How big tech finally awakened to the horror of its own inventions

It took years for ex-Facebook and Google bosses to criticize what they had created - but they seem to have had a collective change of heart. Perhaps it's because they now have children of their own

For an industry that prides itself on innovation, Silicon Valley loves to conform. The herd mentality can be seen everywhere, from tech executives' collective commitment to wearing wool slippers in public to the spectacle of Facebook, Google and Twitter sheepishly echoing one another's testimony at a series of congressional hearings in October.

In recent months, a new trend has emerged among the tech elite: publicly bashing the companies that made them enormously wealthy.