See All Episodes
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.
Eli Pariser is an author, activist, and entrepreneur focused on how to make technology and media serve democracy. He became executive director of MoveOn.org in 2004, where he helped pioneer the practice of online citizen engagement. In 2006 he co-founded Avaaz, now the world’s largest citizen’s organization with over 40 million members in 190 countries.
