Description: Learn a bit more about Ravi
social media (8819) facebook (7687) data science (1568) integrity (436) civic (385) moral psychology (13) ranker (7) ravi iyer (5)
I am currently the Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute , which is a project of USC's Neely Center . Before that, I led data science, research, and product teams across Facebook toward improving the societal impact of social media. I began that work focused on policy-based content moderation, but learned the painful lesson that a focus on content moderation was a dead end and often a distraction from the product design and algorithmic changes that would truly make a difference.
We clearly did not solve things, but across many teams and individual efforts, we did launch: • content neutral algorithmic changes to reduce engagment incentives for important topics • content neutral reputation signals • UI changes and subjective measurement to enable more value aligned algorithms • content-neutral break-the-glass measures for elections and crises • removal of (some) anger from base incentives • auditing of viral content internationally • numerous other research studies, product changes a
These changes collectively measurably reduced misinformation, reduced content that experts consider dangerous , and improved the user experience. However, a lot of work still needs to be done and needs the outside world to be engaged productively, in order to do it well. The principles behind the changes we made apply not just to Facebook, but to a host of other companies that build online products where engagement and algorithms interact. I write about those principles on Substack .