Join the Cyber Policy Center October 15th, from 1 PM-2 PM, for the next seminar in our Fall Seminar Series. Sessions will run October through December and will be moderated by Nate Persily, co-director of the CPC. Tiziano Piccardi, postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group (HCI), joins us for his talk Tuning Our Algorithmic Amplifiers: Designing Pro-Social Values Into Social Media Algorithms.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 12:40 PM for lunch, prior to the seminar. Please note the change in time this fall.

About the Seminar

Can we design feed algorithms that are mindful of their societal impact? AI-driven feed algorithms typically optimize for user engagement and retention but may inadvertently contribute to harmful outcomes, such as affective polarization. Recent interventions aimed at mitigating these effects have produced mixed and sometimes contradictory results. However, advancements in AI now offer an opportunity to rethink how algorithmic curation is done by embedding important societal values—such as supporting democratic principles—directly into the objectives of feed algorithms. In this presentation, we showcase the benefits of this approach through a field experiment on X (formerly Twitter). Using a browser extension powered by large language models (LLMs), we re-rank users' feeds in real time, controlling exposure to posts that express political distrust and animosity. Our findings demonstrate that this intervention influences users' feelings toward individuals from opposing political parties, highlighting a potential pathway for designing feed algorithms that explicitly promote societal values like democracy.

About the Speaker

Tiziano Piccardi is a postdoctoral scholar in the HCI group at Stanford University. His research focuses on the societal impact of AI-driven social media systems, with particular attention to issues such as political polarization. His work explores alternative designs for social media platforms that prioritize positive societal outcomes and reduce harmful effects. He earned his PhD in data science from EPFL in Switzerland, where his work centered on understanding Wikipedia's role in information-seeking behavior and designing solutions to improve the platform. As a formal, long-term collaborator with Wikimedia Research, he contributed to understanding how Wikipedia is used globally and how it can be improved. Tiziano is a Swiss National Science Foundation fellow.