Notices by New_ Public (wearenew_public@mastodon.social), page 3

"The painful reality is that the internet somehow makes it easier to find friends who live halfway across the world than to connect with the people who live down the street."

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/navigating-the-digital-landscape

Our friends at People Powered are debuting their updated ratings of digital participation tools.

See how experts and hundreds of users and the platform developers have evaluated the best tools for participatory, democratic engagement online.

Sign up for the launch event: Thursday, 9am EST

https://www.peoplepowered.org/events-content/launch-digital-participation-tools-ratings-2024

In the US, it's hard to imagine robust regulation of social media. In Europe, that's just the beginning.

@openfuture wants Europe to build an open and sustainable ecosystem offering alternatives to existing commercial social platforms.

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/beyond-regulation-building-europes

Civil society can facilitate democracy or autocracy. How do we know which communities are which?

Read more about our new hypothesis for measuring pluralism in online groups.

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/how-to-calculate-the-inclusiveness

Accountable Tech scores the dominant platforms on election preparedness. Specifically they looked at resilience bolstering, election manipulation counter measures, and transparency efforts.

The results are embarrassingly bad!

https://accountabletech.org/research/democracy-by-design-social-medias-policy-scores/

Meaningful transparency on social media not “set it and forget it.”

As new transparency regulations emerge around the world, join the Integrity Institute and the Action Coalition on Meaningful Transparency for a launch event and panel discussion.

https://lu.ma/transparency

Are you a mod or admin? We want to hear from you!

Five survey participants will be randomly selected to win $25 gift cards! Take part in our research study ⬇️

https://utexas.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0fHN0o7rlpXgF3E

"We are about to see the biggest reshuffling of power on the internet in 25 years, in a way that most of the internet’s current users have never seen before ... a few of the most important changes haven’t gotten any discussion at all."

–@anildash

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/

Experimenting with design features that make norms visible:

Here's a concept sketch of a search box for community stewards that provides recommendations on steps they can take to emphasize their community’s norms.

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/empowering-community-stewards-to

Research: most of us are lurkers.

"The vast majority of those who say they use these platforms have accounts with them, but less than half who have accounts — and even smaller proportions of all U.S. adults — post their own content."

https://news.gallup.com/poll/467792/social-media-users-inclined-browse-post-content.aspx

"Nearly 1 in 10 Gen Zers are more likely to rely on TikTok than Google as a search engine."

Top categories include finding new recipes, music and DIY tips

https://www.adobe.com/express/learn/blog/using-tiktok-as-a-search-engine

After you've regulated social media, what comes next?

Well, if you're Europe, you make a public option to compete with for-profit social media.

@openfuture calls Public Digital Infrastructure, Digital Commons and interoperability.

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/beyond-regulation-building-europes

Love this from @restofworld: How people around the world show that they're amused in online conversation

https://restofworld.org/2023/how-people-laugh-online/

@verge on how Google Search has reshaped the web over decades:

"The problem with setting up an ever-scaling system of winners and losers is that someone will always try to cheat and, at least for a bit, they’ll get away with it."

https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization

Today: Join the Prosocial Design Network for a virtual conversation about the potential for bot assistants to promote healthy digital conversations.

1pm ET/ 10am PT

https://lu.ma/7cjoq63x

.@anildash: "While this new, more diffuse set of social networks sometimes requires a little more tinkering to get started, they epitomize the complexity and multiplicity of the weirder and more open web that’s flourishing today."

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-commentary/internet-future-about-to-get-weird-1234938403/

How does prosocial online conversation fit into a worldview of love, care, regeneration, and interdependence?

We get a nice shoutout in this essay on a "Cultural Power Ecosystem" in the Stanford Social Innovation Review

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/building_the_cultural_power_ecosystem

It's worth considering why this massive, global online community of women has stuck with Facebook Groups for eight years:

1) It is cheap and accessible in Africa
2) It is story-structured
3) They keep building more useful stewardship tools

https://newpublic.substack.com/p/building-a-digital-lifeline-for-women

Social media regulation at the state level:

Minnesota, Maryland and New Mexico pursue laws similar to the UK's age-appropriate design code, while attempting to avoid details that caused a judge to spike CA's bill

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/02/children-safety-social-media-california/

Research: In the US, "across six major social media platforms, the 2022 annual advertising revenue from youth users ages 0–17 years is nearly $11 billion."

Charting the incentives that keep platforms addicted to youth engagement.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295337#sec005