Tristan Harris

It was a really cool product that was about deepening people's understanding.

And I got into the tech industry because I thought that technology could be a force for good in the world.

That's why I started my company.

And then I kind of realized through that experience that at the end of the day, these news publishers who used our product, they only cared about one thing, which is, is this increasing the amount of time and eyeballs and attention on our website?

Because eyeballs meant more revenue.

And I was in sort of this conflict of, I think I'm doing this to help the world, but really I'm measured by this metric of what keeps people's attention.

That's the only thing that I'm measured by.

And I saw that conflict play out among my friends who started Instagram because they got into it because they wanted people to share little bite-sized moments of your life.

Here's a photo of my bike ride down to the bakery in San Francisco.

That's what Kevin Systrom used to post when he was just starting it.

I was probably one of the first 100 users of the app.

And later you see how these sort of simple products that had a simple, good, positive intention got sort of sucked into these perverse incentives.

And so Google acquired my company called Apture.

I landed there and I joined the Gmail team.

And I'm with these engineers who are designing the email interface that people spend hours a day in.

And then one day one of the engineers comes over and he says, well, why don't we make it buzz your phone every time you get an email?

And he just asked the question nonchalantly like it wasn't a big deal.

And in my experience, I was like, oh my God, you're about to change billions of people's psychological experiences with their families, with their friends at dinner, with their date night on romantic relationships, where suddenly people's phones are going to be busy showing notifications of their email.

And you're just asking this question as if it's like a throwaway question.

And I became concerned – I see you have a slide deck there.