Eli Pariser wants to help technology and media serve democracy. At 23 years old, he was named Executive Director of MoveOn.org, where he led the organization’s opposition to the Iraq war, raised over $120 million from small donors, and helped pioneer the practice of online citizen engagement. In 2006 he confounded Avaaz, now the world’s largest citizen’s organization with over 40 million members in 19x countries.

In 2011, Pariser anticipated the dangers of a hyper-personalized Internet, and introduced the “filter bubble” to the lexicon in his New York Times bestselling book of the same name. Bill Gates, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and other internet luminaries have since expressed concern about the phenomenon, and his TED talk on the topic now has over 4 million views. In 2012, he co-founded Upworthy, a mission-driven media company designed to make civically important ideas popular, with Peter Koechley. Within two years, Upworthy had over 80 million monthly visitors.

Pariser’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and WIRED; he has appeared on World News Tonight, Good Morning America, the Colbert Report, and many other shows; and he speaks internationally about democracy, media and the Internet.

Session

Thursday 17:15 – 18:30 Keynotes on an European Alternative