About
- I'm a dad of three young boys and husband of an amazing wife. We live in Oakland and I spend a lot of time organizing shenanigans, surprises and adventures for all of us.
- I co-founded CrowdTangle, a social analytics tool used by newsrooms, researchers, and elected officials worldwide. Facebook acquired it in 2016. I stayed on as CEO through 2020. The New York Times called it "perhaps the greatest transparency tool in the history of social media."
- I care a lot about trying to make the internet, and social media in particular, easier and safer to study. I've testified before the US Senate and the Australian Parliament on questions of platform transparency.
- I'm an affiliate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a member of the California Institute for Technology and Democracy's Tech Advisory Council. Previously, I was a Knight Fellow at George Washington University's Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics.
- I love to read and always love suggestions for new books. Here's my Goodreads.
Writing & Speaking
- I write about the internet and regulation on my Substack, Some Good Trouble.
- I speak and write about transparency and platform accountability. Some highlights: co-authoring The Case For Transparency with GWU, speaking at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, UNESCO's Global Conference, and Stanford's Trust & Safety Conference, appearing on NBC Nightly News and in a Mozilla documentary, and interviews with the New York Times, Wired, The Economist, The Verge, Fast Company, and Platformer.
Side Projects
- Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps — a free archive dedicated to the art of the Sanborn maps
- Byline — an RSS-based email system that sends you a daily digest of articles from your favorite authors
- AI-Powered Animatronic Halloween Skeleton — a fully customizable, AI-powered interactive animatronic skeleton for Halloween
- Tracking Our Institutions — an interactive tracker of how institutions are responding to political pressure
- Transparency Library — case studies showing how research access to social media data has driven real-world change
- Super Bowl Ad Economy — an interactive look at 37 years of Super Bowl ads and what they reveal about the American economy
- Studying the Halftime Show — an interactive exploration of the themes and songs across 34 years of Super Bowl halftime shows
- Transparency Language — a technical overview of transparency language introduced in legislation around the world
- Naming Tool — brainstorm the name of a new organization