A former Facebook executive criticized the company he once worked for and social media as a whole, saying it is "ripping apart the social fabric" in societies around the world, CBS San Francisco reports. Chamath Palihapitiya, who previously served as Facebook's vice president for user growth, expressed "tremendous guilt" and urged people to take a "hard break" from social media during a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
"I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works," said Palihapitiya, who left the social media giant in 2011 and now heads The Social+Capital Partnership, a venture capital fund.
"No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth," he went on to say.
Palihapitiya said the problem is not just isolated to Russia-backed ads and the 2016 presidential election, which led officials from Facebook, Twitter and Google to answer questions in Congress. The former Facebook executive cited an incident in India where innocent people were lynched after hoax messages about kidnappings were shared on WhatsApp."I just don't use these tools anymore, I haven't for years. It's created with a huge tension with my friends, it's created a huge tension in my social circles," Palihapitiya said. "If you look at my Facebook feed, I probably posted two times in the last seven years."
Palihapitiya also said that his children "aren't allowed to use this s**t."
Last month, former Facebook president Sean Parker criticized the social networking giant, saying it is "exploiting a vulnerability in human society."
"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," Parker told the news site Axios.
I'll bet some people know, never mind God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains!
Others in Silicon Valley have also expressed concern about the addictive nature of social media and mobile apps. Former Google engineer Tristan Harris told "60 Minutes" earlier this year that companies have a "whole playbook of techniques" to keep people glued to their apps as long as possible.CBS News' Carter Evans reports that a Pew/Journal of Youth Studies show 92 percent of teen go online daily and 1 in 5 young people regularly wake up in the night to send or check messages on social media.Jim Steyer -- founder of Common Sense Media -- also spoke out about social media."We're not suggesting the leaders of tech companies are evil," Steyer told CBS News. "But they in many case have ignored the consequences of some of the downsides of the innovations they brought to our society."
My rant!Facebook is, in my opinion, LARGELY, but not entirely, for improperly socialized persons.(Realizing a great many persons use facebook to promote their business etc., I'm not talking about them) Additionally it seems sensible and there is research that supports, what seems obvious anyway, the more time one spends on Facebook the more anti social one becomes. Sadly, I'm aware of far to many people who do nothing but make trouble with others. For others. On facebook. I had thought long and hard about why that might be?I stumbled across one explanation while reading the book “How the Body Knows Its Mind” (Worth reading, in my opinion) The author, Sian Beilock, touches on The Milgram Experiments, which did more then offer insights into the affect of authority on our behaviour- Milgram's experiments offered insight into how we might or might not act depending on our proximity, actual physical proximity to our fellow man. And have linked to the part of the book the author raises this important issue in.
“ A physical closeness seems to beget a psychological connection”
Simply put, it’s much more difficult to be an obnoxious, brazen, shameless idiot when someone is sitting or standing right in front of you. Facebook encourages very bad behaviour because it physically separates you from other humans. Making it easier for the poorly socialized/anti social media user to “talk shit", "stir the pot" and generally be obnoxious- Definitely not a plus for society in general. Therefore anti social media has a huge potential for encouraging the worst kind of behaviour humans can muster. This has been known for decades. It was made clear in the Milgram experiments. Surely Facebook’s creators would have been all too aware of this human foible (flaw or shortcoming in behaviour) Hence the comments from those formerly associated with Facebook and other forms of social mediaRelated: Smart Phone Dystopia: “Our Minds Can Be Hijacked”