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posted by janrinok on Monday December 11 2017, @08:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-saw-it-coming dept.

Chamath Palihapitiya, a former vice president for user growth at Facebook, feels (some) guilt about his role in expanding the social media giant:

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."

He went on to describe an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings shared on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven innocent people. "That's what we're dealing with," said Palihapitiya. "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." He says he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children "aren't allowed to use that shit." He later adds, though, that he believes the company "overwhelmingly does good in the world."

[...] In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley's entire system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into "shitty, useless, idiotic companies," rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.

From a partial transcript:

You don't realize it, but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you're willing to give up. How much of your intellectual independence, and don't think, yeah, not me, I'm a genius, I'm at Stanford. You're probably the most likely to fall for it. Because you are check-boxing your whole damn life. No offense, guys.

Previously: Facebook Founding President Sounds Alarm, Criticizes Facebook


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  • (Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:38AM

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:38AM (#608626)

    The point of your conversations is to get to the end as fast as possible? Do you also watch videos sped up, because the point of a movie is to get to the end real fast?

    Hey - awesome. Guess what - no one gives a fuck about what you prefer. The rest of us normal people prefer a relaxed background 45 minute text conversation while doing something else (like being on a call) or watching a movie (w/o speeding it up 20%). When something is urgent we'll still have that 2 minute phone call instead.

    I love you people with autism. Your lives are sooooo sad and shitty, and you refuse to admit it to yourself and fix yourself, so the funny clown show is guaranteed to continue.

    And no, I've never had any social media accounts. I do love my lync and email though. loser.