You could kind of be free and expressive but you already knew when you joined the internet, you knew that you should not be a troll. You began to experience the internet through platforms that were themselves controlled by specific companies, technical instruments of those companies, like search and retrieval and ordering and classification.
Ramesh SrinivasanI'm really interested not just in privacy for the individual but respect for the local communities. And I think we have a problem with both and whenever industries kind of become almost monopolistic they have to be challenged to be more responsible. We can challenge them in the press, in the courts and in regulation.
Ramesh SrinivasanThis is what engineers in Silicon Valley typically do. "Ok, well, of course there are some problems of our technology because it is so excellent and is so global so we are just gonna build a better one."
Ramesh SrinivasanWe are getting close to the point where as every platform of tech that has any level of scale gets bought by either Google or Facebook or sometimes Microsoft. We are getting to the point where we see some oligopoly in terms of behavior online, and that it's really problematic because the oligopolies are completely non transparent, they are terrible in terms of labor and economic equality and they support systems of surveillance. It can create a world where we are all placed in bubbles, where the systems themselves can be manipulated by people who don't have our best interests in mind.
Ramesh SrinivasanThe Silicon Valley companies are not understating that they are so politically and socially and culturally central in the world. They would probably never have thought that they would become like this. But now that they are, what are they gonna do about it? I have a lots of friends who work in these companies: it's about taking responsibility.
Ramesh Srinivasan