SXSW 2024
The Case for Democratic Internet Platforms
Description:
Big internet platforms have been abused to subvert elections, bully dissidents, and carry out ethnic cleansing. What can we do to mitigate these harms in the next five years?
Paul Gowder is a law professor and political scientist who served as the in-house democratic theorist on Facebook's Civic Integrity team. Drawing from his new book, The Networked Leviathan, he will explain why current efforts by both governments and companies to prevent the worst platform disasters continue to fail (tl;dr incentives and information), and how to build direct, global, platform democracy to do better.
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Takeaways
- Neither companies nor governments—no matter how well-intentioned—have the tools to control emergent crises on platforms on their own.
- Ordinary people, unlike either government or corporate officials, have both the right incentives and the right information to prevent platform harms.
- There's a research-based way to design institutions that let the global public exercise real authority over the big platforms.
Speakers
- Paul Gowder, Professor of Law, Northwestern University
Organizer
Paul Gowder, Professor Of Law, Northwestern University
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