SILICON VALLEY’S UNPRECEDENTED

POWER

Twitter announced that it would start charging for vowels

Google shared a mockup of its new data center on Mars

Amazon revealed voice-recognition software would take commands from pets

The companies hadn’t initiated any of these projects, but they probably could
one day, if they wanted to.
WHAT 245
MILLION
INDIANS DO…
EVERY DAY…
 WHAT IS SOCIAL
MEDIA? …
PARK
PLAYGROUND
AIRPORT TERMINAL
DOWNTOWN
A CITY MALL
DEBATING SOCIETY
MAYBE A PARTY…
DEFINING TWO ISSUES IN THE
AGE OF DIGITAL MEDIA…
Social Influencers
and
Toxic Influencers

Democracy of Expression in times of Influencers

BITCH LASAGNA
&
BYE PEWDIEPIE
“Content is king,... You can give people free data,
you can lead them to a streaming site, but you
can’t persuade them to watch garbage.”

I have 160,000 songs, 55,000 music videos, 28

channels in nine languages, 21 new films in the
pipeline… Who am I?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoww4ou3Ark&ab_channel=FlyingKitty
 SMART PHONE AS
MOTIF
Confidence Impudence Cheap Data Cheap Phone
English Speaking necessary?
First Walkman Mp3 TVs Alarm Clock Camera
Existing user base of technology
Equalize a deeply unequal society Rising middle class
Foreign investors
Job Education Dating
Discovering internet in a short time
Explosion in Fake

Tsunami of change
 80 per cent of her audience are women.
At 1.9 million subscribers 12.4 million
Views
 “Every day I would survey rickshaw
stands for colorful ones and pay the
owner Rs100 to let me sit and shoot
inside.
Her most popular video has been
watched 12.4 million times.
“I love the fact that I can reach this
kind of audience without having to
ANISHA DIXIT
audition,”
Dixit’s videos offer funny takes on the
daily experiences of young, urban RICKSHAWALI
women, an audience that has been
largely uncatered to in India.
“People will rate you, people will hate you, people will shake you, people will break you, but it is you who will make
you,” he says to thunderous applause in one of his most-watched videos “

One of Madaan’s most watched with 470,000 views so far…. “How to Earn Money from YouTube”
… more people are likely to seek magical interventions from the likes of Madaan, fueling the country’s vast
market for motivational content.
The chances that they will not succeed, or even get sucked into shady get-rich-quick schemes elsewhere on the
internet are very high, but it doesn’t stop them from looking.
They are spread out, from Delhi and Mumbai to Jaipur and Jalandhar.
They are either studying, working or looking for opportunities. ..
None belong to the Upper Income Class…
ALL SOCIAL NETWORKS
CONTAIN BIGOTRY
BUT NOT ALL ARE
EQUALLY BIGOTED
“THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF CONTENT
ON XXX COMES FROM WONDERFUL, CREATIVE,
FUNNY, SMART, AND SILLY COMMUNITIES…

THERE IS ALSO A DARK SIDE… COMMUNITIES

WHOSE PURPOSE IS REPREHENSIBLE, AND WE
DON’T HAVE ANY OBLIGATION TO SUPPORT
THEM. . . .

NEITHER XXX NOR I CREATED XXXX TO BE A

BASTION OF FREE SPEECH.”
WHAT’S IN THE PUBLIC IMAGINATION…

TYPE “REDDIT IS” INTO GOOGLE…

THREE OF THE TOP SUGGESTED AUTO-
COMPLETIONS
“TOXIC,” “CANCER,” AND “HOT
GARBAGE.”
 INTERNET
“The Internet has to be open and honest’ meaning
UNTAMED authentic, meaning messy, meaning best and
PERFORMATIVI worst and realest and weirdest parts of humanity.”
TY EXPRESSION “ Bastions of Free Speech”
DEMOCRATIC “ Are we all Trolls at Heart…being a little
ANARCHIC outrageous in order to add some spice to life”
“ What is Tech-Executive outreach?
PSEUDONYMOU “…no matter how neutral a platform may seem,
there’s always a person behind the curtain”
S INTERNET”
“…SO, IT WON’T SOLVE
ANYTHING IF I TAKE
AWAY THEIR VOICE..”
STEVE HUFFMAN
THE TAIL OR
DOG…
 “I think it’s a bit of both…”

The tail hypothesis: “Reddit is a reflection of reality. People are enthusiastic

about Bernie or Trump or Modi in real life, so they go on Reddit and talk about
how much they like Bernie or Trump or Modi So far, so good.”
The dog hypothesis—that reality is also a reflection of social media. “All sorts
of weird things can happen online… Imagine I post a joke where the point is to
be offensive—like, to imply, ‘This is something that a racist person would
say’—but you misread the context and think, ‘Yeah, that racist guy has a good
point.’
Social networks, no matter how big they get or how familiar
they seem, are but experimental technologies built by human
beings.

We can tell ourselves that these human beings aren’t

gatekeepers, or that they have cleansed themselves of all bias
and emotion,
I have biases, like everyone else…I just work really hard to
make sure that they don’t prevent me from doing what’s right
 FREE SPEECH
WARRIORS
…
DID BANNING MERELY “RELOCATE
TOXIC BEHAVIOR TO DIFFERENT PARTS
OF THE SITE”?
 Is it possible to facilitate a space for open dialogue without
facilitating hoaxes, harassment, and threats of violence?
Where is the line between authenticity and toxicity?
What if, after technology allows us to reveal our inner voices,
what we learn is that many of us are authentically toxic?