Category Archives: In the News

Fixing Digital Public Spaces

Posted on Monday, February 6, 2023 by No comments yet

Leslie Stebbins was quoted in a recent Salon article, “Our digital public spaces aren’t so healthy… Can we fix that?” (read full article here) that…

Tech companies maintain that they cannot moderate online communities because that would jeopardize our right to free speech and because there is simply too much content flying across these networks to track. Both these issues are false flags. We now know that the core infrastructure of these platforms is intentionally designed to amplify vitriol and misinformation because this increases engagement, keeps us online longer, and provides tech companies with billions of dollars from ad revenue. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Further, Stebbins adds, We should focus on creating new spaces that have explicit civic goals and are designed for equity and social cohesion. Real-world communities need to be involved in intentionally designing their own local digital public spaces rather than leaving this work to global tech companies.

Front Porch Forum gets a nice spotlight in the article…

Front Porch Forum […] focuses on real world community building. It is the antithesis of Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter. Rather than try to keep users online, it strives to get people offline and more connected to their local Vermont neighbors. Most people spend five or ten minutes a day online to get news that their neighbors have posted: lost dogs, bake sales and announcements of upcoming school board meetings. It is funded by donations and local ads based on where someone lives, but it does not track user behavior and advertising does not drive platform design.

Independent research on Front Porch [Forum] shows that it builds social cohesion and is improving the resilience of local Vermont communities. Building stronger community cohesion produces many intangible benefits such as high civic engagement, more instances of neighbors helping neighbors, and lower crime rates.

Another Shout Out to FPF in NY Times

Posted on Monday, December 12, 2022 by No comments yet

Thanks to Jill who just posted on the Craftsbury Forum:

“I just came across this New York Times article  recognizing the great job Front Porch Forum is doing with keeping Vermonters connected. I know my family and I are grateful for the network it provides.”

A Kinder, Gentler Social Network

Posted on Monday, February 7, 2022 by No comments yet

Big Tech and social media giants are under the microscope more than ever. Front Porch Forum continues to draw attention from news outlets as the more friendly alternative among sites that are meant to connect us.

Julia Angwin, Editor-in-Chief of The Markup, a popular publication investigating Big Tech, recently spoke with FPF’s co-founder Michael Wood-Lewis to learn more about how FPF keeps conversations neighborly and kind, while other social media sites seem to be losing civility.

Read the full interview here.

Healthy Digital Discourse

Posted on Monday, November 22, 2021 by No comments yet

The Aspen Institute just issued its Commission for Information Disorder final report.  We’re humbled to see Front Porch Forum recognized among a short list of approaches that are making real progress instead of feeding the spread of disinformation.  The commission includes celebrities like Craig Newmark, Katie Couric and Prince Harry, along with an array of national experts. 

FPF was held as an example of how to

Develop and scale communication tools, networks, and platforms that are designed to bridge divides, build empathy, and strengthen trust among communities.

Learn more here.

An Evening of Courageous Conversations

Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 by No comments yet

On November 18, FPF participated in a virtual event celebrating Vermonters taking One Small Step. VPR and StoryCorps have spent the last several months connecting residents with different views who might never talk otherwise for a simple, personal conversation. Hear voices from the project followed by an interactive conversation with participants and experts, including Front Porch Forum’s co-founder Michael Wood-Lewis. Learn about the project’s intentions and how to incorporate “courageous conversations” into our daily lives. Listen to the show here.

Front Porch Forum and Braver Angels joined the panel to share how we help facilitate these conversations, build community and provide the tools to do have these conversations.

FPF to Speak on Panel: Reimagine the Internet

Posted on Wednesday, May 12, 2021 by No comments yet

Detail of Civic Logic, by Fiammetta Ghedini, RIVA Illustrations

Front Porch Forum‘s co-founder, Michael Wood-Lewis, will speak on a panel for the virtual conference, Reimagine the Internet, on Thu., May 13 at 12:00 p.m. The event is co-hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the soon-to-be-launched Initiative on Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

FPF will be joined by many notable panelists, including Cory Doctorow of Electronic Frontier Foundation, Evelyn Douek of Harvard Law School and Katherine Maher of Wikimedia Foundation.

Front Porch Forum will be part of Thursday’s discussion:

Lessons from Experiments in Local Community-Building

Thursday, May 13, 2021

12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

This panel will focus on lessons learned from local communities and the implications of these lessons for online spaces. Sara Lomax-Reese is the CEO of WURD, a family-owned talk radio station in Philadelphia that serves that city’s Black community. Michael Wood-Lewis is co-founder of Front Porch Forum, an online community of mailing lists that serves every town in Vermont. Individually and in dialog, both will address lessons learned in building hyperlocal media and the ways in which online communities build trusted relationships.

Panelists

Moderator

  • Ethan Zuckerman, Initiative on Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University

Learn more about the virtual conference or RSVP here.

“Why Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Posted on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 by No comments yet

Front Porch Forum was recently featured in an episode of the podcast “Home. Made.” It tells the FPF origin story, and also gets into the behavioral science of what happens when we feel like we finally belong somewhere. Give it a listen! 

Learn more about the episode or read the transcription here.

 

Vermonters take notice of FPF in the News

Posted on Monday, April 5, 2021 by No comments yet

Front Porch Forum is celebrating the start of spring and lots of mentions in the news recently which our members have noticed!

“A big shout out to let everyone know that the April issue of The Atlantic has an excellent article called The Internet Doesn’t Have To Be Awful. This article mentions our fantastic Vermont FPF as an example of how we can make the internet a space that promotes democratic values by helping to make conversations better to benefit everyone in a community.” • Sandy in Burlington

 

How to Put Out Democracy’s Dumpster Fire
By: Story by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev

Instead of making people angry, participation in online forums can give them the same civic thrill that town halls or social clubs once did. “Elks Club meetings were what gave us experience in democracy,” he said. “We learned how to run an organization. We learned how to handle disagreement. We learned how to be civilized people who don’t storm out of an argument.”

Versions of this idea already exist. A Vermont-based site, Front Porch Forum, is used by roughly a quarter of the state’s residents for all sorts of community activity, from natural-disaster response to job-hunting, as well as civic discussion. Instead of encouraging users to interact as much and as fast as possible, Front Porch slows the conversation down: Your posts come online 24 hours after you’ve written them. Sometimes, people reach out to the moderators to retract something said in anger. Everyone on the forum is real, and they have to sign up using real Vermont addresses. When you go on the site, you interact with your actual neighbors, not online avatars.

Read the full article here.

“Kudos! FPF is showcased in the Atlantic. Upon which Fareed Zakaria (Foreign Affairs Quarterly, Global Public Square) highlighted FPF in his Global Briefing newsletter, “Can Online Politics Be Fixed?”  • Alison in Burlington


Can Online Politics Be Fixed?
Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

In Vermont, a site called Front Porch Forum “is used by roughly a quarter of the state’s residents for all sorts of community activity, from natural-disaster response to job-hunting, as well as civic discussion,” Applebaum and Pomerantsev write. “Instead of encouraging users to interact as much and as fast as possible, Front Porch slows the conversation down

See the full newsletter here.


9 Projects Trying To Build Social Platforms That Don’t Make You Hate Yourself
By: Jeff Link

Now in its third software iteration, Front Porch Forum is a community-based forum where neighbors can share information and local concerns. Active in Vermont and parts of New York, the 20-year-old platform launched by Michael and Valerie Wood-Lewis trades in short posts about locally relevant topics lost pets, cars for sale, plumber recommendations, school budget issues and political protests. The service hosts online neighborhood and small-town forums for registered users.

“Once a day they’ll get an issue that arrives via email or website or mobile app,” Wood-Lewis said of users. “The average issue might have about 10 postings. It’s not emoticons. It’s not LOL-type stuff. It’s more substantive. The most compelling content tends to gravitate toward the top.”

“There’s no anonymity. It’s like wearing a name tag and showing up at a block party with your neighbors.”

Open only to local citizens, officials, nonprofits and businesses, the platform is distinct from several of its larger social-networking competitors.

“There’s no anonymity. It’s like wearing a name tag and showing up at a block party with your neighbors,” Wood-Lewis said during the panel discussion.

In addition, every posting is reviewed by a staff of online community managers before publication.

Read the full article here.


Virus in Vermont: In mutual aid groups, people help one another
By: Nora Peachin

Michael Wood-Lewis, co-founder of Front Porch Forum, says local communities have been weakened as life has moved online, a trend he has been trying to reverse with Front Porch Forum a community bulletin board since its founding in 2006.

“It would be my fondest wish that the social capital, those connections created in [mutual aid] work, don’t dissipate with the crisis,” Wood-Lewis said. “I hope all those mutual aid groups continue to live on, even if only as a social entity so that people can keep those connections in this time of political divisiveness and with all that big tech has foisted on us.”
Wood-Lewis noted a dramatic increase in almost all of Front Porch Forum’s metrics new members, postings, advertisers, clicks on ads during the pandemic. Wood-Lewis’ team set up a special category for mutual aid groups in the online directory and a list of ways to help during Covid.

Read the full article here.

Stay in tune with all the latest FPF mentions on our media page.