SalmonGod3

Do you have any insights or thoughts on the debates over the influence of social media algorithms on human behavior and culture, or how social media intersects with mass surveillance? What is your impression of how the leadership in these companies view their responsibility in relation to these issues?

Yeah. Wasn't looking for anything really deep. No solutions or revelations. Just what it looks like from your side of things.

I am qualified to comment pretty deeply on them. They're issues I've been interested in for decades. I was the last of my friend group to join Facebook when it first opened, but eventually gave in to peer pressure and made an account under a fake name, because I'd been following mass surveillance as a political issue since the late 90's when there was a minor internet holiday dedicated to overwhelming ECHELON and people would send each other emails loaded with as many keywords as we could think of. I knew what I was getting into by making a Facebook account in the mid 00's. It's long since been confirmed that tech companies work with institutions like the NSA, willingly or otherwise, to the point of compliance with requirements for backdoors and the like being an engineering consideration in product design. In addition to the public understanding at this point that social media algorithms are deliberately designed to hold attention for as long as possible, and the most effective way to do this is to lure people into rabbit holes of radical echo chambering and maximally polarized controversy.

And that's not an attack. I don't blame you for these things. We all have jobs. Most involve doing things we don't agree with sometimes, and being small cogs in large problems.

But it's extremely rare to see substantive perspective from anyone who isn't an activist or spokesperson, so I thought I'd try. But I understand there's likely very little you can get away with saying.