A former Facebook executive has said that the social networking site is “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”, at an event in Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chamath Palihapitiya who joined Facebook in 2007 and went on to become the company’s vice president for user growth recommended people to take a break from social media.
His criticism was not directed at Facebook specifically, but social media as a whole, but he also spoke of the “tremendous guilt” he felt for helping make Facebook.
He told his audience that he believes that Facebook “does overwhelming good in the world” but he tries to cut down his usage.
The Verve quoted Palihapitiya as saying, “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.”
He cited a lynching incident from India that occurred due to misinformation being spread through WhatsApp.
Facebook Inc disclosed on Wednesday that about 20 million Americans may have seen Russian-backed content on Instagram as lawmakers questioned tech companies for a second day about Russia's use of social media to influence the 2016 US election.
The Senate Intelligence Committee questioned lawyers for Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google as part of a broader investigation into possible Russian interference in last year's election.
In 2011, Palihapitiya quit Facebook and started his own firm called Social Partnership. The firm specialises in technology startups, providing seed funding, venture capital and private equity. He has been critical of Silicon Valley’s venture capital funding. In the talk he criticised the investors who pump money into “idiot” and “useless” companies over addressing real problems like climate change.
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