Some of Facebook’s former friends are expressing some serious doubts about the social network they helped create.
Facebook exploits a “vulnerability in human psychology” to addict its users, Sean Parker, the company’s first president, said in a public forum last month. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook vice president who joined the company in 2007, recently told an audience at Stanford that he feels “tremendous guilt” about helping create tools that have widened social divisions.
And Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early investor in both Facebook and Google, wrote that both companies “threaten public health and democracy” in an August USA Today op-ed.
It has been a rough year for the tech industry, especially social media companies. It opened with concerns about fake news and “filter bubbles” that can shield people from contrary beliefs, segued into pressure on Facebook and Twitter to clamp down on trolling and online harassment, and culminated with congressional hearings into Russian agents’ alleged use of their platforms to meddle with the 2016 presidential election.
All of that, of course, came against a steady drumbeat of tweets from President Donald Trump, who used the service to praise his allies and castigate his foes, often in inflammatory fashion.
But the unkindest cut of all may have come from three people who helped build Facebook in its early days. Facebook, in an emailed comment, said it is “working hard to improve,” and noted that it’s not the same company it was when Palihapitiya, who left six years ago, worked there.
“We’ve done a lot of work and research with outside experts and academics to understand the effects of our service on well-being, and we’re using it to inform our product development,” the company’s statement read. “We are willing to reduce our profitability to make sure the right investments are made.”
