Is There a Place for Political Conversations on Social Networks?

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When i go to fort green or union square in new york city, or goldengate park ind san francisco, it's not just like, hay here's more park spaces where everyone sitting down in circles, yelling at each other about politics. These are activities that don't make our politics at all, even really a part of what matters in human relationship building. A lot of people wit facebook and twitter are trying to figure out how to e dpolarize people or create unifying, harmonizing conversation. And you have this great insight in saying, maybe that shouldn't be the goal at all. Maybe it shou be he let's go do thing together. Let's

You’ve heard us talk before on this podcast about the pitfalls of trying to moderate a “global public square.” Our guest today, Eli Pariser, co-director of Civic Signals, co-founder of Avaaz, and author of "The Filter Bubble," has been thinking for years about how to create more functional online spaces and is bringing people together to solve that problem. He believes the answer lies in creating spaces and groups intentionally, with the same kinds of skilled support and infrastructure that we would enlist in the physical world. It’s not enough to expect the big revenue-oriented tech companies to transform their tools into something less harmful; Eli is encouraging us to proactively gather in our own spaces, optimized for togetherness and cooperation.