The 2023 Social Media Summit@MIT Event Report

Platforms at
a Crossroads
Social media still
rules, but players
are shape-shifting daily
WATCH VIDEO
Sinan Aral
Director, MIT IDE; David Austin Professor of
Management and Professor of Information
Technology and Marketing, MIT Sloan School
of Management
“From public health to teen entertainment, from
finance to education, social media platforms
are shaping opinions and our understanding of
everything,” Sinan Aral, director of the MIT Initiative
on the Digital Economy (IDE) and professor at MIT
Sloan School of Management, told attendees of
the Social Media Summit. We may have heard that
before, but now, Aral noted, the rules, dominant
players, and business models are a moving target.
Twitter of a year ago isn’t the Twitter of today. Meta,
Google, TikTok, and Spotify, among others, are
shape-shifting to accommodate more sophisticated
algorithms, AI, ChatGPT, and decentralized
communities. New ecosystems are forming to
counter established networks.
The stakes have never been higher. They include
fair elections, free speech, global currencies, and
personal privacy. There’s new urgency and public
awareness, but so far, neither the tech industry nor
the U.S. government have taken strong leadership
roles, despite recent testimony from OpenAI and a
statement from AI experts that something needs
to be done.
Aral noted that in many ways, social media is at a
crossroads. “Large platforms have gone private,
policy changes are underway at Twitter...and new
Generative AI, and deep learning—in development
for many decades—have burst onto the scene for
public use last year,” Aral said.
“These changes,” Aral added, “have an immense
impact on text, images, video, and synthetic
generation of information that influences how we
think about our world.”
Aral said that the IDE is conducting scientific research
into social media, AI, decentralization and Web3 to
assess political, social, governmental and business
fallout, and how to stay ahead of the curve.
We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, as Renée
Richardson Gosline of MIT said during her AI Ethics
panel. But speakers throughout the day pointed to
three key remedies to revive the ailing social media
environment: responsible AI, interventions against
misinformation, and new platform ecosystems.
Panelists disagreed about centralized versus
decentralized platform design, about content
moderation techniques, and about the role of
laws and regulation. They said the race by platforms
to implement ChatGPT, prediction algorithms, and
advanced AI ahead of competitors could cause
further harm. Yet in many ways, the day’s speakers—
coming from legal, behavioral science, technology,
and economic perspectives—were each essentially
saying, “We can and must do better.” In this report of
the day’s discussions, we offer concrete action items
and recommendations.
Users also have to be rewired to relinquish the
comforts and crowds of their social platforms in favor
of more discerning, open platforms, such as Mozilla,
T2, and Mastodon. And if they do, tomorrow’s social
media may offer decentralized, shared, and safer
spaces for public discourse.
We know what to do. It’s time to act.
3 METHODS TO REVIVE
SOCIAL MEDIA
RESPONSIBLE AI
Educate programmers and the
public about AI bias; regulate
platforms, and penalize offenders.
MISINFORMATION
INTERVENTIONS
Disincentivize click-bait, keep content
monitors on platforms, and add
friction or nudges to encourage truth
NEW PLATFORM
ECOSYSTEMS
Revamp the business model
to include decentralized, open
platforms that protect users.
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