Sam Liebeskind

These are the sorts of ways in which speech moderation online must embrace the political. The main question we must be asking about a speech platform is not what are the standards for moderation but who moderates and what is the moderator’s relationship to the community .

Living among different people also deepens empathy. If you grew up alongside refugees, it is harder to fear them. If you recognize the face of the unhoused person on your block, it is harder to dismiss them. Familiarity makes humanity harder to ignore.

Rather than shoving all our debates into a single, hellish town square, let each town have its own, and let us work to make each a place of fruitful exchange.

Strong ties like family, close friends, and churches are where ideas are nurtured and meaning is deepened. They are necessary, but limited. Weak ties are how information travels, how opportunities surface, how culture spreads. It is part of why social platforms are powerful. They dramatically increase our number of weak ties.

Strong ties create... See more

Free-flowing exchange of work can establish non-transactional community. Not, like, asking your electrician to work for free, but asking your tech-savvy neighbor if they can help you install a light fixture this weekend.

Marshall Ganz is someone that we've both worked with in different ways. He says that social change always begins with people who have “both a critical eye and a hopeful heart.” That quote is exactly right. And this is why young people are so often at the forefront of social change: because they have the critical eye and they have no choice but to... See more