Perhaps this is unfair - the reformists are trying. But with rare exceptions, the reformists stop short of asking the uncomfortable questions: Is it possible to reform profit-driven systems that turn attention into money? In such a business, can you even separate addiction from success? They tend to believe that companies should be more responsible - and users must be, too.
But it’s hard to discern a collective message in their garment-rending: Is it design that needs fixing? Tech? Capitalism? This lack of clarity may stem from the fact that these people are not ideologues but reformists. Late last year, the co-inventor of the Facebook “like,” Justin Rosenstein, called it a “bright ding of pseudopleasure” in January, the investment firm Jana Partners, a shareholder in Apple, wrote a letter to the company warning that its products “may be having unintentional negative consequences.”Īll but conjuring Oppenheimer at White Sands, these critics offer broadsides, warning about addictive design tricks and profit-driven systems eroding our humanity. The sudden arrival of a new class of tech skeptic, the industry apostate, has only complicated the discussion. But on any more specific claim than that, consensus becomes impossible.
Across various political divides, there is a sense that Facebook, Twitter and Google exert too much influence on the national discourse closely connected to this is the widespread concern that we users have developed an unhealthful relationship with our phones, or with the apps on them. As the ranks of tech-industry critics have expanded, it has become harder to tell what common ground they occupy.
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