Former Facebook Exec Says Social Media is Ripping Apart Society (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: 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 âoehard breakâ 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." Also read: Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook 'Exploiting' Human Psychology

Comments

Counterpoint

[WrongMonkey]

Social media might inflame people's emotions. But it neutralizes their actions.

The major revolutions of the 19th century happened because people had to physically gather in order to air their grievances, discuss their ideas, and design their plots. Once they had a crowd gathered together, it was literally a step away from marching out into the streets and taking to the barricades. The internet doesn't have that physical organizational power. Keyboard warriors fuming away at their desks are relatively harmless. Sure, you might get few lone kooks who shoot up a church. But the instant gratification of social media cannot sustain large scale organized action.

Re:Social media is only amplification

[Jason Levine]

Not to mention the dehumanizing effect of interacting with screen names. If I was talking to you in person, even if I disagreed with you, societal pressure would keep us civil for the most part. Interacting with screen names, though, I might feel freer to insult "DarkOx" simply because my brain sees you as just a flicker of characters on my screen and not a "real person." (Personally, I try never to talk to people online in a manner that I wouldn't talk to them in person, but I might be in the minority with that.)