Elevating online discourse about health through research and practice.

We are an independent lab dedicated to elevating online discourse about health through research and practice. 

The Internet is a transformative tool for improving people’s lives. It connects us to each other, and empowers individual autonomy by making the accumulated knowledge of humanity available to everyone. Unprecedented access to information allows us to make more informed decisions about our health and the ways we spend our time, to better live our lives in accordance with our values.

At the same time, the Internet has created new categories of risk to human health. Social media platforms and content creators are constantly trying to capture our attention so they can sell it as engagement. False or misleading health information is abundant. Bad actors use hateful rhetoric to divide people, stoking fear and anger for financial or political gain.

These profoundly positive and profoundly harmful dynamics co-exist because the Internet is wild. There is no central authority moderating content. Governments and tech companies can and should do more to remove harmful content, but ultimately the empowerment and the risk are two inextricable sides of the same coin.