Text from the SMS @ MIT team
The Social Media Summit @ MIT (SMS @ MIT) brings together the world’s leaders in social technology to examine one of the most critical and compelling issues of our time – the impact of social media on our democracies, our economies, and our public health — with a vision to craft meaningful solutions to the social media crisis.
Social media has become a dominant force for information flow in modern life – it is now a major channel for social interaction, political communication, and commercial marketing.
This rise of social media has fundamentally changed the world’s information landscape from a comparatively small number of information producers such as news networks to large numbers of producers, distributors, and receivers.
This democratization of content production and distribution has had a profound impact on how people understand the world.
The volume of information increased, and with the removal of gatekeepers on distribution, the diversity – and thus variation in quality – of available information has increased as well.
This has both positive and negative impacts on individuals and society.
The purpose of this event is to understand the impact of social media, revisit public policy frameworks that will best govern this impact, and craft an agenda on how to achieve the promise of social media and avoid its perils.
Key topics include:
- Reviving competition
- Rescuing truth
- Restoring speech
- Humanizing design
- Enlightening business models
- Ensuring transparency
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
- Antitrust
- Freedom of speech
- Political polarization
- The rise of the splinternet
- The integrity of our elections
Check the full program here.
– Rappler.com
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