Is Social Media Ripping Society Apart? A Former Facebook Executive Thinks So
A former Facebook representative said that he now has bouts of "tremendous guilt" over his past contributions to the social media platform. Chamath Palihapitiya joins the growing group of former insiders who are now convinced that social media is "ripping apart the social fabric."
Palihapitiya joined the company way back in 2007, and has been top of its leadership as the vice president for user growth. In a recent speaking engagement with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he shared how his work over those years was a thing he has now come to regret.
He speaks from experience when it comes to Facebook, but Palihapitiya is referring to the social media world in general, including Twitter, Instagram, and others, when he shared his conclusions.
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"The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works," he said, noting how an online ecosystem solely based on fleeting exchanges of likes, stars, thumbs-ups or hearts are driving out informed online conversation.
"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 emphasized.
Facebook's founding president, Sean Parker, would agree with him, as the way Parker shared how the company is basically founded on the exploitation of "a vulnerability in human psychology."
He shared with The Guardian how Facebook was focused on the question of "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" as well as ways of giving users just "a little dopamine hit" whenever they see the likes they receive.
He admits that, back then, he has not really understood the unintended consequences of what the social media platform and its 2 billion users would turn out to be, except that "It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other."
