The Facebook algorithm designers chose to let us see what our friends are talking about. They chose to show us, in some sense, more of the same. And that is the design decision that they could have decided differently. They could have said, "We're going to show you stuff that you've probably never seen before." I think they probably optimized their algorithm to make the most amount of money, and that probably meant showing people stuff that they already sort of agreed with, or were more likely to agree with.

Evidence of harm is hard to come by.

I know how models are built, because I build them myself, so I know that I'm embedding my values into every single algorithm I create and I am projecting my agenda onto those algorithms.

There might never be that moment when everyone says, "Oh my God, big data is awful."

I don't think anybody's ever notified that they were sentenced to an extra two years because their recidivism score had been high, or notified that this beat cop happened to be in their neighborhood checking people's pockets for pot because of a predictive policing algorithm. That's just not how it works.

I wanted to prevent people from giving them too much power. I see that as a pattern. I wanted that to come to an end as soon as possible.

People are starting to be very skeptical of the Facebook algorithm and all kinds of data surveillance.