Recode Decode: Tristan Harris

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.3 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2019

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about the latest problem he and his peers are trying to solve: "Human downgrading." In this episode: Harris’ background as a design ethicist Google; how his previous movement, Time Well Spent, was co-opted by the tech industry; how are Apple and Google's "digital well-being" features doing?; the utopian promise of tech; why Harris shifted to focus on “downgrading”; what the Center for Humane Technology does; has Harris gotten through to tech's leaders?; why Facebook and YouTube are worse than Shell and Exxon; digital platforms as cities; what we need to do now; techlash; the (sort of) good news; are CEOs just hoping this goes away on its own?; and why removing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is "critical." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sabotage hired goons and a landfill in Utah.
0:05.0	How Steve Jobs' revolutionary catastrophe of a computer, the Apple Lisa, earned a brief
0:10.7	second life and then was buried for good.
0:14.8	Watch the Verges documentary Lisa's final act now on YouTube.
0:19.8	Hi, I'm Kaira Swisher, Editor-Large of Recode.
0:25.4	You may know me as someone who can quit using my phone anytime I want.
0:29.2	Hang on, I have to get this.
0:30.7	But in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media
0:34.3	Podcast Network.
0:35.8	Today in the red chair is Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
0:40.8	He was formerly a design ethicist at Google and started a movement, combating tech addiction
0:45.7	called Time Well Spent.
0:47.6	Now he's back with a new problem he wants to solve, which he calls human downgrading.
0:52.4	One example of human downgrading is the way social media amplifies grievances in our society
0:57.2	and makes the world a less decent, less democratic place.
1:00.8	For each word of moral outrage that you add to a tweet, it increases your retreat rate
1:05.9	by 17%.
1:07.7	So if you say it's abominable, it's a disgrace.
1:09.8	Oh, these assholes that just, you just get attention.
1:12.4	And I almost want to sort of snap my fingers and tell everybody you can wake up now.
1:17.1	Although his previous movement Time Well Spent was seemingly embraced by many tech leaders,
1:21.8	Harris said he's been disappointed by the responses from leaders like YouTube's CEO Susan
	...

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