Big Tech — Is It Really Surprising?
As I scrolled through Netflix to look for something to ease my pounding headache, I came across The Social Dilemma. Though I don’t normally watch documentaries, this one was engaging enough that I sat through the whole thing. After an hour and a half, my headache had only gotten worse.
The Social Dilemma dives into the algorithms designed by social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and their impact on society. Straight from the source, former big tech employees come together to say these platforms are responsible for many of the issues we face today; declining youth mental health, widespread misinformation, and ever-increasing political division are just a few. This insider-perspective, paired with a healthy dose of dramatic effect, naturally left me feeling angry, uneasy, and deeply disturbed by how a few programmers could have such a detrimental effect on the rest of the population. But after a while, I realized this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
Tech companies are just the latest in a long list of perpetrators that have affected our society. The way in which they do this might be new, but the harm is a common side effect of big companies that have veered off-course from their initial good intentions.
The other day, I came across this article on NPR, exposing big oil companies for lying to the public about their plastic recycling practices. Similar to the employees featured in The Social Dilemma, the people interviewed for this article state that they originally had faith that they’d be doing good for society. They had hopes that recycling could work in an economically viable way and help combat the massive amounts of plastic pollution in our environment.
But of course, things didn’t go that way.
Instead, these oil companies lied to the public and made us believe that every time we recycle something, we’re doing the Earth a favor. They didn’t mention that the recyclables and the trash all get thrown into one bin, and eventually one dump. It’s another one of the reasons climate change is rapidly affecting the way we live. And it’s not the first time big oil has caused such harm on the environment — remember the BP oil spill of 2010?
I won’t go into great detail about these detrimental effects here (maybe another article), but I want to draw attention to the fact that big companies have such a strong grip on our society. And at the heart of it all, it’s really just a handful of people pulling the strings.
I don’t think the algorithms employed by Facebook are solely responsible for the widespread misinformation and political division that we’re experiencing today. Computers do what they are programmed to do. It’s the programmer that has the moral sense of right and wrong that can be used in the design process. It’s the same thing with big oil — the people at the top who control all of the company’s operations should have some sort of moral sense in the decision-making process. Until that morality is put to good use, be prepared for many more disturbing documentaries on the detrimental effects of companies and industries on our society.
