‘Private companies have taken over public interest’— techethicist
Attention is the business model of social media, said Tristan Harris, co-founder and president of, a non-profit that aims to drive a shift toward humane technology that supports well-being, democracy, and a shared information environment.
“If you’re not paying, then you’re the product. The more attention they get from you, the more money [that’s generated for them],” he said atIBM’s Think Conference 2021, a two-day virtual conference thatranMay 11–12.“We need to decouple the amount of attention they get from us from the amount of money that [our attention generates for them].”
As a computer science studentatStanford University,Mr. Harris learned what levers can be pulled in the human brainin order tomanipulate it.At Google, where used to be adesign ethicist,hestudied themyriadwaystechnology triggers, which controls ourprimitive drives.
Mr. Harris—a key figure in,a Netflix documentary that“reveals how social media is reprogramming civilization”— warned thattechnology companies havea monopolywhen it comes to broadcastingtopeopleatscale. “We’ve surrendered the commons to privatelyheld interest,” hesaid. “Private companies have taken over public interest, and they’re not spending enough on this public interest even though they’re worth trillions.”
Four of these giants – Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook –have beengrilled byUSlawmakersafter a reportconcludedthat they.“The four companies had turned from‘scrappy’start-ups into‘the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons,’”,whichnotedtheir dominance in commerce, search, advertising, social networking, and publishing. To rectify the inequities,the reportrecommendedrestoring competition by breaking up the companies.
“We have to find out how to have a regenerative and humane human attention economywith infrastructure that cares about the best of human nature” Mr. Harris said.
AVID PLATFORM USERS
Filipinos spenddaily on social platforms, making the Philippines the world’s biggest social media consumers, according toDigital 2021, a report published in January by We Are Social and Hootsuite.Similarweb, a company that analyzes digital world insights, listsGoogle, Facebook, and YouTube as thein the country.
Shopping through social media is also increasing, as highlighted inby We Are Social and Hootsuite: more than half (or 58.3%) of its Filipino respondents said they’ve bought products from a brand’s social media platform.—Patricia B. Mirasol
