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.
This is a copy of Tristan’s message, that is repeated here because of its importance, and the original thread containing now irrelevant content and had veered off-topic.
To get some of the urgency that is apparent in Tristan’s message, you could read some of the Examples of what is coming to us in the near future and Watch this eye-opening documentary.
You can follow Tristan Harris on Twitter
Now that you are here…
We encourage you to: Introduce yourself 
Thank you for dedicating your time and attention to our mission and signing up to this community!
This is a place to share best practices, new research, highlight good and bad actors, share tools, and more. We’ll be using this space to keep you updated on new projects that the Center for Humane Technology needs support with. It’s also great place to share the work you’re doing and broadcast your needs for support on related projects.
You’ll get the most out of this forum by introducing yourself in the Introduce yourself topic, so we’ll get to know a bit more about you and what interests you the most. Also while you are there, read some of the other introductions. We have a great group of people committed to our cause! Did you know you can send private messages (PM’s) to others? Just click on the user icon and then ‘Message’.
But you can also jump right in to any thread that is of interest to you.
Are you willing to contribute? Help us rise? Please tell us what you’d like to work on
We are still young, continuously improving our organization. But we have many, many ideas to follow-up on… and you probably have your own to add to this growing list.
Fill in the anonymous Poll and - better yet - add a post with your Humane Tech topics you want to take further.
Don’t be afraid. You are just stating your intention, and it does come with no obligation. If someone approaches you to cooperate, take action, you can always politely decline. We are a very friendly bunch, and will understand.
And always remember… Your are free!
Some of the main Humane Tech themes
We are still working on a good categorization, and ways to organize this forum, but currently there are efforts to gather research about harms + opportunities in some of these category areas:
- Health & Wellbeing
- Security & Privacy
- Attention & Cognition
- Critical Thinking
- Relationships
- Democracy & Civics
- Children & Parenting
Are you missing something here? Please share your insights with the community!