Pro-Social on Middleware: A Recap

There’s little disagreement that today’s social media feeds need to be fixed. Most current efforts to fix our feeds - and counter the ills of screen addiction, teen mental health, social division etc - are aimed at pressuring platforms to change their policies and algorithms. But a growing movement of technologists point to “middleware” as a more viable long term solution.

Middleware - or “attention agent services” as Richard Reisman says is a more apt term - are third party tools that give individuals the ability to to choose what goes in their feeds. Today, we see Middleware in action on Bluesky, which gives individuals and groups the ability to construct and offer feed options. In the future, though, Middleware could conceivably mediate our online experiences across all platforms - though a few regulations and protocols would have to be put in place first.

At our Pro-Social in February, to explain how middleware is an answer to harmful feeds, Richard took us back to how social discourse - or social thought - traditionally and more organically existed before social media algorithms. In a community or society, individuals share their thoughts (“expression” in the schema below) but also choose who to listen to (“impression”). Even more critically, there exist norms, informal and formal institutions, and reputation systems about who to trust, which all work to moderate expression and mediate which voices are amplified (“social mediation”)

In social media, that “sense making system” breaks down; in particular the norms, contexts and reputation systems that mediated discourse collapse. The platform response to that collapse, as Richard explains, has mostly been to intervene at the point of expression, essentially censoring speech, which Richard does not see as sustainable in a democratic society. 

Middleware, instead, aims to restore public discourse by intervening at two other points. First, it reinstates “freedom of impression”, giving individuals agency over what goes in their feeds. But granting agency is not enough, according to Richard; individuals also need good options to choose from. Middleware creates those options by returning social mediation to its role, giving communities a way to curate feeds and to infuse reputation systems that signal which sources and what content is more trustworthy. Those last attributes - reputation and mediation - are two “pillars” of public discourse that balance out agency, which on its own risks leaving individuals in distorted silos.

Middleware is still in early stages; again with Bluesky offering the most prominent example and with a lot of work to be done to put the necessary protocols and APIs in place. It’s also unclear that Middleware will prevent echo chambers, given that individuals could opt into extremist feeds. But Richard is optimistic that the equivalent of an App store for Middleware will arise and that open reputation and mediation systems are ultimately what will create a healthy public square. We hope he’s right.

See the full conversation below. For deeper dives on Middleware, read Richard’s case for how Middleware can support the three pillars of social discourse and the Foundation for American Innovation's report on "Shaping the Future of Social Media with Middleware".

About the Prosocial Design Network

The Prosocial Design Network researches and promotes prosocial design: evidence-based design practices that bring out the best in human nature online. Learn more at prosocialdesign.org.