THERE'S no small irony in the fact that readers will have to turn to one of the the biggest tech giants in the world to get this information - but if you search online the phrase ‘tech giants under fire’ you will get at least seven million results. You probably googled it, but there are other search engines available, of course. And under fire the giants certainly are: for “creating problems instead of solving them”; for “enabling US election meddling” and promulgating "fake news"; for allegedly "facilitating terrorism"; for building up vast amounts of power and influence; for turning our minds to malleable mush; for addicting us.

As a tech story in the New York Times recently summarised matters: “Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets a digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web. Their amount of concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings, and is sparking a backlash that is still gathering force.”

Then, last week, came an authoritative intervention by someone who is well-known to the tech giants. Roger McNamee’s silicon CV is impeccable. In his own words: “During a 35-year career investing in the best and brightest of Silicon Valley, I was lucky enough to be part of the personal computer, mobile communications, internet and social networking industries. Among the highlights of my career were early investments in Google and Amazon.” He was also a mentor to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg between 2006 and 2010.

At first, McNamee, now aged 61, saw only good in the world he helped create. Each new wave of technology increased productivity and access to knowledge. Each new platform was easier to use and more convenient. “Technology powered globalisation and economic growth. For decades, it made the world a better place. We assumed it always would,” he said. But what he describes as “two dark sides” came to the fore in 2016. The first related to individual users. With little in the way of regulatory supervision in most of the world, he asserts, giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon “used techniques common in propaganda and casino gambling, such as constant notifications and variable rewards, to foster psychological addiction.”

The other “dark side” was geopolitical: Facebook and other internet platforms “enable the powerful to inflict harm on the powerless in politics, foreign policy and commerce. Elections across Europe and in the US have repeatedly demonstrated that automated social networks can be exploited to undermine democracy”.

He added that the Brexit referendum and the US election won by Donald Trump disclosed that Facebook “provides significant relative advantages to negative messages over positive ones”. Authoritarian governments can use Facebook to promote public support for repressive policies.

McNamee acknowledges that the major internet platforms did not intend to cause harm when they adopted their business models. But now, with their “global ambition and reach, [they] are eating the world economy.” The challenges posed by these tech monopolies are a threat to public health. Social media, he went on, should be treated in a similar way as tobacco and alcohol – with a mixture of education and regulation. For the sake of restoring balance to our lives and hope to our politics, he urged, "it is time to disrupt the disrupters."

McNamee’s perceptive words caused a stir on social and traditional media, as did his January 26 interview on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, in which he spoke about the phenomenon of “brain hacking”. Media companies “try to get your attention and get you to pay attention to what they’re doing to sell products through advertising. When they applied that on a smartphone, it changed everything. Suddenly you had the ability to addict people, and if you had them addicted, you could change what they think, you could implant ideas.”

New York-born McNamee’s career began in 1982 when he managed the Science & Technology Fund at a global investment management firm. In 2004 he and his co-partners founded Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that invests in new media and technology businesses. One of Elevation’s managing directors and co-founders is Bono, the U2 frontman. McNamee himself is a keen musician, and plays guitar and bass guitar. His Elevation biography says he performs up to 100 concerts every year in two groups.

On January 4 Facebook’s Zuckerberg pledged to spend this year fixing “important issues” facing the company: the world, he wrote, “feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do, whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent”. McNamee approves of Zuckerberg’s promise but does not let him off the hook so easily. Offering his friend a “road map to protect our democracy,” McNamee recommends that Facebook follows the 1982 example of Johnson & Johnson following the Tylenol poisoning spree, in which seven people died – the company took “aggressive and immediate action to protect its customers … there was a substantial economic cost in the short-run, but the company built trust with customers that eventually offset it”.

Intriguingly, McNamee also counsels Zuckerberg to testify in an open hearing before Congress, on the grounds that America “needs to hear him explain Facebook’s strategy and design choices and justify its refusal to accept responsibility for what bad actors are doing on the platform”. Among the actions by these bad actors, McNamee says, was Russia’s interference in the US election. Will Zuckerberg take him up on his advice? Watch this space.