Accountable Tech

Major social media platforms serve as information gatekeepers, putting awesome power in the hands of tech giants with little oversight. These companies – like Facebook and Google – were not fundamentally designed to serve the public good, but to generate growth and profits.

Their surveillance advertising business model relies on harvesting and monetizing data, so they developed products and algorithms to maximize engagement. Those algorithms reward outrageous content, reinforce biases irrespective of truth, and filter like-minded individuals into small echo chambers.

Moreover, bad actors are weaponizing these data-rich platforms to manipulate users – be it to suppress voters, prey on consumers, or promote extremism. Democracy requires a shared baseline of facts. But this online information landscape is instead creating a toxic patchwork of personalized pseudo-realities.

Accountable Tech is working to bring about long-term structural reform to tackle the existential threat social media companies pose to our information ecosystem and democracy.