Silicon Valley’s Congressman Ro Khanna says his solution to fixing social media companies would be to ‘hire 100 philosophers’ and ‘liberal arts thinkers’

• Congressman Ro Khanna shared his thoughts on how social platforms can have more positive social impact.  
• Khanna recommended hiring philosophers and “liberal arts thinkers” to social media companies. 
• They’d better reveal why “developing a thoughtful public sphere is so much harder” than the platforms realize, he said.

Rep. Ro Khanna said he’d advise social media companies looking to make a positive change in the world to hire humanities majors and “liberal arts thinkers.” 

“I’d say hire 100 philosophy majors, political science majors, journalists, and people who are liberal arts thinkers,” Khanna who California’s 17th district, home to Silicon Valley, said in an interview with Morning Brew.

“And they will help you realize the fundamental naivete of the view that if you just create a platform for people to come talk on and amplify everything that’s said, it will somehow lead to mutual understanding, dialogue, and peace. Developing a thoughtful public sphere is so much harder,” the congressman added. 

Khanna’s comments come as social media companies like Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, face a reckoning over their wider social impact.

In testimony before Congress in October, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen shed light on a wide variety of issues on the platform, including alleged failures to regulate hate speech, ties to fomenting the January 6 riot at the Capitol, and internal research that found the platforms harmful to the mental health and body image of teens. 

Khanna said it’s important for political leaders to closely study the pitfalls of tech hubs like Silicon Valley, in order to improve the future of technology companies, particularly as they spread to other regions across the country. 

“We have to learn the lessons of things we did poorly in Silicon Valley or in other parts of the country that have seen these tech metropolises emerge,” he told Morning Brew. 

He added that Congress should work toward having more experience with social media so they can better regulate it. 

“You don’t have to be a techie to make tech policy,” he said. “And you don’t have to work in tech. But you do have to have some basic experience, right? [Members of Congress] should be managing their own social media accounts, tweeting for themselves every now and then.”