Decentralizing the Digital Public Sphere

The public sphere is currently dominated by a handful of social media platforms — for example, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit — all built on centralized networks. Centralized networks concentrate decision-making and infrastructure in a single entity that manages user identity, data storage, policy enforcement, and content curation. This concentration of control grants platforms enormous power over online communication and public discourse. Yet these platforms are operated by unelected actors accountable primarily to shareholders rather than the public.

I argue that operators of platforms built on centralized networks can’t legitimately exercise power over the public sphere. By contrast, platforms built on decentralized networks — which distribute control over identity, data, and policy across independent nodes interoperating through open protocols — can in principle exercise their power legitimately. The upshot is that legitimate platform governance requires migrating to decentralized architectures.

Chris Howard
https://www.mcgill.ca/philosophy/chris-howard
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
McGill University

About the Speaker:

I'm an Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, where i direct the Philosophy, Technology, & Policy Lab. My earlier work was in normative ethics & metaethics. Now I work on questions about power, legitimacy, & governance in digital infrastructure. I'm focused on the illegitimate power of centralized social media platforms & AI systems, & on the prospects for legitimate decentralized alternatives. Before joining McGill, I was a research assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill & core faculty in the UNC/Duke program in philosophy, politics, & economics.

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This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat here.

About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca):

The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life.

In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society.

The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai