This paper is co-published by the Foundation for American Innovation and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Click here to download a pdf of the paper.

Executive Summary

Middleware, third-party software intermediaries between users and platforms, offers a promising solution to counter the concentrated power of social media platforms. The term has referred to a variety of technologies and systems over the years, including third-party provider tools that platforms themselves use internally. In this paper, we focus on “middleware” in the form of open, third-party products and services that are composable—meaning, with multiple providers available to be mixed and matched for specific use cases—and which offer user agency over the selection process and overall experience.

Our analysis centers on middleware’s potential to transform two common social media experiences that are often the focus of controversy, user dissatisfaction, and political debates: curation, which involves selecting and organizing information to shape what content is emphasized or deemphasized in a digital environment, and moderation, which addresses harmful content and compliance with platform policy. By providing users with greater control over these experiences, middleware promotes a more user-centric, democratic online sphere. It enables users to choose from competing providers and algorithms, offering a flexible architecture as an alternative to both centrally controlled, opaque platforms and an unmoderated, uncurated internet. Middleware has the potential to provide greater choice around the content individual users see, and to address over-moderation concerns. By decentralizing control and enhancing user autonomy, middleware may also help to reduce the potential for abuse of power by platforms, fostering a more just and equitable digital ecosystem.

The success of open middleware presently hinges on the adoption and cooperation of established major platforms. For middleware to thrive in the present largely centralized environment, platforms must permit third-party services to operate and enable users to choose between them. However, the growing rise of federated platforms, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, and the increasing participation of major platforms in the fediverse (e.g., Meta's Threads), creates new opportunities for the development and adoption of middleware as an integral part of the user experience. These emerging ecosystems prioritize user choice and both horizontal and vertical interoperation, allowing for community-driven moderation tools and enhanced user control of the social media experience.

In light of this shift in technology and adoption, the Foundation for American Innovation and the Stanford Cyber Policy Center convened a gathering of experts in April 2024 to explore the implications of advancing middleware adoption. The group included technologists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, activists, civil society leaders, academics, and independent researchers. Over a day of deliberations, participants examined middleware’s potential as a transformative force to reshape the digital public sphere, enhance user agency, and address persistent challenges in content curation and moderation. They also considered the trade-offs of middleware and the negative externalities it might create, as well as the technological, regulatory, and market barriers that could either support or hinder its implementation.

This report synthesizes those discussions and outlines key considerations for the future of middleware:

• Transformative Potential: Middleware’s role in decentralizing power, enhancing user agency through flexible architectures, and facilitating community-centered, democratic online ecosystems.
• Risks and Trade-Offs: The potential for middleware to exacerbate polarization, facilitate harassment or persistent harmful content, entrench echo chambers, fragment norms, or undermine privacy.
• Technical Feasibility: The challenges of developing scalable, secure, and interoperable middleware systems that can integrate with diverse platform architectures while protecting user privacy.
• Economic and Market Dynamics: The opportunity to avoid replicating misaligned incentives from centralized social media platforms, and instead to create sustainable middleware business models.
• Public Policy and Regulatory Frameworks: The importance of governance mechanisms or standards to ensure privacy, accountability, and alignment with societal values while fostering innovation.

We hope that this contribution serves as a thoughtful assessment of middleware’s promise and its complexities, and offers a roadmap for policymakers, technologists, and stakeholders to navigate this emerging landscape.