This is a bit like saying noise and fights at bars exist because of human nature: It’s true to an extent, but the function, design and norms of the space - not to mention the alcohol - sure help. Platform apologists often argue that polarization and bad behavior on social platforms is an inevitable result of human nature - our animal spirits, our narcissism, our need to be right. A library organized around growth and revenue would be … well, Amazon. But ultimately, they’re all organized around the need for growth and revenue - incentives which are in tension with the critical community functions these institutions also serve, and with the heavy staffing models they require. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch each offer some aspects of these experiences. These kinds of public spaces mostly don’t exist online. Public spaces provide access to essential resources for people who couldn’t otherwise access them - whether it’s an outdoor workout station, basketball court, or books in a library - but they are some of the few spaces in a community where we get a glimpse of each other’s lives and help us see ourselves as part of a pluralistic but cohesive society. In physical communities, parks and libraries aren’t just places for exercise or book-borrowing - they also create social connections, a sense of community identity, and a venue in which differences and inequalities can be surfaced and addressed. Public spaces and private industry work symbiotically, if sometimes imperfectly.īeyond their instrumental value for prosperity, we need public spaces and institutions to weave and maintain our social fabric. These spaces are often the groundwork that private industry builds itself around: Schools teach and train the next generation of workers new public parks and plazas often spur private real estate development businesses transport goods on publicly funded roads and so on. In physical communities, businesses play a critical role - but so do public libraries, schools, parks and roads. They’re problems that physical communities have wrestled with for centuries. The first step in the process is realizing that the problems we’re experiencing in digital life - how to gather strangers together in public in ways that make it so people generally behave themselves - aren’t new. But neither party is talking seriously about the deeper problem: How can we change our digital spaces so that they bring us together instead of tear us apart? Role for Business Some conservatives, angered by what they see as the biased application of new rules around misinformation, are even trying to boycott mainstream platforms in favor of hyperpartisan spaces like Parler and Gab. Both Democrats and Republicans increasingly distrust Big Tech, and there’s a likelihood of both regulation and antitrust actions under the new administration.
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