Interview: Michael Peter Edson on why we really need to worry about the dark side of the web

8 min readFeb 17, 2020

Michael Peter Edson - digital strategist, thinker, museum professional, open data champion and friend - is the keynote speaker at Culture24’s Let’s Get Real conference in London on Monday 2 March. Our annual conference, and a next-day workshop, looks at how cultural organisations can use digital to deepen their connections with audiences, while staying true to their core values. I asked him about why he thinks this is such an important area right now …

JANE: I invited you to the UK to work with us as I’ve been following your recent outspoken and passionate calls to action to cultural professionals to stop and think about the ethics of the web. Why is this an issue we should engage with?

MIKE: First, thank you for the invitation, Jane! I’m a long-time admirer of Culture24 and the Let’s Get Real program and I’m really looking forward to joining you in a few weeks to work with you all face to face!

So, why should we engage with the ethics of the web?

Because it’s 2020 and the world’s on fire.

Because what we’ve come to call “social media” — and by that I mean the big, corporate, 3rd party platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube (and Google/Alphabet), and the like — have become really problematic in terms of privacy, human rights, democratic processes, harassment, fake news, the spread of conspiracy theories and extremism.

For example, if we send our audiences to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube to consume our content, are we in essence selling their personal privacy to the highest bidder? Are we sending them into an environment that is inherently hostile and exploitative? Are we lending our own institutional reputations to burnish the credibility and trustedness of these platforms? What are the consequences of this for our young audiences, or vulnerable populations?

A few years ago I would have thought these kinds of questions to be extreme and alarmist, at best, but a lot has changed. These platforms are capable of so much good, but they are tangled up in the very reasons why the world is on fire — and we continue to use them, for the most part, as if nothing is wrong. That worries me deeply.

Good times!

Jane: Fake news, extremism, election interference, these are huge issues. Can cultural institutions make a difference here?

MIKE: Yes we can! On a number of different levels.

First, I think we have a tendency to underestimate the power of cultural organisations in society. The leverage and influence we have. Or rather, we like to talk about it in the abstract, but when push comes to shove we’re all to often reluctant to use our influence to accomplish difficult and meaningful work, to put the ball in play, as it were.

Given our values and what we stand for as a community — integrity, trust, transparency, operating for the public good, community — I think we have a responsibility to lead. Or, if we are too timid to lead, at least we have an obligation to be wise and enlightened followers.

Inaction, or hoping the problem will go away, should not be an option given the role we want for ourselves in public life. Passivity makes us complicit, and that’s a bad move in terms of what our societies need now, or for the cultural sector’s long-term reputation and relevance in society. I don’t want us to go there.

At the very, very least, cultural organisations should take steps to make sure that we are not actively screwing our audiences online through a failure to think through the implications of using 3rd party social platforms in a post-Cambridge Analytica, post-Trump and Brexit, post-truth world.

To frame it in a positive light, we need do our part to make social media trustworthy and strong because we need to utilize social media’s amazing generative power to do justice to our organisational missions, and to make positive change in the world. We need strong and trusted platforms to address shared challenges like social justice, the climate emergency, education, and human rights.

If we’re not doing that work, given what we stand for as a community, who will?

JANE: You’ve been a champion for the Web and social media for many years. Do you still believe in them?

MIKE: I’m still a champion of the Web and social media. I really am! And in particular I’m still a champion of what I’ve been calling the dark matter of the web — the open, social, bottom-up, peer-to-peer and read/write aspects of the Web. The potential is still there and the Web is still amazing in so many ways!

What I think we’re all struggling with now is the mixture of good and bad. So many good things still happen to millions or billions of people every day on social media, but the corporate conduct of some of the big platforms is atrocious and the long-term consequences of those behaviours are frightening.

I spent most of 2019 trying to wrap my head around this issue, trying to understand the evidence and figure out how I felt, and I was shocked by the degree of apparent malfeasance, misconduct, and exploitation I found.

I put up a blog post about some of the findings here, just to kind of establish some givens:

… I mean, yikes!

Security researcher Moxie Marlinspike talks about the phenomenon of expanding choice scope, the idea that the consequences of a choice, say, 10 years ago, to use a mobile phone is very different than the consequences of using one today in terms of personal privacy and surveillance.

And I think the same thing is true of the choice to use Facebook or the other platforms.

These platforms are like a bunch of cuddly bear cubs we brought home as pets a few years ago and now they’ve grown into hungry, aggressive, dangerous animals.

I don’t think we need to quit social media altogether, no. But there are new realities and consequences that we urgently need to deal with. Some adjustments are needed.

JANE: What are you doing personally in response to the changes in social media?

MIKE: In addition to researching and writing and running workshops on the subject — including a workshop for your community on March 3 — I’m still an active Twitter user, but I use lists more and an unfiltered, chronological newsfeed instead of Twitter’s algorithmically “curated” feed.

I’ve been blogging a little, in my own quirky way, instead of relying totally on social media, and I’ve changed my site to make it possible for people to use RSS or email subscriptions to reduce dependence on social media as a distribution channel.

I’ve also been using the Feedly RSS reader to browse for international news and tech news every day, instead of just going to Twitter to get a news fix — though at its best I still find Twitter to be an amazing, if exhausting, source of insight and inspiration.

JANE: Tell us about the ‘Dealing with the dark side of social media’ workshop you’re running with us on Tuesday 3 March, right after the conference.

MIKE: I’ve put this social media strategy workshop together because I feel a sense of responsibility for helping to find practical solutions to the problems we’re seeing in social media practice right now.

It will be an all-day workshop I’ve designed for 10–15 people who work with or think about online audiences in their organisations. I’d love to have a diverse group of people and organisations there because I think we have a ton to learn from each other here.

We’ll try to accomplish three things together.

First, I want us to build some confidence that we really understand what the heck is going on with social media right now as it relates to our organisations and audiences. As Anil Dash once said, first, you’ve got to know your s — t. If you’re not confident in the facts it’s hard to talk with others in your organisations, it’s hard to know what you want, it’s hard to take action.

Second, I think this is a good moment to do a kind of reality check on our online engagement strategies. I think of this as a kind of social-media and audience-engagement check-up and tune-up.

Then third, we’ll develop concrete strategies and tactics for dealing with social media and its dark side, tailored to people’s specific organisations, that they can use when they go back to the office the next day.

So, in short, people learn some important new information, put it in the context of their organisations, then make it actionable.

JANE: And you’re using LEGO for the workshop?

MIKE: [Laughing] Yes! We’re using the LEGO Serious Play method. I think it’s perfect for this — perfect for going really deep, really quickly, with a group of practitioners on a complex and rapidly changing issue like online strategy.

It’s a technique I learned a few years ago — I became a certified facilitator — when I was wrestling with the content strategy for the Museum for the United Nations. I was leading workshops around the world that got into some pretty serious issues — extreme poverty, climate action, human rights, change — and I just felt like I needed a better way to make sure that everyone at the table could come forward with their expertise; to unlock what people already knew from their own lived experience but maybe had a hard time verbalising.

At our workshop on March 3rd, everyone will get their own specially curated group of bricks to work with, and throughout the day we’ll build and share an increasingly complex set of models representing our organisation’s missions, audiences, and online strategies — all in response to recent changes in the dynamics of social media.

The LEGO workshop process is fun, but it’s very intense work for participants. I don’t know of any other technique that allows people to sustain focus on challenging ideas for so long.

JANE: Are you optimistic about the future?

MIKE: I’m optimistic by nature, and a champion of the underdog, but I don’t think that the normal ways we’ve talked about optimism or pessimism in the public sphere work anymore. Optimism and pessimism have for too long been decoupled from the world of action and I don’t care about them anymore: I care what you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do.

I guess I’m with Greta Thunberg: I want people to get angry, and then I want them to act.

Cultural organisations can play a huge role in this story — the story of how we all have a part to play in what must be the success story of humankind. We can do that as a community… if we have the imagination and courage to make it so.

If you’re inspired by Michael’s call to action and would like to find out more, then go back to your organisation to make some changes, do join us at the Let’s Get Real conference on 2 March, and his Dealing with the dark side of social media workshop on 3 March!