Audrey Tang on Rebuilding Trust in the Digital Age
Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s cyber ambassador-at-large, joins Zoom In Zoom Out to explore how social media can be redesigned for democracy. In an era of deepfakes, disinformation and AI-generated manipulation, Tang advocates for “pro-social media”—platforms that reward nuance, build consensus and bridge ideological divides. From Taiwan’s crowdsourced Anti-Fraud Act to AI safety collaborations, Tang shares concrete tools to promote transparency, digital participation and online resilience.
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As artificial intelligence amplifies online disinformation, Taiwan’s cyber ambassador-at-large Audrey Tang is calling for a redesign of social media that rewards consensus over conflict and prioritizes democratic resilience.
Appearing on “Zoom In Zoom Out” on TaiwanPlus, Tang laid out the core philosophy behind “pro-social media,” a vision she and economist Glen Weyl have championed. Instead of boosting extreme voices for the sake of engagement, these platforms would promote “bridging content” that connects users across ideological divides.
“The idea of pro-social media is that if you go to, for example, Wikipedia, you show a page and that page represents the common ground of all the editors,” said Tang. “The bridging content and the balancing content are the core of how Wikipedia depolarizes the conversation online and builds a neutral point of view.”
Tang cited real-world experiments in pro-social media, including one in Bowling Green in the U.S. state of Kentucky, where local governments helped create town halls that engaged nearly 10% of the population in deliberative forums.
“You see actually much more MIMBY, like ‘maybe in my backyard’ only if you do this or if you do that, you see much more nuanced statements,” Tang said. “People are not actually as polarized as people feel if you just look at the anti-social corner of social media.”
She emphasized that current social media platforms often exacerbate division. “It’s engagement through engagement, because many of their algorithms prioritize content that builds addiction to the touchscreens,” said Tang. “But in pro-social media… the algorithm favors the people who can build bridges across people who feel differently.”
Tang also highlighted the importance of anonymity safeguards that allow people to participate without disclosing their identity, yet still pass verification thresholds.
“So depending on the topic, you can set different thresholds… and therefore no personal data was collected or kept,” she said.
Taiwan has begun implementing stronger digital policies. This year, mandatory “know your customer” (KYC) regulations were introduced for online advertisers, requiring digital signatures that reveal the source of ads. The move comes amid rising concern over AI-driven election interference and scams.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, there [was] a couple advertisements posted on Facebook without such KYC… and was promptly fined by the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs,” Tang noted. “Thanks to an anti-fraud act that we passed… that includes contributions from 450 people randomly selected around Taiwan.”
Tang now serves as a senior advisor to the Mozilla Foundation, working on open-source tools like Common Voice and Rust to improve online safety. “Mozilla wants to prove that the internet becomes safer as it becomes more open,” she said.
Despite rising global pessimism about the future of digital platforms, Tang remains hopeful.
“We have built a democracy that sees those external pressures, these vibe attacks, malicious AI worms… as pressure that makes diamond,” she said. “People are fed up with peak polarization and it’s time to move on.”
