Matt Motyl
I am fascinated by the ways in which technology can shape society. I've studied cognitive biases, misinformation, threats to democracy, and well-being for over 17 years, and have spent the past 7 plus years working to use technology to promote the social good by consulting with numerous companies, civil society organizations, and policymakers. In my role in the industry, I specialized in using behavioral data in novel ways to improve artificial intelligence and machine learning-based algorithms to identify and promote higher-quality civic, health, and news content in ranked feeds.
I am currently a Senior Advisor at the Psychology of Technology Institute, which is a project of the University of Southern California's Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making. As Senior Advisor, I am developing the Social Media Index, the first scientific attempt to compare the positive and negative experiences that people have across the most popular social media and communication platforms, managing and analyzing the data for a nationally representative and longitudinal panel survey of social media users in the United States, and advising product teams and policymakers on how to address problems on these platforms. I am a regular contributor to their blog Designing Tomorrow on Substack.
I am also a Visiting Fellow at the Integrity Institute, which is a non-profit organization comprised of people with on-platform experience building and monitoring potential harms on some of the most widely-used technology platforms in existence.
