97TRISTAN HARRIS
36 • Digital crusader
BY ROGER MCNAMEE
The COVID-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol
helped open many Americans’ eyes to how the amplification of hate speech,
disinformation and conspiracy theories by major Internet platforms has un-
dermined public health and democracy, with disastrous consequences.
Tristan Harris has spent the better part of a decade fighting this status
quo and warning the world about these risks, but his message initially went
unheeded. Beginning with a now famous 2013 slide deck explaining how
psychological vulnerabilities might be used to hook users that circulated in-
side his former employer, Google, Harris has built public awareness about
these issues more successfully than anyone before him. In 2018, he co-
founded the Center for Humane Technology, a non profit focusing on tech
addiction and the way technology can be used to manipulate our behavior.
Harris skillfully uses the persuasive techniques of Internet platforms
as a weapon against them, as seen in the 2020 Netflix documentary The
Social Dilemma. The documentary (which I was also part of ) helped
bring his message to the global masses, while also foreshadowing the
insurrection. In an age when our democracy is in peril, we need activists
like Tristan more than ever to fight the mega Internet platforms and help
redefine our digital lives.
McNamee is the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
and has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years
HadiAl Khatib36 • Gathering
evidence“Transformation starts from
accountability,” says Syrian
journalist Hadi Al Khatib, who
collects, preserves and verifies
digital records of war crimes
and human-rights abuses. But
accountability has proved elusive
in Syria, where Bashar Assad’s
government muzzles the press,
while social media platforms
remove footage documenting
atrocities for violating their
content-moderation policies.
That’s why, in 2014, Al Khatib
set up the Syrian Archive: an
open-source repository of digital
documents for journalists,
lawyers and activists in the
region to draw upon. His Berlin-
headquartered team has archived
more than 3.5 million videos
from Syria and painstakingly
authenticated more than 8,000—
showing strikes on medical
facilities, barrel bombings and
other war crimes. (His team has
since opened sister archives
covering Yemen and Sudan.) In
October, Syrian Archive and other
rights defenders used some of
those verified videos to file a
criminal case against the Syrian
government for two of the worst
sarin-gas attacks it carried out
in 2013 and 2017, allegedly
killing more than 1,400 people.
Al Khatib says that seeing some
top regime officials’ roles in
the atrocities acknowledged is
an important first step toward
accountability. —Joseph HincksNOISECAT: WARD LONG; ASHRAF: SIMA DIAB—THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX; NGUYEN: ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXIS FRANKLIN FOR TIME; HARRIS: SHAUGHN AND JOHN; AL KHATIB: HANS-CHRISTIAN PLAMBECK—DER SPIEGEL