Monday, December 11, 2017

Facebook Ripping Society Apart ???

Here is a cogent assessment of the effects of social media:

Facebook’s former vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya recently gave a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that’ll probably make you think twice about your social media use. The entire talk is well worth a watch, but some of his most prominent remarks included:

  • That he feels “tremendous guilt” about Facebook. "I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works."
  • "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created [including the hearts, likes, and thumbs up of various social media channels] are destroying how society works." He added, "[There’s] no civil discourse, no cooperation; [only] misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem - this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem."
  • Regarding an incident in which seven innocent men in India were lynched after a hoax about kidnappings spread through WhatsApp: "That’s what we’re dealing with. And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs."
  • Unsurprisingly, when it comes to social media, his children "aren’t allowed to use that shit."

Source - https://www.fastcompany.com/40506058/former-facebook-exec-social-media-is-ripping-apart-society

Also unsurprisingly, "our" government is not addressing this issue ... other than to enlist Facebook and its ilk in their efforts to spy on and manipulate us.

In my view, we should turn off the Internet and confiscate the remaining assets of Facebook, Google, and other "social media" companies.

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