Hi everyone, Tristan Harris here.
We’re really sorry that we’ve not been participating actively in these forums.
The reason we haven’t participated more in the CHT Community Discourse forum is that we’ve been heads down on taking strategic action while building our capacity – recruiting, staffing, fundraising for the projects we believe will transform the dangerous incentives of today’s digital platforms. We’re a tiny group of people working immensely hard, day in and day out – and we view the risk that digital platforms pose to the cohesion of society as urgent – requiring immediate change.
Meanwhile, as I’m sure everyone is aware, this topic has burst onto the global stage. We are on a nearly exponential curve of increasing global attention since we launched CHT in February. With the Cambridge Analytica whistleblowers, and Facebook’s breach that exposed the private information of 87 million, if not 2 billion profiles, there has never been more momentum to highlight the problem, and never been more demands on our attention. We receive 50+ major media inquiries per week from all around the world. Political leaders are seeking our advice.
With only a handful of full-time staff, and given the urgency of unfolding events, we try to be extraordinarily focused on where can have the most impact. Soon, with more staff and funding, we can’t wait to engage all of us here - on Team Humanity - on our work.
The revolution is already underway, and more than ever it needs wise guidance on what a more “humane” way to build technology looks like - from business model, to design practices, to organizational culture. And in the spirit of a more “humane” way of communicating – I would like to share that I’ve had a serious personal family health emergency that’s occupied the last 5 weeks of my time. So we ask politely for your patience. We’re doing the best we can.
In the meantime, we built this community forum for you to collaborate and keep communicating while we’re tied up. We will have many exciting developments to share with you very soon!
The best thing we can do in the short-term is keep up the public pressure on these issues. We learned in the Congressional hearings with Facebook, Google and Twitter last November that that public attention was a major lever in creating significant new commitments to change their policies.
Thank you so much for all your energy and support and for being part of this movement.