Previous employees and investors in Facebook, Google and Apple are uniting together in a coalition to fight against the effects of social media and smartphones.
Common Sense, the leading organisation for kids in the digital age and the Center for Humane Technology announced Monday a campaign called ‘Truth About Tech’ that will create awareness about the misuse of technology. They already have received $7 million in funds to push the campaign forward.
Some of the potential consequences of the use of social media have caused alarm and campaign says it is setting out to protect young minds from the manipulation and addiction.
They have planned an anti-tech addiction lobbying push and an ad campaign targeted at 55,000 schools in the United States.
The collective challenging the big tech giants include well-known figures of Silicon Valley such as investor Roger McNamee, former Google Ethicist Tristan Harris and former engineer Justin Rosenstein, who was on the team of developers who created the famous ‘Like’ button in Facebook.
The group has made surprising claims against the tech giants, who are said to be profiting from the addiction problem to technology.
“Our society is being hijacked by technology,” they said.
“We can’t expect attention-extraction companies like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, or Twitter to change, because it’s against their business model. These are not neutral products. They are part of a system designed to addict us.”
Another goal of the project is to urge engineers to take a deeper interest in what they are being asked to build and any potential fallout.
Moreover, they will publish updated information on the effect the digital products can have on people’s health, as well as suggest products that are better for human’s well-being.
Last December, a former Facebook executive admitted he felt guilty after helping Facebook become the company it is.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” said Chamath Palihapitiya.