Monday, December 11, 2017

Climateer Line of the Day: Neurotransmitters and Facebook Edition

Via The Verge:
 "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."
—Former Facebook Vice President for Addicting Users, Chamath Palihapitiya
And the rest of the story:

Former Facebook exec says social media is ripping apart society
‘No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.’
Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people take a “hard break” from social media. 

Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “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.”...MUCH MORE, including video
Recently:
"The Neurochemistry of Smartphone Addiction"
As stated in the introduction to last month's "Early Facebook investor compares the social network to Nazi propaganda, likens its workers to Goebbels and claims it is creating a climate of 'fear and anger'":
We visited Elevation Partners' Managing Director Roger McNamee on Sunday for a TL;DR version in: "Climateer Line of the Day: Bono's Guy Talks Regulating Facebook and Google".

In that piece I noted our point of attack has been the neurochemistry of deliberately trying to addict your users. The thinking being, this is where the giants are most vulnerable and is the argument most amenable to soundbite journalism/attention - grabbing/framing. Turnabout being fair play and all that....





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