“Well, it's difficult. At the height of our activism, like all of the democracy movements in the world that were happening altogether, there was this emerging moment where Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Spain, and Chile...I think that we were kind of super in love at the time with the technology and the tools. Everything seemed very fresh and groundbreaking, but I think we were kind of naive in saying that a particular set of tools was really going to bring the change that we wanted to see without us really looking at the B side of it. All the tools that we were using are designed for virality. They're not designed for healthy public debate, not even generating consensus because that's not even the problem at this stage. We're so far away from that. They're not designed to bring out the best in us. They're designed to bring out the worst in us, and that's what pays off. So I think we missed that as a generation or as an activist group. We missed that. The tools that we were so smitten by were really producing this almost collateral damage to our civic tissue and our societies. And we are so far down that rabbit hole at the moment that I think there's so much we need to walk back in terms of the power platforms have lack of accountability these algorithms have.

So I guess as I grew older, I came to realize that most of the challenges that we face are not necessarily technological. They are in part, but they're also very human, right? They're very much human challenges. And we need to build these digital public spaces in a very different way than we have done.”

Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, political scientist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. She has worked in politics in Argentina as the Chief of Advisers and Deputy Secretary of Political Affairs, Government of the City of Buenos Aires and CIPPEC think tank. She has developed technology for democracy around the world and is a YC Alum, Young Global Leaders (World Economic Forum). She co-founded DemocracyOS & The Net Party (Partido de la Red).

www.piamancini.com

https://opencollective.com

https://democracy.earth

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