Facebook has a Big Tobacco Problem – Monday Note

Facebook’s problems are more than a temporary bad PR issue. Its behavior contributes to a growing negative view of the entire tech industry.

In 1996, it required the tremendous courage of one whistleblower to expose the wrongdoings of the Big Tobacco company, Brown & Williamson, which artificially maintained the public’s addiction to cigarettes. It also helped to have robust media support, despite Big T’s intimidation. (Read this journalistic masterpiece by Marie Brenner, The Man Who Knew Too Much).

Today, things unfold much more quickly, with a cohort of people publicly denouncing the effects of tech to our children (their kids are safely shielded from addictive devices, which is not the case of the ones living in trailer parks).

Nearly every week, we see Silicon Valley execs or funders voicing their concerns about the toxicity of our tech-dominated society — especially our addiction to social media, and Facebook in particular.

A few months ago, Chamath Palihapitiya, former VP for user growth at Facebook, said he felt “tremendous guilt” about his past work (watch on You Tube here):

“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said, even suggesting we take a “hard break” from social media. “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.”

Even Sean Parker, who played a major role in the creation of Facebook, had his epiphany.

“[Facebook] literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.(…) The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.” “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” “The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

Later, Roger McNamee, who presents himself as one of Zuck’s mentors and is a significant shareholder in the company, said adamantly, “Your users are in peril” (read his open letter here).

The threat, according to McNamee, actually involves the entire tech world, and he referred to an open letter to Apple from the investment firm Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) saying Apple must do more to help children fight addiction to its devices.

One of the latest initiatives involves a bunch of Facebook and Google alums who joined the Center for Human Technology.

Facebook is justifiably concerned by this wave. True to the company’s hyper-centralized culture, its top management hired a full-time pollster to assess damages inflicted on the image of Mark Zuckerberg himself, and the other, more human face of the company, COO Sheryl Sandberg.

https://mondaynote.com/facebook-has-a-big-tobacco-problem-f801085109a