A number of early employees at Facebook and Google have created a Center for Human Technology, concerned over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, the New York Times reported. Together with media watchdog group Common Sense Media, the centre is also planning an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the US.
The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with USD 7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology. Common Sense also has USD 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.
The centre will be headed by Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google. It will also include Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook operations manager; Lynn Fox, a former Apple and Google communications executive; Dave Morin, a former Facebook executive; Justin Rosenstein, who created Facebook’s Like button and a co-founder of Asana; Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook; and Renee DiResta, a technologist who studies bots.
The group expects its numbers to grow. Its first project to reform the industry will be to introduce a Ledger of Harms, a website aimed at guiding rank-and-file engineers who are concerned about what they are being asked to build. The site will include data on the health effects of different technologies and ways to make products that are healthier.
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