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> But this also makes them the most effective people to talk about it.

Nope nope nope. While tech people might have some insight into how some of the tech works, they're still lost in how to both define the problem [1] and describe how these technologies may shape society [2]. Nothing in their professional or personal experience has adequately prepared them to answer these questions.

The thing tech people can do now is listen carefully to people who study and understand the many areas tech touches in society, and work with them on solutions that are well-vetted and considered. Tech people need to open their minds and use their power to give voice to those who can more clearly see and explain what's wrong [3].

> I believe him that he didn't for-see it would someday cause a rise in suicides among young women. How could anyone?

There were, in fact, people who could have predicted this. They study things like... teens and mental health. Not things people in tech tend to study. Lets not assume what we don't know must not be known.

We got into this mess because of hubris. That same hubris will not get us out of it.

[1] you will note they struggled with this part in the documentary.

[2] beyond facile doom and gloom.

[3] Center for Humane Tech's podcast has some good interviews with experts, but those voices were largely absent in this doc, and the response I see to this doc still largely falls in the camp of 'techies should evangelize/solve it', which is what I'm responding to here.

Do you have some recommended reading? I enjoyed reading Neil Postman’s Technopoly, but any contemporaries you find particularly insightful?

I'd love to give you a long list but I don't have it - I just know what I don't know. I'm actively looking for more sources as I'm interested in working in this area, given its societal importance.

Here's a good reading list: https://medium.com/tow-center/constructive-technology-critic...

The Center for Humane Tech's founders, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, were the main people interviewed. You can't say they don't know what they're talking about, and then cite their organization.

I think it means a lot coming from people who created the technology. Maybe not to me or you, but it definitely does to non-tech people.

It's like how a thousand people can say K-Cups are bad for the environment, but it's way more shareable that the creator regrets it.

Oh I agree that the story 'I made it and I regret it' is catchy and very useful to add to the conversation. It's a 'man bites dog' type of headline in that it gets the general audience to pay attention. It's valuable to have that perspective.

I like Tristan and Aza and CHT and think they're smart, well-meaning people who are doing their best, and I value what they bring. I especially like their focus on trying to explain some complex stuff in terms and ideas that are simple enough for people to grasp. I'd love to see more well-vetted solutions from them; screen time was a valuable concept they advocated for.

As far as whether tech people are the most effective people to talk about the problems they created, I don't agree. I'd prefer someone who has expertise in the implications of technologies, who can root what is happening in social dynamics, human psychology, etc. Someone whose voice in those areas is highly respected, not someone who read a few articles or a book and then translated it. We need more of a Carl Sagan of sociology/psychology/history who can integrate and explain these things.

Any sufficiently complex topic and area of power needs checks and balances, people with different perspectives and backgrounds who help define the boundaries for discussion and consideration. My concern is we're always hearing from tech people; by default they have a seat at the table because they're in the seat of power in this domain. Their voices need no further elevation nor does their lack of expertise in relevant fields warrant it. We need their counterbalance.

> As far as whether tech people are the most effective people to talk about the problems they created, I don't agree. I'd prefer someone who has expertise in the implications of technologies, who can root what is happening in social dynamics, human psychology, etc. Someone whose voice in those areas is highly respected, not someone who read a few articles or a book and then translated it. We need more of a Carl Sagan of sociology/psychology/history who can integrate and explain these things.

Until you or someone else that fits this personal preference of yours, I guess the problem is that we don't have a lot of choices in terms of interesting, enlightening, clear, and coherent documentaries that describe this problem.

So, yes, you may be right that someone else could describe this situation differently ... but absent that actually existing, this is (in my opinion) a pretty fine documentary, even if some of the talking heads are / were 'tech people'

> There were, in fact, people who could have predicted this.

Did they?

Not sure if she explicitly wrote about likes = teen suicide, but I'm sure danah boyd would have had something to say about it, given her research focus on the intersection of social tech and teens lives.

She was already well respected at that time and known to my team when I worked in Yahoo's online communities division in 2006 and went to her talks.

The relationship between suicide & social status has been well known for decades. It therefore would not have been a leap for someone in the know to conclude that a tool that conferred social status or approval (such as a like button, a list of friends, etc) would therefore have these social implications.

You can read her stuff here: https://www.danah.org/papers/

So, no?

They are the best at this point because they were the ones that created it so the impact of their words is way bigger.

They might not be the best to talk about solutions tho, but I think the purpose of the movie is to make the problem known.

> For example, the inventor of the Like button talked about how the goal was to spread love and appreciation. I believe him that he didn't for-see it would someday cause a rise in suicides among young women. How could anyone?

Every single thing in the world has upsides and downsides. Cars made transportation affordable to people but people die in car crashes. Farming is feeding billions of people but also polluting environment. Internet brings information to people but also disinformation. Medicine saved 100s millions of people, but also messed up with natural selection as a way of making our spice stronger.

You can (and should!) look for bad things about each technology and try to minimize it and make sure there’s right trade off. But trying to present something as pure evil, just because it’s also doing harm, is intellectually dishonest.

I concur. My friends and relatives, who never cared about what I (a techie) said about online tracking, are all now trying to educate me about the harm done by google and Facebook.

I think the arguments in the film are a bit embellished, but certainly they got interesting people to go in front of the camera and they made some good points.

> "Most people in this movie were early employees, before we knew how bad it could get. Back then, social media was connecting people in new ways. Facebook in the early days was fucking magical."

no, before facebook, there was myspace and friendster (and more primitive social networks before that). we all knew exactly how bad it could get. facebook was not fucking magical. it was a psychological exploit for profit's sake. zuck said as much when he let his guard down. he and facebook are not to be venerated nor absolved for this bare-naked blight on humanity.

I think we had different experiences.

MySpace and Friendster and message boards and IRC were all pretty benign. I don't think MySpace had a single "algorithm". There was no newsfeed; it was just a personal Geocities basically. How were they "bad"?

Facebook WAS magical for anyone who was in college around the time it started. All of a sudden, you could connect with thousands of people around you. You could organize events, stay in touch with friends, share pictures and talk about your life. Back then, it was a very different site than it is now.

If you told me in 2005, when I signed up for Facebook, that someday the election would be swayed by it? I would have laughed at you. The biggest fear back then was a drunken picture costing someone a job someday. Now governments are being crippled.

I'm not venerating anyone. I'm talking about 15 years ago, not now. That was the whole point of the movie. Social media isn't inherently bad; human connection is a good thing. It's bad when it's fueled by a limitless need for growth and profit.

of course everything looks rosy with rose-colored glasses on, but facebook not only encouraged those glasses, but made you believe the glasses didn't even exist. same with google. it only took a little perspective shift and foresight to realize the future dangers under a relentless profit motive. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

The first time you loaded up TheFacebook in high school and saw your friend set his status to "Greg is making dinner!", you thought "ah yes, someday this will topple governments due to disinformation campaigns"?

Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?

We can call it a failure of imagination, but when you have a tool that knows a lot about your political views and your location, we should have predicted that information would be used to hypertarget political propaganda.

And all advertising has the goal of swaying some election - which car you buy, where you get your groceries, what clothes you choose. You think you made those choices without external influence when you didn't.

That's my point, though – that wasn't true in 2006! Maybe, just maybe, I posted "Gregory is voting for ______" in 2008, but that's not how people used Facebook back then.

There was no realtime location collection (no iPhones), no sharing of articles, no commenting on posts, no groups, no minifeed, etc. There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. When I started using Facebook, you literally had to go to a person's page to check on them. There was no newsfeed or algorithm or ads. There definitely weren't bots.

It was pretty unimaginable that you could figure out who someone was voting for and influence them based on how FB was in 2006. Now, of course, it's different.

> There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting.

Facebook's original pitch deck from 2004 disagrees with you.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-first-ever-ad-sale...

Look at the slide "Our Online Marketing Services" and the box labeled "Targeted Advertising"

> This site allows for targeted advertisement on the basis of any of the parameters listed below.

Then, of course, it lists gender, age, dating interests and... Political Views.

I vividly remember 2002-2005, and I even had a website once about disinformation. Fake news was a thing during the Bush administration.

> "Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?"

no, i avoided facebook at the start because it was obvious what it was going to be. with google, it was 2005 or so (about a year after the gmail launch) that i started weaning myself off of google.

that folks wore blinders willingly doesn't mean it wasn't easy to connect the dots.

In 2008, I made an app go viral on Facebook by posting pro-LGBT / anti-prop-8 ads within a 20 mile radius of SLC. Hundreds of millions of dollars as been invested into the FB platform ecosystem by that point.

Plenty of people understood the implications.

> we all knew exactly how bad it could get.

You were very smart then, congratulations.

Back in 2006 there was no mention anywhere of "fake news", "bias bubbles" and such because there was almost no news sharing in Facebook, and your feed was not curated to only show you what you were most likely to like. There was no political advertising on Facebook for a long time, and even no ads at all until like 2007 or 2008.

User tracking was almost non existent as well until 2010 or so.

So sure, there was already some concern about privacy back then, it was mostly about people voluntarily over-sharing thins they shouldn't, not about being tracked and manipulated against your wish.

As I like to say, Facebook should have stayed within the area of Universities and schools; A platform born in Harvard, by well-fed white male US Americans, for use and consumption by their peers, was not meant to be used by billions of regular people.

At some point in the documentary, I was expecting someone in front of the question: "what is the real problem here?", to answer: "people are horrible"