Chamath Palihapitiya was the vice-president for user growth at Facebook, before he left the company in 2011.
He has been reported as saying he regrets his involvement in the popular site and feels 'tremendous guilt'.
According to Facebook, the site had 1.37 billion daily active users in September 2017. In other words, we are pretty hooked. Be it for messaging your mates, organising parties or digesting all of the news you need, Facebook is a hub of information and communication.
It's also very addictive.
At a Stanford Business School event in November, Palihapitiya explained, 'The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.'
He clarified, 'This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.'
These comments came only a day after Facebook's founding president Sam Parker apparently criticised the company for, 'exploit[ing] a vulnerability in human psychology' by creating a 'social-validation feedback loop.'
We all know too well what they mean by this phrase. Who can honestly say they are exempt from the harmful side-effects of social media? Be it jealousy, low-self-esteem or the encouragement of shallow bragging, we have all been victim to what Palihapitiya calls being 'programmed'. And this is not even considering the larger socio-political implications of the site, with national votes like Brexit and the Presidential election said to have been manipulated by social media.
Palihapitiya himself abstains from the site and other social media apps and urges others to 'soul-search' about their own use. He explains, 'It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you're going to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.'
Gulp.
He clarified on CNBC that he was not being Facebook-specific and was referring to how truth and popularity has become one-and-the same with paid content:
Daisy Murray is the Digital Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, spotlighting emerging designers, sustainable shopping, and celebrity style. Since joining in 2016 as an editorial intern, Daisy has run the gamut of fashion journalism - interviewing Molly Goddard backstage at London Fashion Week, investigating the power of androgynous dressing and celebrating the joys of vintage shopping.
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