I spent my career as a technology
optimist I was lucky enough to be there
for the entire ride of personal
computers data networking enterprise
software the internet Netscape Amazon
Google I was lucky enough to be a mentor
to Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of
Facebook the Silicon Valley that I
joined in 1982 and the one that I spent
most of my career in was one that was in
the business of empowering the people
who used its products the culture of
Silicon Valley changed in the early
years of the millennium and it went from
being this very positive empowering
thing to by roughly twenty twelve or
twenty thirteen to being a place where
the most successful companies were based
on business models that started by
violating the law that would be Airbnb
uber and lyft or creating addiction that
would be jewel or exploiting the
ignorance of a community that would be
Spotify and I realized at that point I
had passed my cell by date so I retired
and immediately at the end of 2015 when
I retired a month later I saw something
going on at Facebook it disturbed me and
over the course of the spring of 2016
I saw examples related to the Democratic
primary civil rights and then Briggs it
where I realized that the business model
and algorithms of Facebook could be used
not just for good and not just for the
benefit of helping advertisers find
their customers at lower cost and
consumers find things they were
interested in at a lower cost they could
also be used to undermine democracy and
to undermine civil rights and it took me
four months before I could find anybody
who would talk to me about this issue I
was asked to write an opinion piece for
the technology blog recoat and while I
was drafting it the news came out that
the Russians were actively attempting to
interfere in the u.s. general election
and my wife Anne is here with us today
encouraged me to send my draft opinion
piece to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl
Sandberg which I did nine days before
the u.s. presidential election 2016 and
I was warning my friends of this flaw in
the business model of the algorithms
which I viewed a systemic and I viewed
it as a situation where they were the
victim and unintentionally they were
undermining civil rights and democracy
the problem is that the culture of
business in America not just the culture
of Silicon Valley but all business in
America no longer treats consumers as a
real customer worthy of protection we're
very much in a world where there are
very few rules where the role that
government played in capitalism of
setting rules and then enforcing them
fairly for everyone has been eroded
steadily over 40 years to the point
where it's a free-for-all which favors
the powerful at the expense of everyone
else I spent three months begging
Facebook to do the right thing they were
treated behind one phrase Roger we're a
platform not a media company we are not
responsible for the actions of third
parties and I'm saying guys your
business is based on trust once you lose
it you will never regain it I'm begging
you please get this right they were not
interested it's possible
perhaps likely that I was the wrong
messenger it's possible that I was
giving them the wrong message for
whatever reason I failed and I concluded
that with the 2018 midterm elections
faster
in 2020 beyond it that I needed to share
with the US government and the public at
large what I understood about the
business model and culture Facebook so I
became an activist it is not a role that
I am born to and I have found it to be
an extreme challenge when I began I
found an ally young man named Tristan
Harris who had been the design ethicist
at Google he was an expert in persuasive
technology he helped me to understand
the mechanisms of the business model of
Facebook in a way that I had not
appreciated before that these are media
companies they're competing against
television newspapers magazines for
radio
video games netflix sports they need our
attention they get it initial by
appealing to the weakest elements of
human psychology the things we cannot
evade no matter how hard we try as human
beings we have an unstoppable need an
unstoppable need for rewards we need
social validation they send us
notifications 42 people liked your post
yeah please join my network got a
LinkedIn or you've been tagged in a
photograph which you like to tag some
other people now with the LinkedIn and
the tagging they trigger another
inescapable human need the need for
social reciprocity somebody has done
something nice for us I got to do
something nice back they begin a cycle
and they do it on a device that is on
your body and the next thing you know
every free moment you're checking your
phone
you see yourself well what's the harm in
that
it's just a habit the problem is this
kind of habit can soon become an
addiction
[Applause]
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