Mark Weinstein — The Social Reset: Big Tech, Mental Health, and the Future of Connection

The Michael Shermer Show Archives

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Big Tech is driving us, our kids, and society mad. In the nick of time, Restoring Our Sanity Online presents the bold, revolutionary framework for an epic reboot. What would social media look like if it nourished our critical thinking, mental health, privacy, civil discourse, and democracy? Is that even possible?

Restoring Our Sanity Online is the entertaining, informative, and frequently jaw-dropping social reset by Mark Weinstein, contemporary tech leader, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking.

This book is for all of us. Casual and heavy users of social media, parents, teachers, students, techies, entrepreneurs, investors, and elected officials. Restoring Our Sanity Online is the catapult to an exciting, enriching, and authentic future. Readers will embark on a captivating journey leading to an inspiring and actionable reinvention.

Restoring Our Sanity Online includes thought-provoking insights including:

• Empowering You―Social Media User, Content Creator
• In The Crosshairs: Privacy And Anonymity
• Saving Our Kids From The Abyss
• Surprise! Social Media Can Be Good For Your Mental Health
• Is AI The High-Tech Tattletale In Your Social Experience?
• Lifting the Veil On Bots and Trolls
• Facts, Opinions, Lies―Who Decides?
• Web3 Is Here―What The Heck Is It?

Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned tech entrepreneur, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking, including SuperFamily and SuperFriends, two of the earliest social networks. In 2016 he founded MeWe, the Facebook alternative with the industry’s first Privacy Bill of Rights. MeWe’s membership grew to nearly 20 million users worldwide, whose advisory board includes Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web; Steve “Woz” Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; Sherry Turkle, MIT academic and tech ethics leader; and Raj Sisodia, co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Mark is frequently interviewed and published in major media including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fox, CNN, BBC, PBS, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, and many more worldwide. He covers topics including social media, privacy, AI, free speech, antitrust, and protecting kids online. A leading privacy advocate, Mark’s landmark 2020 TED Talk, “The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism,” exposed the many infractions and manipulations by Big Tech, and called for a privacy revolution. Mark has also been listed as one of the “Top 8 Minds in Online Privacy” and named “Privacy by Design Ambassador” by the Canadian government. His new book is Restoring Our Sanity Online: A Revolutionary Social Framework.

Shermer and Weinstein discuss:

• Amid growing concerns over targeting, bullying, hate, boosted misinformation, bots and trolls, AI, privacy violations, and democracy disruption, can we really “restore our sanity online?”
• As an early inventor of social networking, have you been shocked by the direction social media has taken since launching SuperFamily and SuperFriends in 1998?
• How do we combat the mental health crisis associated with social media, particularly among teens?
• How can parents take charge of the runaway train which is their kids on social media?
• You’ve said the Surgeon General’s recommendation of putting warning labels on social media won’t be effective at protecting kids. What will?
• Your book has a chapter that says social media can be good for our mental health … You must be kidding!
• As Meta, X, Snap, and other Big Tech increasingly utilize AI, how will AI impact the future of social media?
• How will AI chatbots and “AI Friends” affect our personal relationships?
• Web3 promises to fix the problems with social media—privacy, data ownership, elimination of targeting, etc. What should people know about Web3? Is that too good to be true?
• How do you envision the future of privacy and anonymity on social media?
• How do we defeat bots and trolls? Are they going to destroy democracy?
• While conducting research for the book, how did you discover the shared patterns between Big Agriculture, Big Energy, and Big Tech?
• What lessons can be gleaned from Big Ag and Big Energy that we can apply to Big Tech?
• The book’s subtitle is “A Revolutionary Social Framework” and in chapter seven you introduce “Restoration Networks.” What’s so revolutionary about these?
• Why should social platforms create a more equitable creator economy?
• How can the tenets of Conscious Capitalism, often associated with retail companies like Patagonia, be applied to social networks?
• Can social media really function successfully without Surveillance Capitalism?

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