Cathy O’Neil, along with criticizing these “big boys of tech”, feels some sympathy for them.
I might be the only person on Earth feeling sorry for the big boys of technology(…) They all started out wanting to make the world a better place using cool technology, and here they are, dealing with all of this democracy and public responsibility stuff, which they never signed up for and honestly don’t have the chops to handle.
You might very well be; if not the only, you are at least in minority. I have no sympathy for these “big boys”. There is no justifying the sheer carelessness these “geniuses” evince in the way they go about their businesses.
You can’t dream of making the world a better place without first being a part of that world; living there; seeing it through the eyes of the normal people. Anticipate every possible way that the platform you build can be misused and empathizing with every single person that such a misstep will affect. This is the foremost quality needed in the person that leads the group building such a “world-changing” platform.
On the first indication of you realizing you do not possess that, you should sidestep. If you don’t do that after multiple slip-ups, it reveals your selfish behavior. And you lose the right to ask for any sympathy.