Update on status of HTC & CHT (Tristan Harris's org)

And I can tell you that we love all the contributions you have made to the great discussions on this forum here :slight_smile:

Re: “inside” activists. Yes and no. On one hand everyone is welcome to address their concerns with tech here, no matter skills an profession, etc. On the other hand this forum also contains content that is more for insider activists, such as discussions on the community website and projects.

This forum was founded by the Center, Tristan Harris et al in Feb. 2018 with great fanfare in a NYT article. It attracted many excited members eagerly awaiting great plans to unroll and for them to participate in. But nothing came forth as CHT became swamped in work after Cambridge Analytica scandal. They preferred to stay under the radar doing strategic preparation to the frustration of the community. See: This community needs more involvement from its founders!

The community began to self-organize with consent and approval of the CHT and in October 2018 we repositioned as a subsidiary of CHT, organizing the forum along the same 4 strategic pillars and calling ourselves HTC. See: Community position statement, contribution guidelines, forum improvements

In 2019 HTC joined the Mozilla Open Leader program and we began preparing to reorganize once again based on lessons learned and with the objective to boost member engagement in a manageable way (as an all-volunteer grassroots movement). This led to the Pyramids of Humane Technology model that is reflected in the current organization of the forum.

At the same time, in parallel, after one year of being undercover, CHT was now ready to present their plans. See: Today is D-Day at The Center for Humane Technology: "A New Agenda for Tech" Livestream - Humane Tech Community

We are still affiated and on close paths bringing Humane Technology to the masses, though HTC is still not in the loop of what’s cooking at CHT. Our community, however, Works Open, Leads Open (Mozilla’s WOLO slogan) and everything is announced here in the forums. I think you can say that CHT is more focussed on the Technologists and operates more as a strategic Thinktank still (advocacy, political pressure).

This diagram shows the strategic relationship I envisioned between CHT and HTC:

CHT vs HTC

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