In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a wave of current and former tech employees came forward to publicly denounce the products they helped create. “They look at the role Facebook now plays in society, and how Russia used it during the election to elect Trump, and they have this sort of ‘Oh my God, what have I done’ moment,” one early Facebook employee told my colleague Nick Bilton. Former Facebook executives (and noted critics) Sean Parker and Chamath Palihapitiya piled on; “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” Parker warned, while Palihapitiya asked rhetorically, “Do I feel guilty? Absolutely I feel guilt.”
As Silicon Valley’s efforts at damage control kick into high gear, its former employees have found it expedient to put themselves at arm’s length. As The New York Times reported on Sunday, the trend has resulted in the formation of a nonprofit group made up of former Facebook and Google employees, dubbed the Center for Humane Technology. The center will reportedly partner with Common Sense Media to produce an ad campaign called “The Truth About Tech,” which will target 55,000 U.S. public schools, as well as a concerted lobbying effort on Capitol Hill. Per the Times, both groups will work together to push back against tech addiction and advocate for more transparency around how tech products affect consumers’ health. Common Sense, Axios reported, has secured $50 million from DirecTV and Comcast in airtime and donated media to boost awareness of the campaign.
The group includes early Facebook investor Roger McNamee; former in-house Google ethicist Tristan Harris, who has been an outspoken critic of Big Tech; former Facebook operations manager Sandy Parakilas; former Apple and Google communications executive Lynn Fox; technologist Renée DiResta; and Justin Rosenstein, the co-founder of Asana who created Facebook’s Like button. “We were on the inside,” Harris told the Times. “We know what the companies measure. We know how they talk, and we know how the engineering works.” McNamee added that joining the group was a chance for him to “correct a wrong.”
As pressure builds on Silicon Valley to disclose the extent to which social media impacts public health, children have emerged as a natural focal point. Last month, two activist Apple investors launched a campaign to warn the company that “social-media sites and applications for which the iPhone and iPad are a primary gateway are usually designed to be as addictive and time-consuming as possible.” YouTube Kids has faced a whole host of issues when it comes to regulating its content for a younger audience. And child-development experts and advocates have been critical of Facebook’s children’s messaging app. “One can only assume that Facebook introduced it to engage users younger and younger,” developmental behavioral pediatrician Jenny Radesky told the Associated Press.
Silicon Valley’s “Just Say No” moment may ultimately represent the best chance critics have to effect change—Democratic Senator Ed Markey is reportedly drafting a bill to commission a study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to determine how tech impacts children, and it’s difficult to imagine such legislation being met with much opposition. In the short term, however, the targeted push glosses over other problems baked into social platforms, such as the fake-news crisis that shows little sign of abating and foreign operatives’ ongoing efforts to influence elections. While the Center for Humane Technology’s goals may represent a step toward breaking Silicon Valley’s vice-like grip on Washington, they may also be a red herring: a long-term, easy-win project for lawmakers to focus on while harder questions go unanswered.
