Former Facebook and Google workers launch campaign to battle tech addiction

Reformed techies have united to file for an offer to set pressure on technology companies in making some less addictive and manipulative.

“Truth About Tech” could be the brainchild in the Center for Humane Technology, a gaggle of former Facebook and Google employees specializing in “reversing a digital attention crisis and realigning technology with humanity’s best interests” and is funded by Sound judgment, a not-for-profit that promotes safe technology and media of the.

The campaign should include educational material targeted at families highlighting the wide ranging harm because of digital platforms and outlining tactics for mitigating the addictive properties of tech, one example is switching off notifications and changing the screen to greyscale. There will also be a lobbying push about the issue calling for policymakers to regulate tech companies using manipulative practices as well as two organisations will establish standards of ethical design to assist the business discourage digital addiction.

The Center for Humane Technology is led by former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris and former Facebook investor and adviser Roger McNamee.

“Tech firms are after a massive, real-time try our kids, and, nowadays, nobody is really holding them accountable,” said Common Sense’s CEO, James Steyer, warning that tech companies’ attention-grabbing business models may hurt “the social, emotional and cognitive continuing development of kids”.

“When parents learn how these lenders can begin to play our kids, they are going to come along in demanding that is a change its ways and improve certain practices.”

According to review by Wise practice, teenagers consume around nine hours of media everyday, while tweens consume six hours. An outside study by psychologist Jean Twenge learned that heavy users of digital media are 56% very likely to say they are unhappy and 27% very likely to be depressed.

I was Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor. Today We would simply tell him: your users will be in peril

Read more

This may be the latest chapter from a rising backlash against big tech. Many former employees of large Silicon Valley firms have offered sharp critiques of the profession.

In November, Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, said the online social network knew in the outset it had become creating whatever exploited a “vulnerability in human psychology”.

“God only knows what it is doing to the children’s brains,” he said.

In January, the Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, said that Facebook need to be regulated much like the cigarette industry.