Talk on Ethical Scaling of Digital Platforms at UC Berkeley School of Information (https://berkeley-infocamp.org/)

1. Ethics (With Some Economics) For Scaling
Digital Platforms in a Fragile World
Chirantan Chatterjee
(Hoover Institution & IIM Ahmedabad)

2. Since I agreed to talk
• Facebook announced its pivot and lost Mr. Cox
• A Terror Attack and Mass Murder Live Streamed in New Zealand
• Extremists in India Glorifying on Twitter, Terror on Muslims in NZ
• Instagram and Facebook went through an outage (while Pornhub usage
goes up)
• All in the last 7-10 days (raising questions again on what is the new
definition of free speech and echo chambers)
• Someone spewed venom on an official post back in India too.

3. What Should Linkedin Do? A Mini-Case

4. What Should Linkedin Do? A Mini-Case
• What should Linkedin Do?
• Should it be Linkedin or IIMA or a Digital Overseer?
• Why more on Twitter or Facebook?
• Collective Consciousness
• Self-Regulation, Co-Regulation or No-Regulation
• Is the Way Forward Pivoting the Business Model?

5. Positive Welfare Effects: #MeToo
Borker, G. (2017). Safety first:
Perceived risk of street harassment
and educational choices of women.
Job Market Paper, Brown University. –
Algorithm on Google-Map

6. Positive Welfare Effects: Politics

7. Positive Welfare Effects: Disasters

8. Positive Welfare Effects: Disasters
• $5 million via text message donations in the 48
hours following the Haiti earthquake in 2010.
• 20 million Hurricane Sandy related tweets
despite loss of cell phone services in 2013.
• Following Boston marathon bombings 1/4th of
Americans looked up social media in 2013.

9. Adverse Welfare Effects

10. Emerging Studies Demonstrating Concern
• Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse
news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.
• Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
• Alatas, V., Chandrasekhar, A. G., Mobius, M., Olken, B. A., & Paladines, C. (2019).
When Celebrities Speak: A Nationwide Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination In
Indonesia (No. w25589). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2019). The Welfare Effects of
Social Media (No. w25514). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Yu, C. (2019). Trends in the diffusion of misinformation
on social media (No. w25500). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Etter, M., Ravasi, D., & Colleoni, E. (2019). Social media and the formation of
organizational reputation. Academy of Management Review, 44(1), 28-52.

11. Emerging Studies Demonstrating Concern
• Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse
news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130-1132.
• Allcott, H., & Gentzkow, M. (2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election.
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), 211-36.
• Alatas, V., Chandrasekhar, A. G., Mobius, M., Olken, B. A., & Paladines, C. (2019).
When Celebrities Speak: A Nationwide Twitter Experiment Promoting Vaccination In
Indonesia (No. w25589). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2019). The Welfare Effects of
Social Media (No. w25514). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Allcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Yu, C. (2019). Trends in the diffusion of misinformation
on social media (No. w25500). National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Etter, M., Ravasi, D., & Colleoni, E. (2019). Social media and the formation of
organizational reputation. Academy of Management Review, 44(1), 28-52.
Scanty Evidence from the
Emerging World!

12. Impressive Economics in the India case

13. Impressive Economics in the India case
• To serve a 500mn+ population base in India.
• Second-highest active Internet users globally (~390
million) but Trust is a Major Issue
• Velocity of user addition (40 million per year)
• Mobile data usage at par w/developed markets
(~8GB/subscriber/month)
• But 28% penetration (compared with 64% in Brazil and
53% in China)
• Gender and Urban/Rural Divide
• Online Retail Spending is $224/online buyer/year
• Government’s Role, Trust, Ecosystems, Local Solutions

14. But Its Also a Frankenstein Being Misused
• Troll Armies.
• Live streaming of hate (by both non-state and state-actors).
• Facebook has set up a War Room in Delhi for Elections2019 coming up.
• Professional platforms like Linkedin abused.
• Crony capitalism augmenting In absence of Taobaos/WeChats
• Inelastic demand on the 3+1 major platforms. (Its free, easy to access
and use, and speed of dissemination is rapid).

15. Bringing in Ethics Infusing Elasticity of Demand!!?

16. Bringing in Ethics Infusing Elasticity of Demand!!?
• Builds Trust
• Creates Tomorrow’s Sticky Customers
• Price Discrimination Methods can be applied
• Avoids Taxes, Embedded Regulators, Monitoring
• Pivots Business Model Towards New Revenue Sources
• Moves Away from Virality/Resurrecting/Dealing With Drop Outs
• Reduces Costs to Monitor Misinformation ex post.
• Responsible Business Behaves Responsibly
• A New Social Construct
• Potential Payoffs and Welfare Enhancement in the Longer Run

17. There is No Such thing As a Free Lunch

18. Thank You
Hoover Website | IIM Ahmedabad Website | Personal Website
Email: chirantanc@iima.ac.in or cc201819@stanford.edu
Twitter: @chiruchat