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

He's right.

[DogDude]

He's exactly right.

Re:He's right.

[DogDude]

You, personally, are, in fact, smart or savvy enough to deal with the internet?

Yes, I am, thanks.

Re:He's right.

[BronsCon]

The real pieces of shit are still the minority, but he internet gives them as loud of a voice as they choose to have. Take me, for example; I could never reach this large of an audience without the internet. Now, just think, I'm not even that big of a piece of shit -- and the bigger ones are louder!

That's why it seems that the world is so shitty -- one tiny pebble of poo can stink up the whole room.

Re:He's right.

[DontBeAMoran]

And since smart people avoid things like Facebook, it only amplifies the noise-to-signal ratio and makes it seem even worst than it is.

Re:He's right.

[jeauxkewl]

This may come as a shock to you, but some people really are of above-average intelligence.

Like, maybe half?

Re:He's right.

[LeftCoastThinker]

And where the real world has self correcting mechanisms for assholes (when someone gets in your face screaming obscenities, you tend to knock their teeth out, most people only need that experience once to modify their behavior), there is no equivalent online where antisocial, uncivil behavior can be properly discouraged.

To be clear, we are not talking about unpopular ideas or positions you don't agree with, rather just basic, civil discourse and an understanding that the other humans you interact with online are more like you than not (with bad days, goals, triumphs and failures, dreams and fears, etc.) And should be treated with the golden rule.

He's right!

[DontBeAMoran]

Mod me up if you think he's right!

Re:Social media is only amplification

[Anonymous Coward]

social media is people who are being emotionally manipulated by machine learning algorithms to get them to click on more ads, with absolutely no moral oversight in play

there are no people making decisions, this is deliberately to avoid the question of "is it moral to do this?"

Re:Social media is only amplification

[ilguido]

That is a fundamental problem and I don't think it changes much if you rein in social media.

In my opinion there is a problem with social media. In real life, it is difficult to find a place (workplace, schoolroom, bus stop) where everybody thinks the same: you have to compare your ideas. In social media you can easily choose to talk only to similarly minded people and so you lose the ability to confront different ideas. All these snowflakes are children born from the marriage between political correctness and social media.

Re:Social media is only amplification

[DontBeAMoran]

Also known as the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Re:Social media is only amplification

[Captain Splendid]

Mod parent up. Back in the day, if you were particularly bigoted, you tended to keep your mouth shut because even in your little bubble, there were very few like you. And no matter what the average slashdotter likes to believe, most people prefer not to be alone even if it means they can't share their theories on why women are so inferior.

Then along comes the internet. All of a sudden, not only are you not alone, but time and effort has gone into creating safe online spaces for you. Not only can you gab to your hearts content about The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, there's thousands of you to do it with!

So we've spent the last two decades knitting together every single little niche group into their own global enclaves, which is great when it brings together fans of an obscure anime, less so when hordes of fascist assholes start using their newfound power.

Alternative hypotheses

[naubol]

Can we reject the hypothesis that social media is merely revealing our differences and forcing us to deal with the results of a long process of slowly building stratification? I'd be interested to see if the sense of stratification grows over the long haul.

In my youth, my southern Baptist grandfather didn't get a daily reminder of how awful I think his policies are, viz a viz homosexuality, and he didn't get a daily reminder that I am going to burn in hell. He went about his life hoping I was still going to church and thinking society was mostly like him, white and Christian. I got to forget the depressing xenophobia of rural regions in my urban, liberal enclave. Then Facebook came along and made it clear to both of us that there were many, many Americas full of people doing things I wish they weren't doing.

My attitude is: let's give this some time. It's kinda bruising to keep being a butthole on the internet, maybe we'll work it out well enough that the culture wars become a little less ridiculous. I hear anecdotes that more and more teenagers are confidently (and often casually) uninterested in their parents' culture wars but instead adopting a political position more likely to tolerate diverse groups and less likely to tolerate political positions that disenfranchise others. While this may be quite dogmatic from a certain perspective, it could mean a future where people aren't particularly interested in fighting culture wars instead of fighting over political policies.

I'd also question the idea that we're always susceptible to outrage. Does outrage media sell as well in multicultural societies that largely tolerate intra-group differences? Does it sell as well with gen Z? As an oft-maligned millennial, my experience is that the boomers feel outrage when politics aren't serving them, gen my generation is more likely to feel outraged when anyone is being excluded, and gen Z'ers can't wait for both of us to die off.

I'm sure people blamed the newspaper for encouraging people not to like the monarchy.

Re:Social media is only amplification

[Jason Levine]

I'll speak from my experience. My father is pretty bigoted. As might be expected, I started down that path. One day in class I was making fun of Jehovah's Witnesses when a kid behind me said that he was a Jehovah's Witness. All of a sudden, they weren't some faceless group that I could make fun of for laughs, but an actual person. I realized what I was doing was wrong and that I had to stop.

Now imagine a similar situation but, instead of a mixed group of kids in a classroom, I was posting in a forum filled with like-minded people. My rant against a different group of people is met with laughter and virtual high-fives instead of "hey, that's out of line" comments. Instead of changing my behavior and reducing my bigotry, I'd just reinforce my bigotry. If I got too bigoted for that group to tolerate, I'd move on to a different group where they were even more bigoted. The reinforcement loop wouldn't function to reduce bigotry and expose me to different viewpoints, but to increase bigotry and isolate me from those different than myself.