While Facebook\u2019s\u00a0business is booming\u00a0and the company continues to expand its tentacles\u00a0to every corner of the internet, its early employees and investors are growing more and more vocal about the damage it has wrought among its users.<\/p>\n
Former Facebook vice president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya said that social media is \u201ceroding the core\u00a0<\/span>foundations of how people behave<\/span>\u201d and that he feels \u201ctremendous guilt\u201d about creating tools that are \u201cripping apart the social fabric.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n During a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in November, Palihapitiya echoed the words of other Facebook dissenters who have recently taken their guilt and grievances public.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u00a0<\/span>don\u2019t realize it, but you are being\u00a0<\/span>programmed \u2026 but now\u00a0<\/span>you got to decide how much you\u2019re\u00a0<\/span>willing to give up, how much of your\u00a0<\/span>intellectual independence,\u201d he warned the audience. He said he didn\u2019t want to be programmed himself, emphasizing he \u201cdoesn\u2019t use this shit\u201d and his kids are not allowed to use \u201cthis shit\u201d either\u2014also recommending that everyone take a \u201chard break\u201d from social media.<\/span><\/p>\n Palihapitiya joined Facebook in 2007, and is now the CEO of venture capital firm Social Capital, which he founded in 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cThe things that you rely on,\u00a0<\/span>the short-term dopamine-driven feedback\u00a0<\/span>loops that we have created, are\u00a0<\/span>destroying how society works: no civil\u00a0<\/span>discourse, no cooperation, misinformation,\u00a0<\/span>mistruth,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n His fear is that bad actors can manipulate large groups of people, and that as users, we compound the problem in our quest to create an idealized version of ourselves:<\/p>\n We curate our lives around this\u00a0<\/span>perceived sense of perfection because we\u00a0<\/span>get rewarded in these short-term signals\u2014<\/span>hearts, likes, thumbs up\u2014and we conflate\u00a0<\/span>that with value,\u00a0<\/span>and we conflate it with truth. And\u00a0<\/span>instead what it really is is fake,\u00a0<\/span>brittle popularity\u00a0<\/span>that\u2019s short-term and that leaves you\u00a0<\/span>even more\u2014admit it\u2014vacant and empty\u00a0<\/span>before you did it, because then it forces\u00a0<\/span>you into this vicious cycle where you\u2019re\u00a0<\/span>like \u201cWhat\u2019s the next thing I need to do now because I need it back?\u201d<\/p>\n Sean Parker, Facebook\u2019s founding president, spoke last month about the way the platform exploits human psychology,\u00a0much in the same terms, and said the founders of the company \u201cunderstood consciously\u201d what they were doing.<\/p>\n Palihapitiya agreed that \u201cin the back, deep, deep recesses of our minds\u201d they knew something bad could happen.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: Quartz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While Facebook\u2019s\u00a0business is booming\u00a0and the company continues to expand its tentacles\u00a0to every corner of the internet, its early employees and investors are growing more and more vocal about the damage it has wrought among its users. Former Facebook vice president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya said that social media is \u201ceroding the core\u00a0foundations of how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":383103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n