The recommendation systems for platforms like Facebook and YouTube determine what kinds of behavior get attention—attention which can be converted to money and power. The way such systems are currently designed rewards the people who seek to divide us—which impacts the kinds of politicians and content creators who are most likely to succeed.

This presentation and discussion, hosted by TAPP fellow Aviv Ovadya, will explore an alternative: bridging-based ranking—recommendation systems that bridge divides and platform democracy—a governance approach which may help overcome blockers to platform evolution.

There will be brief presentations by Aviv Ovadya on bridging-based ranking and platform democracy intermixed with discussions and commentary, and ending with Q&A.

Jeff Allen (Integrity Institute; ex-Facebook) will add context on recommendation systems and the challenges and opportunities of bridging-based ranking.

Claudia Chwalisz (OECD) will provide color on ‘representative deliberative processes’, one of the democratic approaches most appropriate for platform democracy. She leads the O.E.C.D.’s work on innovative citizen participation, and has been a significant contributor toward institutionalizing such processes.

While neither of the approaches explored in this discussion are silver bullets, they both aim to provide pragmatic paths forward—moving beyond some of the dead ends of platform accountability conversations that have slowed meaningful progress for many years.

Stay informed about new developments—including upcoming platform pilots—at newsletter.aviv.me.

Moderator

Aviv Ovadya, Technology and Public Purpose Fellow

Aviv Ovadya is an expert on the societal risks and opportunities of emerging technology. He is currently a Technology and Public Purpose fellow in Harvard's Belfer Center and was previously Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility among a number of other roles across academia, civil society, and industry. Aviv's writing has been published at the Washington Post, HBR, MIT Technology Review, and Bloomberg and his work has been covered regularly by publishers including the BBC, NPR, Yomiuri Shimbun, the Economist, and the New York Times. He can be found online at aviv.me and tweets as @metaviv.

Speaker

Claudia Chwalisz, Innovative Citizen Participation Lead, O.E.C.D.

Based in Paris, Claudia Chwalisz leads the O.E.C.D.’s work on innovative citizen participation. Her work explores how to bring public judgement to democracy to improve public decision-making, and how to strengthen society’s ‘democratic fitness.’ She is the lead author of the O.E.C.D.’s “Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave” report, she led the development of the O.E.C.D.’s “Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes,” both published in 2020, and she wrote the O.E.C.D. policy paper “Eight Ways to Institutionalise Deliberative Democracy” (2021). She coordinates the O.E.C.D. Innovative Citizen Participation Network of leading international practitioners, academics

Ms. Chwalisz was part of the small group of experts who designed the permanent Paris Citizens’ Assembly, as well as the Ostbelgien Citizens’ Council, the world’s first permanent deliberative body made up of people drawn by civic lottery. The council has an agenda-setting role and complements the work of the elected regional parliament.

Ms. Chwalisz is on the advisory board of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy Europe, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the participation of everyday citizens in policy making through deliberative democratic methods and civic lotteries. She is also a member of Democracy R&D, a global network of practitioners, academics and advocates helping decision makers take hard decisions and build public trust. In 2019, she was a distinguished international visitor at the Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra.

She tweets as @ClaudiaChwalisz.

Jeff Allen, Integrity Institute; ex-Facebook

Jeff Allen is a former physicist and astronomer who left academia for data science in 2013. Since then, he has worked on multiple sides of the internet information ecosystem: on publishers who are trying to maximize the traffic they get from platforms, on platforms themselves, and on political organizations and campaigns just trying to navigate the online spaces.

While at Facebook, he worked on tackling systemic issues in the public content ecosystems of Facebook and Instagram, developing strategies to ensure that the incentive structure that the platforms created for publishers was in alignment with Facebooks company mission statement.

Jeff is the co-founder and Chief Research Officer for the Integrity Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

More info: https://www.belfercenter.org/event/re...