Very astute post by Tristan Harris (Center for humane technology), via WIRED.com

With the world on lockdown, tech platforms are now the social fabric. How they act in the next few days will decide their legacy, and perhaps our fate.

“In the blink of an eye, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Zoom went from operating our social communications—serving as the dominant mediating agent of users’ human attention—to becoming the dedicated social habitats for humankind … But who could possibly race ahead of the exponential growth and reach billions of people with this corrective lens before the virus can? Only today’s major tech platforms are positioned to do so. Until we have a Covid-19 vaccine, delivering this corrective lens to 3 billion people is our best hope… This emergency, this moment, calls for a fundamentally new approach to technology—to abandon the myth of neutral metrics and engagement, and restructure technology to prioritize this corrective lens that can help save millions of lives.

Related: read my latest post on my Covid19, backcasting from late 2020

“We have a choice. Either billions of people continue on the default path, where the slow pace of grassroots commitments to practice social distancing, slow responses by governments, and slow observations of how “few others are taking it seriously” wake up to Italy-scale horrors of miscalculation of exponential curves. In the other future, billions of people gain a “corrective lens” that enables them to see the exponential curve of what’s coming now and are offered radical ways to take immediate and coordinated actions that “flatten the curve.” Millions of lives are saved and economic calamities avoided”

Tristan Harris (Center for humane technology), read more via WIRED.com

Related: read my latest post on my Covid19, backcasting from late 2020

“Facebook and other platforms should immediately release employees from traditional goals and performance evaluations, and suspend all nonessential tasks—as Amazon has already done—to maximally respond to the crisis. Everyone should ask themselves: How would we feel looking back on this time, if any of us had spent it designing smiley stickers or improving ads…. The platforms should be using their persuasive powers of “social proof” to foster altruism and generosity, highlighting examples of friends who are choosing to help others—say, health care workers or those unemployed”

Tristan Harris (Center for humane technology), read more via WIRED.com

Related: read my latest post on my Covid19, backcasting from late 2020