What social media platforms have done, though, thanks to their increasing market dominance and their emphasis on speed, is accelerate the decline of newspapers and other traditional news sources.

the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users

very specific choices made by the companies that have come to dominate the internet generally and social media platforms in particular

You don’t even have to look up. And it’s made all of us more prone to what psychologists call confirmation bias

it did fortify a sense of shared culture and it came to the news, at least, citizens across the political spectrum tended to operate using a shared set of facts

the sheer proliferation of content and the splintering of information and audiences

We’ll have to come up with new models for a more inclusive, equitable capitalism. We’ll have to reform our political institutions in ways that allow people to be heard and give them real agency. We’ll have to tell better stories about ourselves and how we can live together, despite our differences.

as once marginalized groups demand a seat at the table, politicians have found a new audience for old-fashioned appeals to racial and ethnic, religious or national solidarity

the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008

the rise of China

At the end of the day, tools don’t control us.

K-Monitor

News Literacy Project

MIT Center for Constructive Communication

National School of Journalism and Public Discourse

the U.S. Constitution as software

ways to give young people and the rest of us the chance to build up civic muscles

reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism

online media literacy

An interesting study came out recently

these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share

Platform Accountability and Transparency Act

European Union’s Digital Services Act

tech companies need to be more transparent about how they operate

regulation has to be part of the answer

we need to consider reforms to Section 230 to account for those changes, including whether platforms should be required to have a higher standard of care, when it comes to advertising on their site

Section 230 of the United States code

More importantly, these companies are still way too guarded about how exactly their standards operate, or how their engagement ranking systems influence what goes viral and what doesn’t.

the need for some democratic oversight

The problem is, we often don’t know what principles govern those decisions. And on an issue of enormous public interest, there has been little public debate and practically no democratic oversight.

the First Amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies like Facebook or Twitter

I believe that in most instances the answer to bad speech is good speech.

There are some bugs in the software.

the transformative power and promise of the open internet

New technologies are already challenging the way we regulate currency

Russians could study and manipulate patterns in the engagement ranking system on a Facebook or YouTube.

the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction

sophisticated actors from political consultants to commercial interests, to intelligence arms of foreign powers can game platform algorithms