Posted on 12/12/2017 12:52:56 PM PST by Hojczyk
Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people take a “hard break” from social media.
Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”
He went on to describe an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings shared on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven innocent people. “That’s what we’re dealing with,” said Palihapitiya. “And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs.” He says he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children “aren’t allowed to use that shit.” He later adds, though, that he believes the company “overwhelmingly does good in the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Dude, you’re on social media.
Trump's fault! ;^)
No. I am a person whose not named Vaquero in my real life.
Twitter and Facebook is social media. I have a Facebook account under an assumed name for emergencies like when FR is down and I want to find out why. I don’t communicate with friends or family on social media.
Able Danger 5.1 bump for later....
No social interaction. Nextdoor neighbor texts “Will be out of town. Will you watch the house?”. You text back “Sure”. And that’s your interaction.
It’s the same with shopping. People shop online rather than having deal with humans. It makes you get to the point where you simply don’t want to be around people.
I’m typing this instead of having a conversation with my wife. She’s shoping online in the other room.
Terry, in some way you are right.
Then there are people who are older and don’t have a good way to connect to people, and the same things that can be seen as bad, can be seen as good.
I know that my family members that don’t still live at home with our folks, are in contact a number of times throughout the day. That is good.
In some ways I agree with you. In others I don’t.
It’s up to us to try to make sense of it and keep it in perspective.
Here on the forum we’re not face to face, but tell me how we could connect like this without the social media you seem to think is very very bad.
Networking here, we are as savvy as anyone in the nation regarding our government and various things going on.
We do an end run on the media. We have their number better than anyone. We know the news before they even present it more often than not.
Almost all the time, when I hear something reported, I already know the background behind it, to make heads or tails of it before the spin I’ would be about to hear.
So yes, I agree with you in some ways. In other ways I am glad to have social media available.
I agree there is some good. There are also people who don’t know how to use computers. The internet can be good. But former internet bigshots are admitting the goal of organizations like Facebook is to get people hooked. In fact, when i first signed on to this website there was a warning that it is addictive.
food
coffee
soft drinks
fast food
liquor
There are a lot of things that are addictive.
We weave a course through the during our daily lives.
+1
Thanks Incorrigible.
Few things annoy me more than watching people walking down the street thumbs aflutter checking social media...... even worse, seeing a family of 4 at a restaurant, all glued to their smartphones, rather than having any interaction with each other — except, perhaps, to tweet to another family member across the table.
It is also possible that social media and the Internet in general are giving the non-elites a voice in (or at least a look at) the truth of how “things” really work in the world. It’s Tammany Hall and Teapot Dome on steroids. Highly entertaining but also highly disturbing. I think people are just running way behind the vast info the Internet brings to light. Things will stabilize once everyone finally accepts that they are being watched in many ways 24/7. Too bad privacy is gone.
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan.
A book that I read in 1968. Has paid dividends ever since.
On our 32 acres, we’re pretty private, except the google satellite view caught me mowing my lawn. :)
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