Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It

by Mike Monteiro

On March 15, 2019 a white supremacist opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand during evening prayer service. He murdered fifty people. He was wearing a camera and live-streaming his act of terror. The video went viral across multiple platforms, despite a public outcry to take it down. The platforms were doing exactly what they were designed to do: spread, sensationalize, and drive engagement. As teams across the major platforms attempted to eradicate the video from their services they found out how difficult it is to get a system to stop doing what it’s been designed to do. Facebook alone had to remove it 1.5 million times in the first 24 hours. This shouldn’t have been a shock. After all, they were the ones who designed it that way.