of, and this is who we really are, and
Speaker 1: you can try to mitigate that with some better design,
Speaker 1: But you're fighting upstream against human nature. What do you
Speaker 1: say to that. You know there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as universal human nature. And part of what we know
Speaker 1: from social scientists is that even the same person in
Speaker 1: different contexts will behave in radically different ways, and in
Speaker 1: some contexts will be much more altruistic and other context
Speaker 1: will be much more selfish. A lot of that has
Speaker 1: to do with the situation we find ourselves in and
Speaker 1: how we understand how we fit into that situation. And
Speaker 1: so this is kind of the no panaceas point, Like,
Speaker 1: I just don't think there are universal statements that are
Speaker 1: very helpful about humanity as a whole, because people are
Speaker 1: lots of things, and there are definitely some pretty screwed
Speaker 1: up people out there with some pretty screwed up objectives,
Speaker 1: But there are also so many times when you can
Speaker 1: look at these stories of people with just like not
Speaker 1: a lot of resources coming together and doing something really cool,
Speaker 1: And to me, that's kind of the battle is, like,
Speaker 1: how do we help those people on those moments happen more,
Speaker 1: and the people who are kind of aiming to do
Speaker 1: screwed up stuff do it a little less. And if
Speaker 1: we can tilt that balance a little bit, Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a universal solve, it just has
Speaker 1: to kind of be a game of inches. It sounds
Speaker 1: like somebody's trying to bend the moral arc of the
Speaker 1: universe towards justice. I wouldn't. It's a small small part
Speaker 1: of that project. It's look, if billions of us pull
Speaker 1: on that arc, it'll be right, not all build in
Speaker 1: just a majority. We just need more. And it's like
Speaker 1: at any given time, the reality is most people are
Speaker 1: just living their lives, doing their thing. And that's why
Speaker 1: building the number of people at the edges who are engaged,
Speaker 1: who are active can be so powerful because people are busy.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of stuff going on, and just
Speaker 1: a little bit of extra time and a little bit
Speaker 1: of extra energy really actually like can have a big,
Speaker 1: big impact. This stuff takes time. What do you want
Speaker 1: for future generations? I have heard some kids in the background,
Speaker 1: so I've seen you're pretty invested in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my kids have it pretty good and are privileged. But
Speaker 1: even for them, like I look at the digital landscape
Speaker 1: that they're going to grow up and be a part of,
Speaker 1: and I worry for them, like I worry for their souls.
Speaker 1: I worry for what it means to them to be
Speaker 1: human being and some of these environments that we've created,
Speaker 1: because they can be pretty soul sucking, pretty extractive. So
Speaker 1: what I want and what I think is possible, and
Speaker 1: it's not going to be me, but it's like this
Speaker 1: movement that's growing to say, like, hey, we can build
Speaker 1: digital environments that are good for people, and we should
Speaker 1: do that, and that's going to require thinking about it differently,
Speaker 1: Like I want those kinds of environments to be available
Speaker 1: to them. It doesn't have to be that you're spending
Speaker 1: all of your time in the park. Nobody spends all
Speaker 1: their time in the park or the library. But going
Speaker 1: to the park allows you to see a certain way
Speaker 1: of being together that's possible, that changes your ideas about
Speaker 1: what humanity is. And that's kind of what I want
Speaker 1: for them, is to have those spaces where you can say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it is possible to have like a good conversation with
Speaker 1: strangers online that doesn't evolve into all of us calling
Speaker 1: each other Nazis. When you put it that way, it
Speaker 1: sounds like such a meager request and so achievable. And
Speaker 1: I also think it's it's important that you oldline that
Speaker 1: in the words of like the early eighties serials commercials.
Speaker 1: That is the stuck in my head. This is part
Speaker 1: of a complete breakfast, right, it's not digital. No one
Speaker 1: lives in the library or just hangs out in the park,
Speaker 1: like you said, And so you're not trying to displace
Speaker 1: the spaces were already used to. You're calling for some variation,
Speaker 1: some diversity, options, choice, even um a capitalist should love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know when you talk about freedom and that kind
Speaker 1: of like everybody should just be free to do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. Like the limits of that idea of freedom
Speaker 1: are that how do you think about freedom when there
Speaker 1: are certain kinds of things you can only do with
Speaker 1: other people, you can only experience with other people. And
Speaker 1: if your only thing about freedom is this individual like
Speaker 1: I get to do it or I don't get to
Speaker 1: do it, you miss all these categories of human experience.
Speaker 1: There's some of the most joyful, amazing categories that only
Speaker 1: are facilitated by being able to be doing stuff with
Speaker 1: other people. And so I think there's that piece as well,
Speaker 1: which is like, you don't get to really be free
Speaker 1: if you're free, you know, just in your own yard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: freedom all by your damn self is kind of missing
Speaker 1: out on a lot of the value of freedom. Yeah, Eli,
Speaker 1: I have thoroughly enjoyed finally being able to spend some
Speaker 1: quality one on one time with you. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this has been great. Thank you. Eli's reasons for
Speaker 1: designing a new Internet are pretty personal. It's for as kids,
Speaker 1: and that seems like a good thing when designing things,
Speaker 1: shouldn't we be making things with the people we love
Speaker 1: in mind? Eli and Talia created the Signals as guide
Speaker 1: posts for new online conduct and design. These principles directly
Speaker 1: speak to democratizing and harnessing civic power in digital spaces.
Speaker 1: They're both helping folks define their own digital futures. It's
Speaker 1: a roadmap for our tech future, at least one we want.
Speaker 1: But it's also damn good philosophy to carry offline as
Speaker 1: well as the world heals or struggles to. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can start using this new framework in person. Here at
Speaker 1: how to Citizen, we're committed to giving you things to
Speaker 1: do beyond listening to me talk to somebody, though the
Speaker 1: talking is pretty good. We're building an entire universe of
Speaker 1: citizen action over at our shiny new website, how to
Speaker 1: citizen dot com. It's got every episode transcripts, links to guests,
Speaker 1: and things you can do. Now, for every episode, we're
Speaker 1: offering you three ways to take action. A personal reflection
Speaker 1: you can do alone and even just in your head,
Speaker 1: a way to get more informed and publicly participating, joining
Speaker 1: with others for something out in the world. So for
Speaker 1: this episode, here are three things you can do. First,
Speaker 1: I want you to reflect on some recent online interactions
Speaker 1: you've had with total strangers on social media. Now, think
Speaker 1: about some interactions you've had with strangers offline, maybe in
Speaker 1: a public park or library. How did each of these
Speaker 1: experiences make you feel? Did you prefer one over the other?
Speaker 1: And why again, just think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: becoming more informed. Check out New Public's new design playbook
Speaker 1: for building digital public spaces of the future. It was
Speaker 1: built from two years of global research and feedback. Also
Speaker 1: read elis thought provoking article in the Atlantic. It's all
Speaker 1: about envisioning a future online that serves the public good
Speaker 1: and supports a culture of democracy which is totally possible. Finally,
Speaker 1: in terms of publicly participating, I want you to try
Speaker 1: to find or create an online community in a space
Speaker 1: that isn't a giant shopping mall where you can practice
Speaker 1: some of the fourteen signals, but using a platform like
Speaker 1: highl h y l O or Mighty Networks. I think
Speaker 1: you could do that. I'm gonna try to now. Look,
Speaker 1: we've got links to all this and more over at
Speaker 1: how to citizen dot com, and please follow us on
Speaker 1: Instagram shiny new account at how to Citizen. There you
Speaker 1: can share and learn from others on the journey. Next week,
Speaker 1: we talked to a tech designer, an activist who's got
Speaker 1: some very strong opinions about the birth of the Internet.
Speaker 1: People always complained it's like, oh, the Internet is full
Speaker 1: of idiots, because that's by design how we made it.
Speaker 1: I told you serious opinions. We aim for brutal honesty here, folks.
Speaker 1: Stay safe and stay tuned. We've got more imagination and
Speaker 1: stories coming next time. Keep citizen and y'all. How to
Speaker 1: Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio podcast and dust Light Productions. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: me Barritton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Tamika Adams. Our producer is Ali Kilts
Speaker 1: and our stint producer Sam Paulson. Stephanie Cone is our editor,
Speaker 1: Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Laie as
Speaker 1: our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
Speaker 1: music for season three from Andrew Clauson. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced and sound designed by Tamika Adams. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
Speaker 1: dust Light Production.