Guest Blog: Iris Vold on All Tech Is Human and New_Public’s Better Digital Public Spaces Directory

By Iris Vold

In the modern world, there are endless ways we can leverage social media to make connections. However, just because technology simplifies our ability to make connections, that does not mean that those connections are more meaningful or more valuable. This begs the question: does the social media we use to find and foster connection end up helping us or hurting us? I’m sure that many, if not all of us at ATIH and similar organizations grapple with this question.

When I joined ATIH, our organization was in the process of forging their own connection with New_Public—a non-profit focused on public-spirited digital spaces. In our joint collaboration, we began to explore what makes a healthy, digital public space. But what exactly does that mean? Similarly to the physical public spaces we know and love (parks, civic halls, libraries, etc.), a digital public space is any virtual space that people can use to interact, host events, and share information. But how do we define a “healthy” digital public space? New_Public launched a detailed investigation into this very question. The findings from their study resulted in the Civic Signals—a series of common “healthy” qualities that many flourishing digital public spaces share.  These qualities are categorized into four major building blocks, encompassing the ability to welcome people to the space, help people to connect, foster understanding among individuals or groups, and catalyze action. More broadly, healthy spaces focus on the health of their audience, “prioritizing the needs of their communities over profit” (ATIH definition). 

These signals are available to provide supportive guidelines for the builders and creators that want to contribute to the growing field of healthy, digital public spaces. But wouldn’t it be helpful to have some examples? New_Public thought so too. They launched a joint project with ATIH that I helped to facilitate, curating a directory of spaces that showcase one or more healthy attributes, some key defining characteristics, and their relation to the Civic Signals. 

(Note: While the spaces incorporated in the directory are not all perfect, they have been identified as including one or more healthy traits outlined by the Civic Signals, for their entire space or specific features.)

I have to say, it was pretty fun to conduct this investigation. It was a great excuse for me to spend hours playing with new apps, reading forums, and writing graffiti on the walls of the web (I’ll explain more about that later). As I went through lists of potential spaces for this directory through ATIH partners and submissions to New_Public, I was amazed by how many creative spaces people were building—the directory includes over 200 spaces and there are many more out there! Through this work, I learned that for most problematic social media norms, there are multiple platforms addressing the norm from different angles and rethinking interaction in completely new ways to provide a healthier platform alternative.

Let’s focus on a few examples of negative social media norms that are being addressed by the creatives designing healthier platform alternatives:

Norm #1: Quantity over Quality

The average person on Facebook has 338 friends. If we think of a friend as someone who genuinely supports us, then 338 friends is a pretty substantial number. Think to yourself: would you feel confident randomly selecting a friend from Facebook to confide in after fighting with a significant other? Losing your job? Or coping after a loved one has died? Probably not. Yet many people have hundreds, even thousands of friends or followers across various social media platforms. How useful can a social media platform truly be if we are only superficially connected to the people we call our “friends”? Why not use social media platforms to focus on our true friends and build our connections with them? One such platform that focuses on this is called 150. You probably guessed it, but on 150 you can only have a maximum of 150 friends. The space is built on the principle of Dunbar’s Number which suggests that your brain’s limit for meaningful relationships is around 150 people. Whether you feel like you have room for more than 150 friends in your heart or not, the 150 platform encourages us to focus on developing meaningful relationships—a pursuit worth considering as we rethink the health of our digital interactions. 

Norm #2: No Rhyme or Reason

Unfortunately, we know that social media circulates misinformation faster than accurate news stories. This is likely because humans are drawn to highly emotive content which leads to more engagement—and social media rewards content with high engagement. Thus, misinformation is swiftly shared and leveraged, fueled by emotion rather than reasoning. While it may be easy to place the blame solely on bots or algorithms, some platforms are focusing on how to teach people better ways to engage with news media and engage in logical arguments in order to combat the spread of misinformation. For example, Kialo is a platform that facilitates rational debate by creating a visual mapping of an argument while tracking the evidence and points of both sides. This allows people on their platform to easily dive into a discussion and track both sides of a debate. Of course, there are many ways to tackle the spread of misinformation (and we could probably use all of them), but learning how to have a rational debate and track evidence is a good start. 

Norm #3: Thinking Inside or Outside the Box (Literally)

When interacting with others in digital spaces, communication is usually regulated to a specific area of a platform; the comments section for responding to a post, a specified chat, or other designated area. In addition, the thoughts and ideas that are shared are usually intended for a specific audience and lack the potential for spontaneous discovery. Under this model, there is no easy way to change our medium or intended audience. If I wanted to draw a picture or leave a quote for anyone to find, I couldn't do that in most forms of traditional social media. I’m stuck within the constraints of the space. Oio.land has created an alternative to this: the ability to create graffiti on the walls of the web. With their Chrome extension, you can write or draw on top of the “walls” of a website to be shared with the others who may encounter your art or message. The experience Oio.land creates capitalizes on the freeform and serendipitous nature of the real world that is lacking in many digital interactions.  

Those are just a couple of the amazing social media alternatives that have been created to address some pretty serious flaws in traditional platforms. There are many more healthy spaces, and the list is growing! Social media as we know it does not have to stay in its current state—we can continue to create innovative alternatives that make our digital interactions healthier and happier. Feel free to check out the directory for more inspiration and I implore you to think about some alternatives that you’d like to see in the field of healthy, digital public spaces.