#toxic tech

"In March of 2016, [...] JAMA Internal Medicine released a study showing that the artificial intelligence built into smartphones from Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft isn’t programmed to help during a crisis. The phones’ personal assistants didn’t understand words like “rape,” or "my husband is hitting me.” In fact, instead of doing even a simple web search, Siri—Apple’s product— cracked jokes and mocked users. It wasn’t the first time. Back in 2011, if you told Siri you were thinking about shooting yourself, it would give you directions to a gun store. After getting bad press, Apple partnered with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to offer users help when they said something that Siri identified as suicidal. But five years later, no one had looked beyond that one fix. Apple had no problem investing in building jokes and clever comebacks into the interface from the start. But investing in crisis or safety? Just not a priority."

Meta laid a number of people who had taken a leave of absence. Aka Meta is punishing people for maternity and paternity leave.

"One of the things that people who make software want to do is pretend they can predict the future, and it's not really about predicting the future, it's about re-inscribing the past. That's what happens if you don't specifically design against it."