Council for Responsible Social Media - Issue One

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Social media promised to build a more interconnected, informed world. But now the harms the platforms are causing are exceeding the promise of greater improved conversation and global connectedness, and American democracy is at stake.

These harms are widespread: degraded mental health, especially for our children, growing political polarization, fragile democracies disrupted by propaganda, conspiracy theories going mainstream, and increased distrust of foundational institutions. How is this happening? The simple answer is that the Big Tech companies are operating with no serious accountability or oversight, and they are putting profits above the societal harms to our kids, for our communities, and to U.S. national security.

In the same way that tobacco companies designed purposefully addictive products, marketed those products aggressively to teens and adults, and suppressed research about their product, today’s social media companies are obscuring the truth and preventing change.

We need to adopt significant bipartisan solutions, and that’s exactly what the Council for Responsible Social Media is all about. The Council brings together a multi-sectoral group of leaders who are focused on finding solutions to the technological harms to our kids, communities, and national security. The Council brings together Republicans and Democrats, policymakers and members of the media, impacted communities and key stakeholders to elevate a bipartisan conversation and advance impactful, achievable solutions.

Strategies and Tools

As a unique and unified voice, the Council will change the national conversation around social media reform so it is focused on meaningful, achievable and bipartisan solutions. Here’s how we’ll do it:

  1. Advocate for key policies both at the federal and state level.
  2. Publicly pressure social media platforms to make meaningful platform and internal governance changes.
  3. Hold bipartisan public hearings — both in-person and virtual — that are open to the press and highlight testimony from parents, pediatricians, child psychologists, national security leaders and tech experts who can shed light on the impact of decisions being made inside the platforms.
  4. Serve as a resource for the media, providing bipartisan insights, information, and quotes. The Council will point reporters and producers to academics, advocates, other stakeholders who also have bipartisan or nonpartisan credibility.
  5. Develop and strategically distribute powerful written and video content about the harms caused by social media.

Council Co-chairs  

Dick Gephardt

Fmr. Congressman (D-MO) and Majority Leader

Kerry Healey

Fmr. Lieutenant Governor (R) of Massachusetts

Former Members of Congress

  • Cheri Bustos
    Fmr. U.S. Congresswoman (D-IL)
  • Steve Israel
    Fmr. U.S. Congressman (D-NY), Director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University
  • Claire McCaskill
    Fmr. U.S. Congresswoman (D-MO)
  • Reid Ribble
    Fmr. U.S. Congressman (R-WI)
  • Denver Riggleman
    Fmr. U.S. Congressman (R-VA) and Senior Technical Advisor to the U.S House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol
  • Chris Shays
    Fmr. U.S. Congressman (R-CT)

Public Sector Experts

  • John Bridgeland
    Co-chair and CEO of More Perfect and fmr. Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council
  • Susan Coppedge
    Fmr. U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and Executive Director of the Georgia Legal Services Program
  • Linda Douglass
    Fmr. Head of Global Comms, Bloomberg Media; Senior Vice President at Atlantic Media, and Communications Director in the White House’s Office of Health Reform
  • Dan Glickman
    Fmr. Secretary of Agriculture and Congressman (D-KS)
  • Nathaniel Lubin
    Fmr. Director of the Office of Digital Strategy at the White House
  • Tommy Thompson
    Fmr. Governor of Wisconsin (R), Secretary of Health and Human Services
  • Tom Wheeler
    Fmr. Chair of the Federal Communications Commission

National Security Experts

  • R.P. Eddy
    CEO of Ergo and fmr. Director of the White House National Security Council
  • Laura Edelson
    Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, Co-director of Cybersecurity for Democracy
  • Porter Goss
    Fmr. Director of the CIA and Congressman (R-FL)
  • Chuck Hagel
    Fmr. Secretary of Defense and U.S. Senator (R-NE)
  • Herb Lin
    Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University
  • Bill Owens
    Fmr. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Navy Admiral
  • Farah Pandith
    Fmr. Member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, State Department Special Representative to Muslim Communities, and Director for Middle East Regional Initiatives for the National Security Council
  • Leon Panetta
    Fmr. Secretary of Defense, Director of the CIA, White House Chief of Staff, and Congressman (D-CA)
  • Anjana Rajan
    Fmr. Chief Technology Officer of Polaris
  • Michael Rogers
    Fmr. Director of the NSA and U.S. Navy Admiral
  • Nicole Tisdale
    Fmr. Director for the National Security Council

Information Integrity Experts

  • Imran Ahmed
    Founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate
  • Nora Benavidez
    Senior Counsel and Director, Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press
  • Joel Bervell
    TikTok disinformation specialist, member of White House Healthcare Leaders in Social Media Roundtable
  • Roberta Braga
    Founder and Executive Director of the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas
  • Jiore Craig
    Head of Digital Integrity at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
  • Renée DiResta
    Associate Research Professor for the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Tech & Public Policy program and Massive Data Institute
  • Isabelle Frances-Wright
    Head of Technology and Society at Institute for Strategic Dialogue
  • Craig Forman
    Fmr. CEO and President of McClatchy, Executive Chairman of the Center for News, Technology & Innovation
  • Tristan Harris
    Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Humane Technology
  • Frances Haugen
    Facebook whistleblower and tech expert; Founder of Beyond the Screen
  • Sasha Havlicek
    Co-founder and CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
  • Daniel Kelley
    Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center for Technology and Society
  • Tim Love
    Former Vice Chairman of Omnicom Group
  • Vivian Schiller
    Executive Director of Aspen Digital, fmr. President and CEO of NPR, Global Chair of News at Twitter, and General Manager of NYTimes.com
  • Maria Ressa
    Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Founder and CEO of Rappler
  • Craig Spencer
    Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University
  • Jason Thacker
    Chair of Research in Technology Ethics at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Tech Accountability Experts

  • Danielle Allen
    Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Democracy Renovation Lab
  • Kristin Bride
    Social media reform advocate
  • Caitriona Fitzgerald
    Deputy Director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
  • Mary Anne Franks
    Professor of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at the GW Law School; President and Legislative & Tech Policy Director of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative
  • Nancy Gibbs
    Fmr. Editor of TIME and Director of the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy
  • Josh Golin
    Executive Director of Fairplay
  • Jonathan Haidt
    Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, social psychologist, and best-selling author
  • Ravi Iyer
    Managing Director at the Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision Making
  • Emma Lembke
    Founder and CEO of LOGOFF and Co-chair of Design It For Us
  • Mary Mazzio
    Documentary filmmaker
  • Sean McGarvey
    President of North America's Building Trades Unions
  • Manu Meel
    CEO of BridgeUSA
  • Trisha Prabhu
    Founder and CEO of ReThink
  • Zamaan Qureshi
    Co-founder of Design It For Us
  • Olivier Sylvain
    Professor of Law at Fordham University; Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute
  • Danny Weiss
    Chief Advocacy Officer at Common Sense Media
  • Layla Zaidane
    President and CEO of Future Caucus
Why Issue One?

For a decade, Issue One has been a leading voice in the effort to build a democracy that works for everyone. We have defended our elections against disinformation and disruption, advanced a modern and effective legislative branch, and built broad coalitions to strengthen democracy in the face of rising polarization. In each of these efforts, we have found ourselves pushing back against the destructive influence of social media on our democracy. We have approached this work from a crosspartisan discipline, uniting Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the movement to fix our broken political system — often through high-level bodies of leaders like the ReFormers Caucus, the National Council on Election Integrity, and the Faces of Democracy campaign. Now, Issue One is applying its experience and strengths to bring attention, energy, and bipartisan problem-solving to the challenges posed by social media.

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