Eli Pariser: What obligation do social media platforms have to the greater good?
Pioneering online organizer Eli Pariser is the author of "The Filter Bubble," about how personalized search might be narrowing our worldview. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
at a party in California
they're creating in society.
just did more drugs
have already been to Burning Man.
that watching a bunch of half-naked people
they need right now.
back to this guy,
to tell truth from fiction.
migratory crisis.
when we really need new tools
together as a society,
is kind of tearing at our civic fabric
misinformation on WhatsApp,
that we're having right now
these platforms are creating
existential crisis in Silicon Valley
that it's a little harder
to publish false news.
taken control of our online public square,
for the greater good?
important questions of our time.
do tech platforms have to us
over our discourse?
that the new platforms that come back
I've been working with Dr. Talia Stroud
and political scientists
and trying to rank content for democracy
this is an information problem
is a people problem.
weird things that happen
about platforms as spaces?"
that spaces shape behavior.
in a room like this,
really differently
softer furniture in classrooms,
political consequences.
neighborhoods with parks
had higher levels of social trust
for themselves politically.
certain norms about how to behave.
that are OK in a bar
of behavioral norms.
they dress in their profile pictures.
talking about sports,
yelling at each other, flirting,
with no walls, no divisions,
the louder the noise is.
that become obvious
in terms of physical space.
are almost always structured.
that unstructured space is conducive
there's a reason for this myopia
of Silicon Valley itself.
vary across cultures.
which she calls "tight" --
the clocks are on a city street.
is one of the looser countries.
in the United States is,
of the 1970s Californian counterculture.
in the loosest state
countries in the world.
because people need structure.
"a lack of norms" in French.
is that, when things are too loose,
correlates really strongly
is actually feeding anxiety
to authoritarianism.
bring people together
to our friend from Burning Man.
isn't the solution --
for the problem.
to visit for a week,
rising out of nowhere in the dust.
of wealthy white guys
how social media feels in 2019.
has become our home.
through the lens of spaces,
for the public good?
for a long time about cities.
and distant relatives?
and political challenges
that overwhelmed existing communities
frictionless technologies
existing social and race divides.
of decay and renewal
of some of our best ideas
thriving communities.
car-driven vision of city life,
at the center of urban design.
like Holly Whyte, her editor,
of what actually happened on the street.
people stop and talk?
that successful public places
that they structure behavior.
a fountain here or a playground there.
and get the kids out.
informal ownership of a space
actually have analogues online.
possible in the space.
other two softer, social areas.
a new design movement
that work for users or consumers?"
that are public-friendly?"
that don't serve individuals
on which we all depend.
need healthy public spaces.
movement that Talia and I imagine
if it was happening in physical space?
from good physical spaces
in the online world?
in a small town in Maine,
town hall meetings that you hear about.
they weren't always nice.
big feelings ...
that that space was structured,
or lost the crowd,
or hauled out by the police,
negative social feedback.
could build this,
that online spaces can learn
that in healthy public spaces,
that afford different ways of relating.
where you have lunch with your family
walk with a partner
visible public signs of engagement.
do we actually want to invite,
for those kinds of conversations.
that built social trust?
were having these big political arguments.
even talk to each other
or five times they see each other.
even very different people,
the bedrock for relationships.
as kind of this bodiless meeting place
is to find a way to be in proximity,
a sense of ownership and equity.
becomes challenging.
by just a few people
digital environments
some real ownership of,
the diversity of human existence
and some input into the process.
there's trash in the streets,
mentally and emotionally
is to hole up in your apartment
on the idea of online public spaces
on cities over their history.
of, like, wiring up a civilization
to come into contact with each other
that it is possible
who are really different,
right on top of each other,
important infrastructure.
important problems in front of us,
and park benches of the online world.
public-friendly architects,
what Eric Klinenberg calls
libraries and museums and town halls.
can learn from each other,
to public art to rapid transit.
and understand and trust each other.
are going to be our new home,
beautiful place to live,
not just to visit
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Eli Pariser - Organizer and authorPioneering online organizer Eli Pariser is the author of "The Filter Bubble," about how personalized search might be narrowing our worldview.
Why you should listen
Shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Eli Pariser created a website calling for a multilateral approach to fighting terrorism. In the following weeks, over half a million people from 192 countries signed on, and Pariser rather unexpectedly became an online organizer. The website merged with MoveOn.org in November 2001, and Pariser -- then 20 years old -- joined the group to direct its foreign policy campaigns. He led what the New York Times Magazine called the "mainstream arm of the peace movement" -- tripling MoveOn's member base and demonstrating how large numbers of small donations could be mobilized through online engagement.
In 2004, Pariser became executive director of MoveOn. Under his leadership, MoveOn.org Political Action has grown to 5 million members and raised over $120 million from millions of small donors to support advocacy campaigns and political candidates. Pariser focused MoveOn on online-to-offline organizing, developing phone-banking tools and precinct programs in 2004 and 2006 that laid the groundwork for Barack Obama's extraordinary web-powered campaign. In 2008, Pariser transitioned the Executive Director role at MoveOn to Justin Ruben and became President of MoveOn’s board; he's now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
His book The Filter Bubble is set for release May 12, 2011. In it, he asks how modern search tools -- the filter by which many of see the wider world -- are getting better and better and screening the wider world from us, by returning only the search results it "thinks" we want to see.
Eli Pariser | Speaker | TED.com