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from the take-two-tablets-and-oh...-wait...hold-the-phone...oh...no?...uh-oh dept.
Silicon Valley technologists, including former Google and Facebook employees, have formed the Center for Humane Technology:
A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build.
The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology. Along with the nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media, it also plans an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the United States.
The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with $7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology. Common Sense also has $50 million in donated media and airtime from partners including Comcast and DirecTV. It will be aimed at educating students, parents and teachers about the dangers of technology, including the depression that can come from heavy use of social media.
"We were on the inside," said Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google who is heading the new group. "We know what the companies measure. We know how they talk, and we know how the engineering works."
Omidyar Network is listed as a key advisor/supporter.
Also at TIME.
Related: How Facebook Can Be Addictive
Facebook Founding President Sounds Alarm, Criticizes Facebook
Another Former Facebook Exec Speaks Out
FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
(Score: 5, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:43AM
I can't wait their high-impact low cost awareness campaigns using Facebook and Twitter...
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @04:45AM (9 children)
The things that could be done with that money!
It's so strange to me that someone thought it would be a good idea to spend millions of dollars on this.
I suppose the key word here is "lobbying". Someone wants to pull the levers of governmental power, but what is the real motive?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:13AM (6 children)
Break down the quasi-monopoly of FB/Twitter! Make them pay!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:43AM (5 children)
"Why are you a bank robber?"
"I rob banks because that's where the money is."
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:12AM (4 children)
So many CEO-s use the same argument. After all, this is what (a certain) society expects them to do: go after the money where those money are.
Granted, very few of them use so crude a mean as bank robbery, those that do it are doing it from the inside (see Bernie Madoff and Lehman Bros).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:06AM (3 children)
Also, 2 wrongs don't make a right, or something.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:44AM (2 children)
I read the S/N's ToS and beat me if i noticed any mention on the interdiction to go on a tangent.
If you want me to admit the original AC post that triggered this as an example of invalid argumentation, that's fine with me, i have no qualms: yes, that post is borderline trollish.
Which makes your answer to it (the one without 'because that's where the money is') a post equally misdirected.
Which means my tangent stays in no relationship with TFA's topic, but at least I have the (posthoc) excuse of not being me to start it.
Or something...
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
So, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:24PM
Now that you mention it, seems like the above is another post in no relation with the topic.
Funny pipe I must have, sorry for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:08AM
One does indeed wonder where they got all the money from. I had a look around and saw somewhere else (already forgot where...) that old-school TV seemed to be involved. Makes sense, if the zombies and smombies are locked into facebook and youtube, ad-"supported" TV is screwed for good. Someone also dropped the name "Comcast".
Philantropic welfare for the people this is not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:20PM
This is a great idea, money well spent. Since people by the Billions are using social media without obviously understanding the Faustian bargain they make people desperately need to be educated.
Surveillance capitalism is not in your best interest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:15AM (3 children)
100% think they are self aware. 10% are. 1% of internet posters are self-aware. 0.1% of internet posts are self-aware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:19AM
My nutsack is the only thing that's truly self-aware. Shhh, baby, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:31AM (1 child)
You're off by 3 levels of magnitude.
FTFY.
Yours,
THE self-aware internet post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @08:25AM
Name one person who doesn't claim to be self aware. Everyone can think and actually does think (and believes they think)--unless you're in a coma or something.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:55AM
It's a no-brainer. They just need to take it to the next level to turn this into a win-win situation. The best practice is to get rid of the low-hanging fruit first. Set an agenda so we can go flag up on this thing
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:00AM (5 children)
Preemptive strike against government regulation. Now they can quietly design algos to monitor your mouse movement and ban their competitors at the same time. All that while keeping government away? That's 3 birds in a stone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by melikamp on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:41AM (4 children)
This could be true. While the nonfree software is not the only cause of the popular system's addictiveness and maliciousness, it is a major enabling factor.
If spy-phones, for example, were built with a free stack, then users would promptly get the tools to disable any feature they didn't like, which is not possible and will never be possible with nonfree software.
If the flagship social network was based on a free software app with a federated protocol (like Diaspora [wikipedia.org]), then once again, users would automatically get the tools to disable any client features they don't like, and they would also get a choice of competing servers, each with its own server-side feature set; and aside from the technical improvements, they would also enjoy a decentralized platform, which is somewhat more resistant to censorship and gaming. Again, none of these things will ever be implemented by a proprietary platform, because that's not how one makes money.
So one has to wonder what the fuck they are thinking when they are saying that the way forward is, in part, to
Can you smell the giant pile of the elephant dung in the room? It's the nonfree software. They must be aware of it. They must be aware that a free+libre phone together with ubiquitous anonymous-friendly wireless coverage would make it practically impossible to extract information beyond what users themselves provide. They also must be aware of the fact that consumers are completely shafted by the nonfree software: no silver lining, it is strictly more expensive and more awful, both technically and politically, than a libre equivalent. They know this last part very well, being the insiders. So why are they saying nothing about it?
I am afraid it's because they really want to concentrate on "empowering employees who advocate for non-extraction based design decisions and business models", because this would be just what the doctor ordered, and what cubancigar11 is suspecting: they want to preempt the actual legislative solution, which would make all nonfree software as legal as vodka mixed with roofies: think giant red danger labels, straight out prohibition in government, healthcare, infrastructure, education. Instead, they would like to mount that wave and waste our collective time with feel-good habit building and "empowering" poor saps who try to change the hopelessly corrupt business model (corrupt chiefly by the lure of nonfree software) from inside.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:47AM (2 children)
Well stated, with the omission of one important additional element [bbc.co.uk].
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:34PM
There should be +0 weep for humanity mod.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:26PM
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:31PM
By this masterstroke they have actually killed even proprietary software, as the only way for a lot of these "services" to make money is via collecting and selling user data. What we are seeing is a formation of cartel. See, who are we but plebs? By this move they have just moved the date of eventual debacle that is going to happen and is going to finally wake up a lot of us to the security nightmare we are walking right into.
Anyway, with this move, they have basically devised a way to kill smaller players because they won't be able to make much money anyway without running afoul of some rule formed by this group.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:57AM (3 children)
Shouldn't they figure out if Tech Addiction is anything beyond the current version of "the young generation is going to hell in a hand basket" before the start assigning an IDC Code and forming committees to "fight" diseases that don't actually exist?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:45PM (2 children)
Oh, it exists all right.
I was reminded of that this morning when yet another woman wheeled her baby out into the middle of the road in front of my car while face down in her phone.
Once again I chose not to run them over, like every other morning, so far.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
That is not e definition of an addiction.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 07 2018, @11:02AM
Nor is that emoticon in your message header an E.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @07:49AM
They are going to make this shit even more annoying?