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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: 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.