Your social media. Your rules.

Gobo is an experiment, not a startup. We’re building it to change the conversation on social media and imagine a better version of it. This is a technology-to-think-with—a tool we want you to play with and push against. Gobo is being built by a small team at MIT Media Lab's Center for Civic Media, where we work on technologies for social change.

For questions, feedback, and musings, you can reach the Gobo team at gobo@media.mit.edu.

Control your own feed

Social media companies use algorithms to control what we see on our feeds, but we don’t know how these algorithms work. As a result, we’re often unaware why certain posts show up in our feed while others don’t. Gobo allows you to control the algorithms, or a set of “rules,” so you can decide what gets shown on your feed and know why.

Connect multiple platforms

We believe that multiple social media platforms should exist to serve different purposes. However, it’s not easy to keep up with all these platforms, especially when your data can’t be easily shared between them. Gobo allows you to connect up to three platforms, so you can view all of your feeds in one place.

See what gets hidden

We believe that transparency can help you better understand what you see on social media and keep platforms accountable for algorithmic bias. Gobo tells you why certain posts are hidden based on the rules you set. It also shows you how many posts are hidden, so you can understand the overall impact of the rules you set.

Expand your perspective

Social media companies make assumptions about what we want to see based on what we read and click on. They tend to show us content we’re already engaging with, reinforcing our echo chambers. Instead of assuming what you want to see, Gobo allows you to add unfamiliar perspectives into your feed, so you can better understand the range of opinions that are shared online.