A Good Time for Nihilists: Social Media is Ripping Society Apart By James Reed

     Apart from ethno-racial conflict, which has always been with us, and which humanity, or at least Whites never seem to understand, going through these cycles of civilisation and collapse, there is the new variable of technology. Most people are so addicted to it, especially computers, social media and demonic things like that, that criticism of these institutions is unthinkable, heretical. Some, though are still thinking:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/11/facebook-former-executive-ripping-society-apart

“A former Facebook executive has said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his work on “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”, joining a growing chorus of critics of the social media giant. Chamath Palihapitiya, who was vice-president for user growth at Facebook before he left the company in 2011, said: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.” The remarks, which were made at a Stanford Business School event in November, were just surfaced by tech website the Verge on Monday. “This is not about Russian ads,” he added. “This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.” Palihapitiya’s comments last month were made a day after Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, criticized the way that the company “exploit[s] a vulnerability in human psychology” by creating a “social-validation feedback loop” during an interview at an Axios event. Parker had said that he was “something of a conscientious objector” to using social media, a stance echoed by Palihapitiya who said that he was now hoping to use the money he made at Facebook to do good in the world. “I can’t control them,” Palihapitiya said of his former employer. “I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit. I can control my kids’ decisions, which is that they’re not allowed to use that shit.” He also called on his audience to “soul-search” about their own relationship to social media. “Your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed,” he said. “It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re going to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.”

     Social media exploits the most vulnerable aspects of humanity. No, that is not an original thought, as I have none, but I can still read:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-sean-parker-vulnerability-brain-psychology

“Facebook’s founders knew they were creating something addictive that exploited “a vulnerability in human psychology” from the outset, according to the company’s founding president Sean Parker. Parker, whose stake in Facebook made him a billionaire, criticized the social networking giant at an Axios event in Philadelphia this week. Now the founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Parker was there to speak about advances in cancer therapies. However, he took the time to provide some insight into the early thinking at Facebook at a time when social media companies face intense scrutiny from lawmakers over their power and influence. Parker described how in the early days of Facebook people would tell him they weren’t on social media because they valued their real-life interactions. “And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be,’” he said. “I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying,” he added, pointing to “unintended consequences” that arise when a network grows to have more than 2 billion users. “It 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,” he said. He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

“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.” Parker, who previously founded the file-sharing site Napster, joined the Facebook team in 2004 five months after the site had launched as a student directory at Harvard. Parker saw the site’s potential and was, according to Zuckerberg, “pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company”. In 2005, police found cocaine in a vacation home Parker was renting and he was arrested on suspicion of possession of a schedule 1 substance. He wasn’t charged, but the arrest rattled investors and he resigned shortly after. Thanks mostly to his brief stint at Facebook, Parker’s net worth is estimated to be more than $2.6bn. He set up the Parker Foundation in June 2015 to use some of his wealth to support “large-scale systemic change” in life sciences, global public health and civic engagement. Parker is not the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur to express regret over the technologies he helped to develop. The former Googler Tristan Harris is one of several techies interviewed by the Guardian in October to criticize the industry. “All of us are jacked into this system,” he said. “All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are.”

     Hijacking minds? That makes sense, especially when one actually observes people nowadays, mindless staring at their phones, apps and other nonsense:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

    That is why I do not have a phone at all. I once had a mobile phone which cost $ 20 from Woollies, but even that was too much, so I found two huge rocks, and put the phone on one rock, and introduced the phone to the other rock. They got on like a house on fire. Literally.

     Apart from ethno-racial conflict, which has always been with us, and which humanity, or at least Whites never seem to understand, going through these cycles of civilisation and collapse, there is the new variable of technology. Most people are so addicted to it, especially computers, social media and demonic things like that, that criticism of these institutions is unthinkable, heretical. Some, though are still thinking:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/11/facebook-former-executive-ripping-society-apart

“A former Facebook executive has said he feels “tremendous guilt” over his work on “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works”, joining a growing chorus of critics of the social media giant. Chamath Palihapitiya, who was vice-president for user growth at Facebook before he left the company in 2011, said: “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth.” The remarks, which were made at a Stanford Business School event in November, were just surfaced by tech website the Verge on Monday. “This is not about Russian ads,” he added. “This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.” Palihapitiya’s comments last month were made a day after Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, criticized the way that the company “exploit[s] a vulnerability in human psychology” by creating a “social-validation feedback loop” during an interview at an Axios event. Parker had said that he was “something of a conscientious objector” to using social media, a stance echoed by Palihapitiya who said that he was now hoping to use the money he made at Facebook to do good in the world. “I can’t control them,” Palihapitiya said of his former employer. “I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit. I can control my kids’ decisions, which is that they’re not allowed to use that shit.” He also called on his audience to “soul-search” about their own relationship to social media. “Your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed,” he said. “It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re going to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.”

     Social media exploits the most vulnerable aspects of humanity. No, that is not an original thought, as I have none, but I can still read:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-sean-parker-vulnerability-brain-psychology

“Facebook’s founders knew they were creating something addictive that exploited “a vulnerability in human psychology” from the outset, according to the company’s founding president Sean Parker. Parker, whose stake in Facebook made him a billionaire, criticized the social networking giant at an Axios event in Philadelphia this week. Now the founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Parker was there to speak about advances in cancer therapies. However, he took the time to provide some insight into the early thinking at Facebook at a time when social media companies face intense scrutiny from lawmakers over their power and influence. Parker described how in the early days of Facebook people would tell him they weren’t on social media because they valued their real-life interactions. “And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be,’” he said. “I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying,” he added, pointing to “unintended consequences” that arise when a network grows to have more than 2 billion users. “It 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,” he said. He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

“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.” Parker, who previously founded the file-sharing site Napster, joined the Facebook team in 2004 five months after the site had launched as a student directory at Harvard. Parker saw the site’s potential and was, according to Zuckerberg, “pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company”. In 2005, police found cocaine in a vacation home Parker was renting and he was arrested on suspicion of possession of a schedule 1 substance. He wasn’t charged, but the arrest rattled investors and he resigned shortly after. Thanks mostly to his brief stint at Facebook, Parker’s net worth is estimated to be more than $2.6bn. He set up the Parker Foundation in June 2015 to use some of his wealth to support “large-scale systemic change” in life sciences, global public health and civic engagement. Parker is not the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur to express regret over the technologies he helped to develop. The former Googler Tristan Harris is one of several techies interviewed by the Guardian in October to criticize the industry. “All of us are jacked into this system,” he said. “All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are.”

     Hijacking minds? That makes sense, especially when one actually observes people nowadays, mindless staring at their phones, apps and other nonsense:
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

     That is why I do not have a phone at all. I once had a mobile phone which cost $ 20 from Woollies, but even that was too much, so I found two huge rocks, and put the phone on one rock, and introduced the phone to the other rock. They got on like a house on fire. Literally.