‘Google is manipulating human nature’: ex-worker
A FORMER Google manager yesterday accused the tech company of ‘manipulating human nature’.
Tristan Harris, who spent four years at the tech giant, said its number one goal was to keep people plugged into platforms and this was causing a ‘race to the bottom of the brain stem’.
He claimed that governments around the world had given the tech industry ‘a free pass on regulation’. His warning comes a day after Sharon White, the head of the UK’S communications watchdog Ofcom, said that continuing to give tech giants free rein on the web – with no regulation in place – could have ‘profound consequences’ for children.
Mr Harris spent several years as a ‘design ethicist’ for Google, developing plans for how technology could ethically steer the thoughts and actions of web users. Speaking on BBC Radio 4, he said firms like Google were fixated on clicks, rather than the effects their sites could have on others.
‘It really is manipulating human nature and has consequences across the social spectrum.’ Mr Harris added: ‘They [tech companies] are caught in this race to the bottom of the brain stem.’
Asked to comment, Google who have their EU headquarters in Dublin, said it had announced earlier this year that it was rolling out tools to help people ‘better understand’ how much time they spend online.
Mr Harris, from San Francisco, said: ‘I think most people assume that technology equals progress. What most people don’t realise is that... the smartest engineers in the world are pointing super computers at people’s brains and figuring out, “How can I get you to stay and click?”.’
Mr Harris said the fact people are realising web platforms were not designed with their wellbeing in mind ‘puts pressure’ on the sites to improve their practices.
In a post in August, YouTube, owned by Google, said: ‘Our goal is to provide a better understanding of time spent on YouTube, so you can make informed decisions about how you want YouTube to best fit into your life.’
Last year, Samidh Chakrabarti, a manager with Facebook in California, said sites such as his employer’s could be used to ‘corrode democracy’.
‘At its worst, it allows people spread misinformation and corrode democracy. I wish I could guarantee the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t,’ he said.
YESTERDAY, a former Google employee warned that tech giants are interested only in making online interaction addictive in what he called a desperate race to the bottom of the brain stem.
Tristan Harris has concluded that excessive screen time leads to alienation, isolation and loneliness for teenagers – and that tech firms are throwing vast resources at finding ways to make their products ever more addictive. This, he warns, risks damaging the very fabric of society.
Meanwhile, a UK study shows that there has been a sharp decline in the number of girls and young women who say they are happy. Unsurprisingly, one of the main factors cited was social media, with increased numbers saying they experienced unkind, threatening and negative behaviour online compared with five years ago. Anecdotally, we know that exactly the same issues are hitting Irish children: the authorities here just haven’t got around to measuring the effect.
In the face of this mounting evidence, for our Government to continue with the facile mantra that it is simply up to parents to police their children’s web activity is a shocking dereliction of its duty of care to our most vulnerable citizens.