Recalling my experience as a youngster getting information on the internet back in the day, the only real thing that really changed my mind about anything was to be exposed to perspectives different than my own. Not in a shouting match or battles of the echo chambers, but a real, heart-felt discussion about where people were coming from and why they believed in the things that they did. The bigger problem with social media right now is that it lacks the sustenance and diversity needed for these types of interactions to occur, since it’s built towards polarization and hyper-segmentation.

Complex societies require complex social systems in order to maintain its functionality on a political level. I’ve been working on building electoral models to be used for social settings, but it’s been kind of a hard-sell for the tech industry since they’ve been doing things in certain ways for so long. Hopefully this past year they’ve come to see the dire need for alternative methods and sources.