Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook 'Exploiting' Human Psychology (axios.com)

Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, spoke to news outlet Axios about the ways social networks have made hundreds of millions of users addicted to their platforms. He said, from the interview: When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' And then they would say, 'No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' And I would say, ... 'We'll get you eventually. I don't know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and ... it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains. The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you ... more likes and comments. It's a social-validation feedback loop. He says people like him, and Mark Zuckerberg knew the potential consequences, but they did what they did anyway.

Comments

Re:And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be'

[vux984]

But if you come back to /. to see if any one replied you'll get your little dopamine hit. Same shit.

PS: Your welcome.

Giving themselves too much credit

[Dan East]

I think they are giving themselves too much credit. Let's strip away the advertising machine that is FB and distill it down to the most basic fundamental. A person can post information, and others who are connected to that person can see that information and react to it. That's it in a nutshell. The fact that people get a "little dopamine hit" when someone they are connected to reacts to something they did is not something Facebook engineered. It is human nature. It is why we like to sit around talking to one another, or why we like to see a person smile when we do something. This is nothing FB engineered or calculated or anything like that. For any virtual social network to be compatible with human nature and be accepted it must provide a way for people to provide feedback with one another. Calling it a "like" or letting someone comment on it is not exactly the height of software or social engineering.

Methinks he is giving Facebook way too much credit to stoke his ego that he had a hand in reshaping people's "relationship with society". Facebook was inevitable, and in fact had existed in many, many different forms in the past (Usenet, America Online dialup, MySpace, Slashdot commenting system, ad infinitum). Facebook was nothing more than a simplification of existing social networks to the point that anyone could use it. It hit a critical mass, like MS Windows, the iPod, etc, where it had to resources to outgrow the competitors.

You are still on facebook.

[DrYak]

NO, you can't find anything about me on Facebook. I don't have an account there, no one I know is allowed to reference me there

Yup, you don't have a Facebook profile, and you've politely asked your closest friend to not upload pictures with your face on them to it.
Good for you.

The problem is that Facebook will data mine the living shit out of everything it comes by.

Maybe one person with whom you didn't communicate using throw away accounts (but, e.g.: you mailed using a regular e-mail, all called them with your called-ID visible) had facebook's app installed on their smartphone (and the app will automatically mine any contact details it comes by, including caller list and e-mail addresses auto-added to the replied-to list)

Maybe someone you don't know personally uploaded a picture of a crowd while you were out in the public without wearing dazzle make-up (forget about usual clothing accessories like sun-glasses, Facebook face recognition system is fine-tuned well enough to be able to recognise you even with these).

etc.

Add all these small crumbs of information together over time and facebook ends up having quite some idea about who you are without you or any of your direct friend ever giving out any such information.