All Tech Is Human Library Podcast Series #15 | Sahar Massachi
In the fifteenth conversation of a sixteen-part All Tech is Human Library Podcast interview series, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Integrity Institute Sahar Massachi joins David Ryan Polgar to discuss the importance of fostering a generation of integrity workers to transform our technology ecosystem. Check out the full podcast series here.
About Sahar Massachi
Sahar Massachi is the co-founder and executive director of the Integrity Institute.
Key Takeaways
The term “integrity” can be used to encompass trust, safety, and intentionality in the holistic design of our systems.
Our digital spaces are healthier when we democratize them with governance structures and well-defined norms.
A better tech future involves more creative expression, play, and peaceful coexistence.
Quotes
“If you are at a company that has been optimizing for these core company metrics for years, the entire platform is really well-optimized for those things. So if you try to do a change that is not towards doing that goal, it is very likely that it will hurt those metrics because it's been so finely tuned to those metrics…Frankly, I think the best way to course correct is to choose different metrics that are the core company metrics that are, like, the thing that everyone has to optimize towards.” 6:04 - 6:38
“For me, I like the term ‘integrity’ for a few reasons. First of all, it connotes the sense of structural integrity, which says that the problem is that systems are being abused which means thinking systemically and thinking about the problem as being abuse, that is behavior and actors as opposed to just content. Also, I think the term trust and safety has connotations of centering around content moderation and policy people. Whereas I think integrity has connotations more around design, product, stuff like that. And also, should platforms be trusted? Maybe they should act in more trustable ways first. Is making people safe the correct framework? Maybe it's making democracy healthy. Maybe those things are intentional sometimes.” 7:30 - 8:16
“So in my opinion, democracy is a value that's important. And when I was a kid, I would read social studies textbooks, and in those social studies textbooks, there sometimes would have these little cartoons or whatever to liven up for you. And one of them really grabbed me. It was from around 1912 and it was propaganda for some political party, maybe it was the socialist party and…it said, ‘You can't be a slave to your boss all year and be a citizen once a year to vote and have a healthy society,’ and I think that we can't be in digital spaces that are run as dictatorships and also live in a healthy society.” 8:46 - 9:29
“But my personal opinion is [that] people like me who have this kind of job both need more power to do our jobs well and correctly, and also need to be accountable to a legitimate democratic institution.” 9:48 - 10:03
“But also the importance of thinking about it as a city is to say the internet, social media technology, it's, like, interesting. It's new, but it's not hugely transformational. Like human beings are still human beings. We have dealt with this problem before. We have dealt with problems of how do strangers begin to trust each other? How do we live together in peace? And I think that hope is really important. And moving away from, like, mystical cyber utopian mumbo jumbo. To like... we've had unaccountable companies before and we've dealt with that too. Like there's nothing new under the sun in a way.” 11:57 - 12:27
Learn More About Sahar Massachi
Website | Twitter
Credits:
David Ryan Polgar - Moderator
Sahar Massachi - Interviewee
Unfinished Live - Producers
