“For a while it was beautiful. it was messy, and it was punk as fuck. We all rolled up our sleeves and helped to build it.”

We were the ones who were supposed to guide it… We failed. […]

We designed and built platforms that undermined democracy across the world. […]

We designed and built technology that is used to round up immigrants and refugees and put them in cages. […]

We designed and built platforms that young, stupid, hateful men use to demean and shame women. […]

We designed and built an entire industry that exploits the poor in order to make old rich men even richer. […]

The machine we’ve built is odious. Not only can we not participate in its operation, nor passively participate, it’s now on us to dismantle it. […]

Mike Monteiro, writing about the Internet and the World Wide Web in his book Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It (with light editing for clarity)