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

The Oppenheimer Moment

[Rick Schumann]

A distillation of what Sean Parker had to say about Facebook:

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Yes, Mister Parker, you have. Facebook is a cancer to humanity, a virulent disease. It should never have been created in the first place, and I for one am glad that I have nothing to do with it.

..and 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, and I defy anyone who says different.

This is a bigger problem

[schweini]

This is a huge problem - advertising, marketing and shadier news outlets are systematically exploiting the innate cognitive biases we all have.

They have always done this, but instead of an artform, this has become scientific. And it seems to work quite well (for them)

It's similar to Casinos, which also exploit well-known human mental defects - which is why casinos are usually heavily regulated. But you obviously can't do the same for communication.
The only kind-of protection against these assaults on our mental defects is education, and a change in the mind-set. But noone really has a short-term incentive to change either of those.

Re:Its your fault

[Cajun Hell]

No, it's We The People's fault, for being drug addicts. Don't blame the dealer.

Re:You are still on facebook.

[DarkOx]

^^THIS^^

I resisted facebook for a long time, but ultimately I signed up and created a basic profile, with information about me that is already mostly public and things I would generally want the world to know about me. I keep it pretty impersonal and rarely post about being anywhere or doing anything that isn't documented elsewhere publicly, but at least I get to bring the attention to those things as opposed to attention being on everything else for lack anything else being there.

Its nice to ask your friends not to tag you in stuff but sooner or later someone forgets, making an honest mistake, after that facebook's photo recognition will start to suggest you everywhere you appear. Combine that will all their other data mining and yes they know a lot about you and publish a lot about you whether you like it or not.

At some point you have to make a decision do YOU want some control over the message about you that gets put out by facebook or do you want to continue you protested at the cost of not having that control? If you do you have to create an account, and play some of their game. You can ignore facebook all you like but others don't and you can't make them, because of the that facebook has you and I over a barrel.