Social media is under fire for how it threatens our society, our politics, even our mental health.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech giants are criticized for spying on us and using secret algorithms to push us toward extreme views.

Civic Hall is a key player in a growing movement to use technology to better the world-- what people are calling "civic tech".

Our guest, Micah Sifry, co-founder and President of Civic Hall, is a longtime advocate for transparency, better government, and using tech for social change. 

"The problems that we face as a society are not going to be solved by tech alone," he says. Most of the problem-solving work that we see and support at Civic Hall is, at most, 20% tech and 80% social." 

In this episode we highlight the work of several groups, including Code For America, which is on a mission to make government work in the digital age, and Ushahidi, an organization that builds tools to solve the world's biggest humanitarian and international development challenges.