A Former Facebook VP Says Social Media Is Destroying Society. And He’s Right.

From Futurism.com

by Brad Jones on January 5, 2018

In Brief

Chamath Palihapitiya, the former vice president for user growth at Facebook, has spoken out about social media. While platforms like Facebook and Twitter can bring people closer together, they can also have the opposite effect.

Excerpt

Feedback Loop

Speaking at a recent event at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Chamath Palihapitiya – a former vice president for user growth at Facebook – expressed a concern that social media platforms have become “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

Palihapitiya brought up the example of a WhatsApp hoax campaign in India that led to a string of lynchings. However, new technology is also having more subtle effects on the way that we interact with one another.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” said Palihapitiya, according to a report from The Verge. Interactions such as ‘liking’ a photograph or ‘favoriting’ a tweet are perhaps more about short-term gratification than the basis for meaningful communication and relationships, Palihapitiya suggested.

“I think that Pallhapitiya points out a very real issue regarding social media and immediate gratification,” said Lizbeth M. Kim, a doctoral candidate in social psychology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State whose research looks at social media, to Futurism. “I view his message as an important reminder of the part of the picture that we may often willfully ignore.”…SNIP

Read the full article here

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