why goodbot
over the last five years, technology has increasingly shaped our interactions with one another. we have decidedly moved out of the romantic time of the arab spring and into a world with a lot more complexity and nuance. we know that technology has brought us incredible advances in medical sciences while also risking more discrimination. we can connect to anyone around the world but our online interactions are filtered and mediated by labels, algorithms, and digitally-specific desires for social acceptance. we want to share our photos and experiences of our lives with our loved ones but are increasingly concerned about surveillance, foreign interference, manipulation, and loss of control over our digital identities. these issues are leading to a number of problematic outcomes:
a sense of powerlessness - we feel that we have little or no control over data, whether it be our personal data or the data of those around us that are used to categorize and sort us.
a sense of overwhelm - these problems are big in part because they were left unregulated for so long even as companies like facebook and twitter grew to have unparalleled power to mediate public discourse.
a sense of resignation - to take advantage of many of the tools out there, we are forced to agree to deliberately long terms of reference that we have neither the time nor the expertise to understand, and as a consequence, we have concluded that there is not much we can do to prevent our data from being shared.
these feelings are understandable, but there is progress in addressing some of the issues that are leading to these issues. on the policy front, some democratic countries and regions are strengthening regulations on data, privacy, and ai. multi-stakeholder governance has informed decisions on some of the most complex issues facing facebook and similar governance mechanisms have been formed in other settings. lessons are being shared and contextualized across different policy communities dealing with online harms such as children and sexual abuse material, violent extremism, and hate speech. companies and organizations increasingly looking at how to operationalize codes of ethics into operational principles which include exploring questions not just on how but also whether to solve a problem, along with what steps are needed to preemptively identify and mitigate harm. stakeholders in the tech sector no longer believe tech is neutral but understand the need to understand deliberately how design, user experience, and algorithms embed deliberate values that shape our social interactions and experiences. companies are hiring more and different people to help with trust and safety, risk assessment, and human-centered design.
to be clear, there is a very long way to go before any of these moves has a substantive impact on the technology sector. there is also a very real risk that newer companies trying to provide viable alternatives to the existing and dominant big tech companies could be disadvantaged as they try to embed responsible technology principles into their practices at the management, technological, and social levels.
but it is a start and the encouraging sign is that these conversations are happening in a lot of different ways and in a range of different spaces. getting there requires an educated, informed and mobilized citizenry who are able to see their agency and role in shaping the future both in terms of policy, norms and holding tech companies accountable when they fail to act in the public interest. We also see how companies like facebook attempt to reduce conversations that should be about their accountability into politicized debates on freedom of speech to avoid affecting the bottom line.
we are at a delicate moment in time. we have seen around the world that technology has contributed to risk in destabilizing both autocratic and democratic countries alike. we have seen in recent years the rise of disinformation and an almost psychosis-like state for some people who cannot accept facts in the face of glaring proof. we see how conversations that result in public discourse breakdown online can translate to constructive interactions offline but lack the ability to replicate and scale offline experiences in digital realms.
knowing what to do and where to start is hard - but this is everyone’s fight. technology is and will continue to shape nearly every aspect of our lives as well as the lives of those we love. we cannot afford to be bystanders in one of the greatest shifts of our times.
