Tristan Harris Testimony in Washington

“We at Ethical markets Media fully support Tristan Harris and the Center for Humane Technology and offer our own 5 steps for immediate reforms of social media giants in our “Steering Social Media Toward Sanity“ , www.ethicalmarkets.com. We also support the re-funding of the US Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) on which I served as a science policy advisory for 6 years. OTA can help Congressmembers keep ahead of such technology issues!

~Hazel Henderson, Editor“

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NEW PODCAST EPISODE

Mr. Harris Zooms to Washington

Back in January 2020, Tristan Harris went to Washington, D.C. to testify before the U.S. Congress on the harms of social media.A few weeks ago, he returned — virtually — for another hearing on algorithms and amplification.

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On April 27th, Tristan testified before the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law at a hearing on Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms’ Design Choices Shape Our Discourse and Our Minds. He testified alongside Dr. Joan Donovan, Research Director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy and the heads of policy from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The senators’ animated questioning demonstrated a deeper understanding of how these companies’ fundamental business models and design properties fuel hate and misinformation, and many of the lawmakers expressed a desire and willingness to take regulatory action. But there’s still room for a more focused conversation. “It’s not about whether they filter out bad content,” says Tristan, “but really whether the entire business model of capturing human performance is a good way to organize society.” In this episode, a follow-up to last year’s “Mr. Harris Goes to Washington,” Tristan and Aza Raskin debrief about what was different this time, and what work lies ahead to pave the way for effective policy.