Questions to Ask Early Stage Founders of Social Platforms
Thoughts on ethics and what we should demand from founders building a social platform.
I believe we will look back on this time in history and see it as the era of unregulated tech and how decisions made by founders reverberate into every niche of our society. It’s up to us to actively learn from that and make better decisions. After witnessing what is America recently and speaking with a couple of founders in recent weeks, I feel compelled to share…
For founders building businesses with the goal of building social connections, friendships, and community, we must demand more than a platform. This should become the norm. It shouldn’t be a hot take to demand that these founders have a basic understanding of behavioral and social science, because at the end of the day, that is the industry they are in. This is important because it not only helps us build a world we want to live in, but it will increase the chances of their business succeeding!
This also leads into another take-that-should-not-be-hot: we need new business models that don’t rely on extracting and selling people’s data. Privacy and data security should be paramount to protect all of their users. Business models should not create a dynamic of presenting a regressive tax on people (1) without the financial means to pay for additional privacy and/or (2) the increased need for those privacy features to ensure their own safety.
To offer some suggestions on how to tease this out (and add here if you have more), here are some questions:
- What research have you done on the behavioral science that leads to the value you are marketing to users?
- How do you think the experience on your platform changes for introverts vs extroverts?
- What makes you think your users will build authentic, long-lasting relationships?
- What privacy features are you baking in? Are you charging for any?
- How are you going to prevent harassment on your platform?
- Someone wrote to you saying they were harassed on your platform. What do you do?
- Are you selling your user data? Why?
- You want to bring advertisers on to this platform. How will they target users?
- What kind of advertisers will you bring on to this platform?
- You had 10 users write to you complaining about an event that an advertiser was promoting because of ethical reasons. What do you do?
- What do you think about echo chambers emerging on your platform?
