When The Social Dilemma was released, it took only 3 weeks to become Netflix’s most popular documentary of 2020. That’s because millions around the world already knew something was very wrong with tech. Now those millions can combine forces to exert power and demand change.

• ?? Citizens are sharing stories, flagging harms, and demanding reform
• ?? Students are organizing on campuses and growing the movement
• ?? Educators are teaching about harms and solutions
• ?? Technologists are working to redesign harmful technologies
• ?? Policymakers are crafting laws to hold companies accountable
• ?? Investors are shifting funding toward humane technology pioneers

Through lesson plans as well as algorithms, through deep conversations as well as code, this movement is creating the conditions for humane technology that:

• Is values-centric and designed with awareness that technology is never neutral, and is inevitably shaped by its surrounding socioeconomic environment
• Is sensitive to human nature and doesn’t exploit our innate physiological vulnerabilities
• Narrows the gap between the powerful and the marginalized instead of increasing that gap
• Reduces greed and hatred instead of perpetuating them
• Helps to build shared reality instead of dividing us with fragmenting realities
• Accounts for and minimizes the externalities that it generates in the world

Extractive tech companies have been able to maximize engagement at all costs, with little pushback. Until now. The humane technology movement is beginning to apply real pressure — and the platforms are noticing. As we build power we’ll:

• Put public pressure on tech leaders and remove their social license if they fail to respond
• Train and support workers changing tech from the inside
• Create the conditions for a new generation of competitors that are more equitable, accountable, and humane
  

Businesses rarely change unless they’re forced to change by law or because it becomes too expensive not to. Often it’s a combination of both. For humane technology, the goal of public pressure and regulation is to:

• Force platforms to pay for their externalities, i.e. the harms they inflict on society
• Halt tech companies' unrestrained race for human attention
• Make platforms past a certain size or influence over the public square accountable to the public interest

See our complete policy recommendations.