43 Quotes by Tristan Harris

We want to have a relationship with technology that gives us back choice about how we spend time with it, and we're going to need help from designers, because knowing this stuff doesn't help. We're going to need design help.

Information that confirms our beliefs makes us feel good; information that challenges our beliefs doesn't.

Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people's perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people's buttons, you can play them like a piano.

Apps or media who make money on advertising are never satisfied with 'enough' of your attention. They will always fight for more.

Our brains are already bad at seeing exponential curves.

If you're an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.

Traditional companies have been subject to licensing for many years. Attention utilities should be required to obey limits on data extraction and message amplification practices that drive polarisation, and should be required to protect children. We should ban or limit microtargeting of advertising, recommendations and other behavioural nudges.

Tech companies are distracting, dividing and outraging citizens to the point where there is little basis for common ground. This is a direct threat to democracy.

I actually worry that we're so mindlessly following the herd on privacy and data being the principle concerns when the actual things that are affecting the felt sense of your life and where your time goes, where your attention goes, where democracy goes, where teen mental health goes, where outrage goes.