Re: [44net] An apology for the Internet from the people who built it

+1 Michael Facebook, Apple, and the others named in that article below are NOT architects of the Internet. These people and corporations are simply *users* of the Internet that created compelling uses of it for a large swath of people. The more appropriate name of the article should be "An apology for the Internet from Social media that twisted it". The choices these companies made in developing their products to make them addictive, abusive, etc. is not the "Internet's" fault. It's their own. People have choices and they can either choose to be bound to social media sites like this or they can choose to spend their time some other, more constructive ways. :-) Yes, I realize that addiction of any kind isn't necessarily a choice for some but to blame "the Internet" for their problems is wrong. A slightly more accurate point would be to blame social media sites. --David KI6ZHD The list of so-called Internet architects: -- Jaron Lanier, virtual-reality pioneer. Founded first company to sell VR goggles; worked at Atari and Microsoft. Antonio García Martínez, ad-tech entrepreneur. Helped create Facebook’s ad machine. Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit. Filed major gender-discrimination lawsuit against VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Can Duruk, programmer and tech writer. Served as project lead at Uber. Kate Losse, Facebook employee No. 51. Served as Mark Zuckerberg’s speechwriter. Tristan Harris, product designer. Wrote internal Google presentation about addictive and unethical design. Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka, entrepreneur who founded influential message board Something Awful. Ethan Zuckerman, MIT media scholar. Invented the pop-up ad. Dan McComas, former product chief at Reddit. Founded community-based platform Imzy. Sandy Parakilas, product manager at Uber. Ran privacy compliance for Facebook apps. Guillaume Chaslot, AI researcher. Helped develop YouTube’s algorithmic recommendation system. Roger McNamee, VC investor. Introduced Mark Zuckerberg to Sheryl Sandberg. Richard Stallman, MIT programmer. Created legendary software GNU and Emacs. --