There is growing appetite for alternative ways of designing social media to give users ways to escape X, Facebook, TikTok and the like - and not just in the political technology community. In some quarters, particularly in Europe, there is growing political attention to this topic with high profile initiatives like rebuild.net (championed by former EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager) and #SaveOurSocials. Bluesky in particular is being used and discussed ever more widely.

There are various theories of change for how these platforms could displace existing Big Tech and/or protect democracy - many of which are perhaps over-optimistic and need to be challenged and refined.

I can discuss with Fellows about some of the core innovations and methods underlying alternative social media design - such as interoperability and federation, "public value" AI systems, pro-social design, and middleware.

I can also discuss framing questions around the hoped-for benefits of the design. Who do you hope uses it, and how, in order to achieve your desired change (and is that realistic)? What is your conception of your user groups and their needs, and does that need refining or researching? What existing tech, if any, are you hoping to displace - and if so, how?

Some material for starters:

https://www.betterconflictbulletin.org/

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-future-of-platform-power-making-middleware-work/

https://www.prosocialdesign.org/

https://www.oliver-marsh.com/sideways-looks-35-a-better-internet-part-1-also-hayfever/

https://www.oliver-marsh.com/a-better-internet-part-2-also-mermaids/