We’re going to RightsCon! Plus: briefing deck and think tank updates.
Hi there! So, at the beginning of the month, I sent you my previous newsletter. In the four weeks since then, we have launched multiple (!) think tank products (see below) and are heading into the summer energized by that momentum. In the background, the Integrity Institute staff met in-person for the first time since January and got our hands dirty with strategic planning, the results of which I cannot wait to share with you soon. Get ready for the Integrity Institute newsletter — retrospective edition. We’re going to catch you up on, and celebrate, what we achieved. And, as always, we did it together with our members.
But before we celebrate achievements this month, there’s a big event coming up: Jeff and I going to RightsCon in Costa Rica next week! We’ve always seen the Integrity Institute as a bridge between integrity workers and the world, and our partners have been telling us that RightsCon is *the* place to build bridges with human rights advocates from across the globe. If you will be there (or know of organizations that we should talk to there), let us know! Jeff and I are speaking at the Misinfo Village satellite event, which is co-organized by Institute member Hallie Stern and features several other members. We’re also looking forward to the event on messaging platform encryption featuring Institute member Caroline Sinders.
Briefing deck
Earlier this month, we held an invitation-only briefing to introduce the Integrity Institute and our scope of work to partners who are just getting to know us. The process of putting the briefing together and seeing so many folks speak on our behalf there was so affirming and delightful! It reiterated how much impact we have already achieved — by building a community and putting member expertise front and center.
As Integrity Institute’s senior advisor Katie Harbath shared after the briefing, “[w]e had funders, regulators, and academics all sharing how talking directly to tech workers - many of whom aren’t currently at a company - about tech policy issues has been so helpful to them as they do their work. We had our members sharing how the Institute has helped them to do their work better or find impact and purpose outside of going back into a tech company. It just made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
You can also get in on the warm and fuzzy feeling! Here’s a look at the briefing deck. And we’ll get a summary of those conversations on our blog soon.
Elections integrity guide
As you might recall, election integrity is one pillar of work at the Integrity Institute. This month, a group of Institute members who have experience working on elections at online platforms – led by Glenn Ellingson and Katie Harbath – released a best practices guide for online platforms about how to set up an election integrity program.
Besides the wealth of information contained in the guide, I want to offer my personal reflection:
It covers a lot: this turned out to be an even bigger and richer topic to mine than we realized when we started back in November 2022. So big, in fact, that we had to split it up – this guide is just Part 1! Part 2 is being drafted right now, with a target launch in August 2023.
It’s a flagship member-powered and staff-led effort: it took a massive community effort involving dozens of members, organized by volunteer and staff project managers with deep expertise in this particular work.
It showcases our model: this is a technical document – a how-to. The audience are people working at companies. And yet, at the same time, it provides a very clear yardstick that civil society can use to hold companies accountable.
I strongly encourage you to check out the entire guide yourself! Share it widely, and let us know if you find it useful for your work.
Think tank updates
Besides the elections integrity guide, our think tank work continues to speed up, so much so that the Institute staff are calling the next few months the “summer (and half) of impact”. When Jeff and I started the Institute with our founding fellows, we wanted to talk directly to policymakers (and others) and help them get things right. Little did we know there would be such appetite!
Here’s a sneak peek into recent think-tank updates to our members:
This comes out biweekly! All the bullets here only cover (a fraction of) a two week window!
We expect more and more of think-tank work that involves member feedback to start showing up on our blog over the course of summer. In case you haven’t looked at it recently, make sure you check out two new posts in particular:
Institute founding fellow Tom Cunningham shared his original research on ranking by engagement.
A group of Institute members submitted public comments to the Oversight Board on Meta’s approach to the term “shaheed”.
Both posts exemplify the type of knowledge that comes only from on-platform integrity experience, and we’re glad that the Institute can be a stage for integrity professionals to share their expertise. And there will be even more to come once we announce our inaugural cohort of visiting fellows!
Thanks for reading and following our work.
Sahar Massachi, executive director and co-founder