Former Facebook executive, who has banned his own children from the site, says social media is ripping society apart by manipulating users

Former Facebook executive, who has banned his own children from the site, says social media is ripping society apart by manipulating users

  • Comments were made by Chamath Palihapitiya who joined Facebook in 2007
  • He took particular aim at the ways people communicate via social media
  • He cited an incident where hoax messages led to the lynching of seven people
  • He believes money pumped into social sites would be better spent addressing problems like climate change and disease

A former Facebook executive has spoken out against the social network he helped to create, saying it is ‘ripping society apart’.

The comments were made by Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth.

He says he feels ‘tremendous guilt’ for the influence Facebook has had and its ability to manipulate users, suggesting users take a break from using social media altogether.

The venture capitalist, who has banned his own three young children from the site, took particular aim at the ways people communicate via social media, including hearts, likes, and the thumbs-up.

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A former Facebook executive has spoken out against the social network he helped to create, saying it is 'ripping society apart'. The comments were made by Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth

A former Facebook executive has spoken out against the social network he helped to create, saying it is ‘ripping society apart’. The comments were made by Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth

CHAMATH PALIHAPITIYA

Chamath Palihapitiya left Facebook to start up his own venture capital business.

He has since invested in a number of firms, including last year a team of ex-Googlers called Groq.

They are hopinh to build a ‘next-generation chip,’ taking on some of the world’s biggest firms, including Intel and Google.

Groq hopes that this revolutionary chip ‘can empower companies like Facebook and Amazon, Tesla, the government to do things with machine learning and computers that nobody could do before,’ according to Mr Palihapitiya.

The key to creating the chip is to squeeze heavy and highly sophisticated computation into less silicon – something which Google’s TPU is one step ahead of its competition with.

Mr Palihapitiya believes this has the power to boost the spread of misinformation and allow people with nefarious intentions to manipulate users.

He cited an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings shared on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven innocent people, according to reports in The Verge.

During his talk, Mr Palihapitiya called out not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley’s entire system of funding.

He claimed money pumped into the region would be better spent addressing problems like climate change and disease.

Speaking to an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Mr Palihapitiya said: ‘I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.

‘The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.

‘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.’

This is not the first time that prominent figure at Facebook has spoken out about the social network……more here

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