Michael Slaby is an American entrepreneur, currently serving as the chief strategist at

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

-based nonprofit, Harmony Labs. He previously ran the

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

-based startup he founded, Timshel, which developed the platform known as

The Groundwork The Groundwork was a privately held technology firm, run by Michael Slaby, that was formed in June 2014. Campaign finance disclosures revealed that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was a client of the Groundwork. Most of the Groundwork's e ...

Background

Slaby attended

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, where he earned an A.B. degree in English literature and Biochemistry. Slaby was the chief technology officer of Obama for America in 2008 campaign. In 2012, he rejoined the campaign as chief integration and innovation officer. When that campaign finished, he began work on social impact organizations that leverage technology to create social movements.

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...

also used the technologies developed by Slaby and his team in her

presidential campaign A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referen ...

. Slaby is the former chief technology strategist for TomorrowVentures, which is an angel investment fund for

Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...

examines disinformation and promoting divisiveness

In 2021, Slaby authored a book entitled, ''For All the People: Redeeming the Broken Promises of Modern Media and Reclaiming Our Civic Life'', in which he addressed

disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...

, the encouragement of divisiveness, and those profiting off of it and

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

. He stresses that the rationalization offered by those reaping enormous profits off of Internet platforms used to communicate dialogue promoting them, "protecting free speech", is baseless because the free speech amendment of the United States Constitution relates to prohibiting suppressive actions by the government, not private entities. Slaby then examines how

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

are seen to have polarized their users, allowed hate speech, and created an environment in which conspiracy theories could thrive. He cites the social basis for the Internet entities to have optimized their profits massively in this way and he calls for reigning in those with such profound influence in the public sphere through new governmental regulations, engagement by politicians, encouragement of moral leadership, and collective action by users in order to reestablish healthy discourse.Smith, David,
Optimizing for outrage: ex-Obama digital chief urges curbs on big tech
',

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

, Monday, March 1, 2021

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Slaby, Michael Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign People from Chicago Brown University alumni