Spent years observing people in the room, turns out the room has its own opinion.

Those many years in policy made me think that power belonged to the some people. It shaped my attitude to look for the room where it happened and figured out who was in it. Everything, and everyone else, is furniture. The technology, the infrastructure, the rules already built into the system before anyone shows up.

Then I went back to school, and learned about how the furniture... matters? That the systems we took as a given are shaping outcomes while we are busy with the policy makers. My first thought was, “huh?”, followed by, “what?”

Then I watched how my perpetual roommate works. As an interior designer, she arranges a room so that people move, sit, and interact differently depending on what she puts where. Different materials, different impact on the room and the people within even long after they are gone.

I used to study politics to explain technology. Now I study technology to explain politics. Same intersection but opposite direction. Turns out where you stand determines what counts as furniture and what counts as a decision maker. In tech policy, we spend a lot of time watching the people in the room. Maybe we should also check what the room is doing to them.

It is still largely a welcomed change (I’m using that word generously). The notes enables regular users to shape content moderation, albeit at the expense of third-party fact-checkers (3PFC). Your Algorithm can make the recommendation system less opaque. Users contribute to the machine, although they only contribute to one part of it.

I tried to map this out in a recent piece for ISEAS. I initially asked two questions: is this technology reliable for borderline content, and is it controlled by the platform or open to external input? My version of an answer, mostly, is that the technologies capable of handling borderline content are also the ones most tightly held by platforms.

Maybe the question is not whether platforms should collaborate on content moderation. They already do, to a degree. Maybe the question is whether that collaboration can (or should?) be embedded into the technical architecture itself. That is harder to do than to write (heh).

My hesitation came from an impasse. Platforms are understandably reluctant to open up without clear regulatory protection. Regulators struggle to write rules without access to the technical systems they're trying to regulate. Both sides are stuck, and for reasons that make sense from where each of them sits.

But partnership by design still beats partnership by press release. The full piece is here.

My first pick was sarcas.tech, but that was unavailable. So, I went with the second-best spelling sarkas.tech, felt closer to home anyway.

Now of course, naming this after a wordplay on “sarcastic” is the least sarcastic thing you can do. No self-respecting satirist would ever introduce themselves that way. But “sarkas.tech” was just sitting right there, for free, and I am… weak.

But now that I have put whatever this is into existence, I feel the need to give it a reason of being. Like a reverse-Descartes, if you will. Exist first, think later.

Anyway, here is my made-up reasoning: sarcasm runs on irony, and tech policy has no shortage of it. A tech promises one thing, and delivers its version of that thing. A regulation aims here, and lands there. The material writes itself. Perhaps none of this is hidden, but it’s certainly not where we tend to look.

I can’t promise that this space is going to be funny, nor will it be useful. But at least it will be paying some attention.