What obligation do social media platforms have to the greater good?

I was talking to a guy
at a party in California

about tech platforms

and the problems
they're creating in society.

And he said, "Man, if the CEOs
just did more drugs

and went to Burning Man,

we wouldn't be in this mess."

(Laughter)

I said, "I'm not sure I agree with you."

For one thing, you know,

most of the CEOs have already
been to Burning Man.

But also, I'm just not sure
that watching a bunch of half-naked people

run around and burn things

is really the inspiration
they need right now.

(Laughter)

But I do agree that things are a mess.

And so, we're going to come
back to this guy,

but let's talk about the mess.

Our climate's getting hotter and hotter,

It's getting harder and harder
to tell truth from fiction,

and we've got this global
migratory crisis.

And just at the moment
when we really need new tools

and new ways of coming
together as a society,

it feels like social media
is kind of tearing at our civic fabric

and setting us against each other.

We've got viral
misinformation on WhatsApp,

bullying on Instagram,

and Russian hackers on Facebook.

And I think this conversation
that we're having right now

about the harms that
these platforms are creating,

is so important.

But I also worry

that we could be letting a kind of good
existential crisis in Silicon Valley

go to waste

if the bar for success is just
that it's a little harder

for Macedonian teenagers
to publish false news.

The big question, I think, is not just

what do we want platforms to stop doing,

but now that they've effectively
taken control of our online public square,

what do we need from them
for the greater good?

To me, this is one of the most
important questions of our time.

What obligations
do tech platforms have to us

in exchange for the power
that we let them hold

over our discourse?

And I think this question is so important,

because even if today’s platforms go away,

we need to answer this question

in order to be able to ensure
that the new platforms that come back

are any better.

So, for the last year,
I've been working with Dr. Talia Stroud

at the University of Texas, Austin,

and we've talked to sociologists,
and political scientists,

and philosophers,

to try to answer this question.

And at first we asked, you know,

if you were Twitter or Facebook
and trying to rank content for democracy,

rather than for ad clicks or engagement,

what might that look like?

But then we realized, you know,

this sort of suggests that
this is an information problem

or a content problem.

And for us, the platform crisis
is a people problem.

It's a problem about the emergent
weird things that happen

when large groups of people get together.

And so we turned to another older idea.

We asked, what happens
when we think about platforms as spaces?

We know from social psychology
that spaces shape behavior.

You put the same group of people
in a room like this,

and they're going to behave
really differently

than in a room like this.

When researcher put
softer furniture in classrooms,

participation rates rose by 42 percent.

And spaces even have
political consequences.

When researchers looked at
neighborhoods with parks,

versus neighborhoods without,

after adjusting for socioeconomic factors,

they found that neighborhoods with parks
had higher levels of social trust,

and were better able to advocate
for themselves politically.

So, spaces shape behavior

partly by the way they're designed,

and partly by the way that they encode
certain norms about how to behave.

You know, we all know that
there are some behaviors

that are OK in a bar,
that are not OK in a library,

and maybe vice versa.

And this gives us a little bit of a clue,

because there are online spaces

that encode these same kinds
of behavioral norms.

So, for example, behavior on LinkedIn

seems pretty good.

Why?

Because it reads as a workplace.

And so people follow workplace norms.

You can even see it in the way
they dress in their profile pictures.

(Laughter)

So, if LinkedIn is a workplace,
what is Twitter like?

(Laughter)

Well, it's like a vast, cavernous expanse

where there are people
talking about sports

arguing about politics,
yelling at each other, flirting,

trying to get a job,

all in the same place
with no walls, no divisions,

and the owner gets paid more
the louder the noise is.

No wonder it's a mess.

And this raises another thing
that become obvious

when we think about platforms
in terms of physical space.

Good physical spaces
are almost always structured.

They have rules.

Silicon Valley is built on this idea

that unstructured space
is conducive for human behavior.

And I actually think
there's a reason for this myopia

built into the location
of Silicon Valley itself.

So, Michele Gelfand is a sociologist

who studies how norms
vary across cultures,

and she watches how cultures like Japan,

which she calls tight,

is very conformist, very rule-following.

And cultures like Brazil are very loose.

And you can see this even in things like

how closely synchronized
the clocks are on a city street.

So, as you can see,

the United States
is one of the looser countries.

And the loosest state
in the United States is,

you got it, California.

And Silicon Valley culture came out
of the 1970s Californian counterculture.

So, just to recap,

the spaces that the world is living in

came out of the loosest culture
in the loosest state

in one of the loosest
countries in the world.

No wonder they undervalue structure.

And I think this really matters,
because people need structure.

You may have heard this word anomie.

It literally means
a lack of norms in French,

and it was coined by Émile Durkheim
to describe the vast,

overwhelming feeling that people have
in spaces without norms.

Anomie has political consequences.

Because, what Gelfand has found

is that, when things are too loose,
people crave order and structure.

And that craving for order and structure

correlates really strongly
with support for people like these guys.

I don't think it's crazy to ask

if the structurlessness of online life

is actually feeding anxiety

that's increasing a responsiveness
to authoritarianism.

So, how might platforms
bring people together

in a way that creates meaning

and helps people understand each other?

And this brings me back
to our friend from Burning Man.

Because, listening to him, I realized,

it's not just that
Burning Man isn't the solution,

it's actually a perfect metaphor
for the problem.

(Laughter)

You know, it's a great place
to visit for a week,

this amazing art city,
rising out of nowhere in the dust.

But you wouldn't want to live there.

There's no running water,

there's no trash pick-up,

at some point, the hallucinogens run out,

and you're stuck with a bunch
of wealthy white guys

in the dust in the desert.

(Laughter)

Which to me is sometimes
how social media feels in 2019.

(Laughter)

A great, fun, hallucinatory place to visit

has become our home.

And so,

if we look at platforms
through the lens of spaces,

we can then ask ourselves,

who knows how to structure spaces
for the public good?

And it turns out that this is a question

people have been thinking about
for a long time about cities.

Cities were the original platforms.

Two-sided marketplace?

Check.

Place to keep up with old friends
and distant relatives?

Check.

Vector for viral sharing?

Check.

In fact, you know,

cities have encountered a lot of the same
social and political challenges

that platforms are now encountering.

They've dealt with massive growth

that overwhelmed existing communities.

And the rise of new business models.

They've even had new
frictionless technologies

that promised to connect
everyone together.

And that, instead, deepened
existing social and race divides.

But because of this history
of decay and renewal

and segregation and integration,

cities are the source
of some of our best ideas

about how to build functional,
thriving communities.

Faced with a top-down,
car-driven vision of city life,

pioneers like Jane Jacobs

said, let’s instead put
human relationships

at the center of urban design.

Jacobs and her fellow travelers,
like Holly Whyte, her editor,

were these really great observers
of what actually happened on the street,

they watched, you know,
where did people stop and talk.

When did neighbors become friends?

And they learned a lot.

For example, they noticed

that successful public places

generally have three different ways
that they structure behavior.

So, there's the built environment.

You know, that we're going to put
a fountain here or a playground there.

But then, there's programing,

like, let's put a band at seven
and get the kids out.

And there's this idea of mayors,

people who kind of take this
informal ownership of a space

to keep it welcoming and clean.

All three of these things
actually have analogues online.

But platforms mostly focus on code,

on what's physically
possible in the space.

And they focus much less on these
other two, softer, social areas.

What are people doing there?

Who's taking responsibility for it?

So, like Jane Jacobs did for cities,

Talia and I think we need
a new design movement

for online space.

One that considers not just, you know,

how do we build products
that work for users or consumers,

how do we make something user-friendly.

But how do we make products
that are public-friendly?

Because we need products
that don't serve individuals

at the expense of the social fabric
on which we all depend.

And we need it urgently,

because political scientists tell us

that healthy democracies
need healthy public spaces.

So, the public-friendly
digital design movement

that Talia and I imagine,

asks this question,

what would this interaction be like
if it was happening in physical space?

And it asks the reverse question,

what can we learn
from good physical spaces

about how to structure behavior
in the online world?

For example, I grew up
in a small town in Maine,

and I went to a lot of those
town hall meetings that you hear about.

And unlike the storybook version,
they weren't always nice.

Like, people had big conflicts,

big feelings,

it was hard sometimes.

But because of the way
that that space was structured,

we managed to land it OK.

How?

Well, here's one important piece.

The downcast glance, the dirty look,

the raised eyebrow, the cough.

When people went on too long,

or lost the crowd,

they didn't get banned or blocked
or hauled out by the police,

they just got this soft,
negative social feedback.

And that was actually very powerful.

I think Facebook and Twitter
could build this,

something like this.

(Laughter)

So, I think there are some other things

that online spaces
can learn from offline spaces.

Holly Whyte observed that
in healthy public spaces,

there are often many different places
that afford different ways of relating.

So the picnic table,
where you have lunch with your family,

may not be suited for the romantic
walk with a partner

or the talk with some business colleagues.

And it's worth noting that in real space,

in none of these places are there big,

visible public signs of engagement.

So digital designers could think about

what kind of conversations
do we actually want to invite,

and how do we build specifically
for those kinds of conversations?

Remember the park that we talked about,

that built social trust?

That didn't happen because people
were having these big political arguments.

Most strangers don't actually
even talk to each other

the first three or four
or five times they see each other.

But when people,

even very different people,
see each other a lot,

they develop familiarity,

and that creates
bedrock for relationships.

And I think actually, you know,

maybe that early idea of cyberspaces

kind of this bodiless meeting place
of pure minds and pure ideas,

sent us off in the wrong direction.

Maybe what we need instead
is to find a way to be in proximity,

you know, mostly talking
amongst ourselves,

but all sharing the same warm sun.

And finally, healthy public spaces
create a sense of ownership and equity.

And this is where the city metaphor
becomes challenging.

Because, if Twitter is a city,

it's a city that's owned
by just a few people

and optimized for financial return.

I think we really need
digital environments

that we all actually have
some real ownership of.

Environments that respect
the diversity of human existence,

and that give us some say
and some input into the process.

And I think we need this urgently.

Because Facebook right now,

I sort of think of like 1970s New York.

(Laughter)

The public spaces are decaying,
there's trash in the streets,

people are kind of like
mentally and emotionally

warming themselves over burning garbage.

(Laughter)

And --

(Applause)

And the natural response to this
is to haul up in your apartment

or consider fleeing for the suburbs.

It doesn't surprise me

that people are giving up
on the idea of online public spaces,

they way that they've given up
on cities over their history.

And sometimes, I'll be honest,

it feels to me like this whole project
of like wiring up a civilization

and getting billions of people
to come into contact with each other

is just impossible.

But modern cities tell us
that it is possible

for millions of people
who are really different,

sometimes living
right on top of each other,

not just to not kill each other,

but to actually build things together,

find new experiences,

create beautiful,
important infrastructure.

And we cannot give up on that promise.

If we want to solve the big,
important problems in front of us,

we need better online public spaces.

We need digital urban planners.

New Jane Jacbses,

who are going to build the parks
and park benches of the online world.

And we need digital,
public-friendly architects,

who are going to build
what Eric Klinenberg calls

"palaces for the people,"
libraries and museums,

and town halls.

And we need a transnational movement

where these spaces
can learn from each other,

just like cities have about everything,

from urban farming to public art

to rapid transit.

Humanity moves forward

when we find new ways

to rely on and and understand
and trust each other.

And we need this now more than ever.

If online digital spaces
are going to be our new home,

let's make them a comfortable,
beautiful place to live.

A place we all fell not just included,

but actually some ownership of.

A place we get to know each other.

A place you'd actually want

not just to visit, but to bring your kids.

Thank you.

(Applause)