Two (Official) Years of Integrity Institute
Hi!
I’m trying out some semi-regular “from the ED’s desk” emails. This is the second. And it turns out that this week contains the 2nd anniversary of our public launch! Time. Flies.
Inside the org updates:
So, always, lots to update you on. But first, we’ve welcomed a few new faces to the team over the past month. Say hello to Sofia (Executive Associate), Spencer (Research Assistant), Laure (Community Resident Fellow), Matt (Research Resident Fellow), and Alexis (Partnerships Resident Fellow).
Yes, we launched our Resident Fellowship program. Thanks Hewlett for the money! These people are so good. More are coming. And we have a true embarrassment of riches of other applicants we had to turn away. Want more people like Laure, Matt, Tom, and Alexis in the public sphere sharing their knowledge? Please help us make it happen by way of introducing us to donors.
Oh, also! Our Community Project Manager will start with us next week. The CPM will tackle two of our organizational goals: people understand integrity work better and integrity workers have more power to do the right thing. You’ll like them.
So, what’s coming up on the Integrity Institute’s agenda? We’re hosting a staff retreat in NYC in mid-November. As an organization that’s fully/primarily remote, I’m excited to connect IRL with our wonderful team. We may even host a happy hour, so be on the lookout for an update. Do you have any comments or ideas for the Institute to chew on during this time? Let us know!
I’ve been thinking a lot about fundraising: We suspect foundations are planning 2024 now. We don’t want to interrupt them, but is there information from us that would help them in their planning? Could or should we be on their radar? Introduce us, please.
What we’ve been up to:
Our Community wing has been working hard to organize some special events. Check them out:
Shedding Light on Dark Patterns (RSVP via Lu.ma required)
Wednesday, November 1, 10am PT / 1pm ET
This will be an engaging panel discussion on deceptive patterns moderated by Integrity Institute member, Caroline Sinders, featuring panelists Kat Zhou and Dr. Jen King. This conversation is for integrity workers, designers, developers, policy-makers, creative tech practitioners, and anyone contributing to a more ethical digital landscape.
In two weeks, Trust in Tech will be 1-year old! We're so thrilled Talha and Alice have grown an integrity storytelling platform with over 7,000 listens.
Rebecca Thein, Theodora Skeadas, and Sarah Amos – who work with us for their Visiting Fellowship – focus on member attendance and processes at conferences. Show some appreciation for their reflection on our blog about 2023 DEF CON!
Similarly, the Research wing is churning out important projects from election integrity to platform risk assessments to responsible AI. Read more about some of these initiatives below:
Elections Best Practices Working Group: We launched part 2 of the Elections Integrity Best Practices Working Deck! You can find the release here.
Help us with the promotion of the deck! We need all the help we can get to promote this amazing document. Can you help us by sharing this guide with 2-4 people who you think would really benefit from it? And can you tell us if you did?
DSA, Risk Assessments & Audits Project: This project is focused on addressing questions related to the implementation of the DSA - specifically the articles related to platform risk assessments, risk mitigation and audits.
Our goal is to create resources for regulators as they receive the risk assessments submitted by the platforms, by answering the questions on how to do a platform risk assessment, how to assess platform risk mitigation plans, and how to audit a platform.
US Federal Election Commission (FEC): II member Eric Davis led a group effort to submit comments to the FEC on the topic of rulemaking around the use of deepfakes in political communications. Read what they submitted, along with additional commentary, on our blog!
It’s our 2-year anniversary! 🎉
Integrity Institute has officially hit our two-year mark.
For our birthday, please reread our anniversary feature in Protocol. Also, in honor of this milestone, we’re announcing a decentralized happy hour. Any time two or more members hang out this week, we will cover food and drink for them to hang out together (as long as they send us a selfie!).
So, some reflections:
Two years ago, Jeff, myself, and our founding fellows/members were looking around nervously at each other, maybe a bit unsure if it was safe to go public. Would this work? Would people misunderstand what we were doing here? Spoiler alert: it did work, and sometimes people do misunderstand, but that’s okay!
One year ago, we were coming out of what we thought was a frantic year of growth. We were talking to the New York Times, governments, NGOs and press around the world. We had less than 100 members. We were figuring stuff out–with only 3-4 paid full time staff. Then we got a post-industry-layoffs / post-Twitter takeover growth spurt (thanks Elon!). While we have many members who currently work at platform companies, turns out integrity professionals with a lot of time on their hands are more likely to join. Go figure! We had to figure out how to grow faster and do even more. So, we built more working groups, encouraged members to take the lead on stuff like AI, and started building our muscles as an organization.
Now we have ~10 permanent staff, 4 resident fellows, 16 visiting fellows, and 330+ members. We circulate tons of questions asked and answered internally, helping our members do their job better day to day. (Note: we don’t recruit. We don’t set goals connected to our number of members. But it’s an interesting statistic nonetheless.)
Some incredible products we’ve worked on, partners we’ve worked with, and impacts we’ve made so far:
We are helping the EU figure out how to implement regulations. Especially on what a “risk assessment” is. We think this is key to the whole shebang.
We are helping OFCOM figure out how social media works, how to regulate it, and why internally actor- or behavior- based methods matter more than content.
Our work is embedded in one key clause of PATA, the flagship US transparency bill
Our Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court – did it get them to rule narrowly? Not sure! But it’s very good and you can read it.
Our members are co-creating our briefing decks, and then realizing there are best practices, and then sharing them with their teams.
Policymakers tell us “I assign your decks as part of onboarding for my staff.”
Staff at companies tell us: “I assign your decks as part of onboarding for new staff.”
We are briefing NGOs, Press, companies and helping them better understand what “good” looks like and how to get there.
We are bringing integrity storytelling to the public. Our podcast is at 22 episodes and counting and we’ve hosted three public conversations this year.
We represented at over 7 conferences this year, including TrustCon and RightsCon.
Thanks for being on this journey with us. If you know a foundation or donor-type person or institution that would be excited to learn that we exist, please do introduce us. Thanks to our friends who have already made some introductions. Really, many people and organizations are delighted to learn that there’s someone like us out there: a group of integrity professionals who are making our expertise and knowledge available to the world. But we need your help spreading the word.
Thanks, and cheers, and hoping for another wonderful two years.
Sahar