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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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:45PM (#608455)

    Boo hoo for him. So he feels bad. Well, bully for him. Ten years or so ago I read an article on the guy who was behind the algorithmicization of the radio industry; the guy who is responsible for the fact that most of commercial radio only ever plays, like, 50 songs. He felt bad about the state of mediocrity we find ourselves in and he wanted to shake up the industry. My response to him then was: you can KMA. Unless these guys want to forego the wealth it made them to atone for their participation, I couldn't give a rat's ass about how bad they feel. I'm sure the pharma heads feel bad about all the people hooked on opioids. Unless he wants to dump the millions he made and go back to being a regular schmo, I don't give a flying you-know-what about how bad or guilty he says he feels.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:52PM (#608459)

    I go back and forth myself about how much to blame execs. Sometimes they are scum, sometimes they pursue something and only realize how bad it was in hindsight. At the very least kudos to him for speaking out, it certainly won't help his career because who wants a tattle-tale?? Any info we can use to disrupt FB's hold over our friends and family is welcome.

    I also empathize with your irritation, hopefully he donates to some charities or something worthwhile.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @10:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @10:00PM (#608465)

    Ideally they should dump their wealth into a foundation dedicated to undoing whatever it is they're feeling regretful over. That's something that might approach repentance.

    It would be good to have a foundation dedicated to decentralized social. Revive XMPP (yes, I know, it lost and I can't get over it). Fund efforts to create a distributed content platform for sharing family pictures in a way that respects and enables the privacy that a family should have. Etc.

    We can't undo Facebook, but we can try to come up with something better. However, nothing will change without the inertia of billions of dollars in PR behind it.