Bad for your Health? Salesforce CEO Argues Facebook 'is the New Cigarettes' (nytimes.com) 79
Social media may be bad for our health, argues long-time technology reporter/commentator Kara Swisher in the New York Times:
In March of 2018, I interviewed Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, at the top of the company's San Francisco tower. He offered up an astonishing metaphor when I asked him for his take on the impact of social media companies. "Facebook is the new cigarettes," Benioff said. "It's addictive. It's not good for you." As it did with cigarette companies, "the government needs to step in," he added." The government needs to really regulate what's happening."
At the time, I thought it was a flashy reach by an executive who often went out on verbal limbs to make brazen points. But today, after the latest series of investigations into the sketchy acts of the social media giant, Benioff seems like Nostradamus. In the past weeks, The Wall Street Journal published "The Facebook Files" — well reported pieces that rely on whistle-blowers who are now just tossing incriminating documents over the wall at a furious pace. The Journal's series includes: internal reports showing that Facebook was fully aware of Instagram's deleterious impact on the mental health of teen girls, while moving full steam ahead with an Instagram for Kids product; internal documents inferring that the company lied to its independent Oversight Board when it said it gave only a small amount of celebs, pols and other grandees a wide berth to break its rules on the platform while, in fact, the free pass was given to millions; and the latest revelation that Facebook makes people angry, in part because of futile efforts of its leader, Mark Zuckerberg, to stop the endless rage...
[N]owadays the human race seems even more abhorrent, and in many more twisted and amplified ways, and it's because of Facebook, the biggest and least accountable communications and media platform in history.
At the time, I thought it was a flashy reach by an executive who often went out on verbal limbs to make brazen points. But today, after the latest series of investigations into the sketchy acts of the social media giant, Benioff seems like Nostradamus. In the past weeks, The Wall Street Journal published "The Facebook Files" — well reported pieces that rely on whistle-blowers who are now just tossing incriminating documents over the wall at a furious pace. The Journal's series includes: internal reports showing that Facebook was fully aware of Instagram's deleterious impact on the mental health of teen girls, while moving full steam ahead with an Instagram for Kids product; internal documents inferring that the company lied to its independent Oversight Board when it said it gave only a small amount of celebs, pols and other grandees a wide berth to break its rules on the platform while, in fact, the free pass was given to millions; and the latest revelation that Facebook makes people angry, in part because of futile efforts of its leader, Mark Zuckerberg, to stop the endless rage...
[N]owadays the human race seems even more abhorrent, and in many more twisted and amplified ways, and it's because of Facebook, the biggest and least accountable communications and media platform in history.
Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:1, Insightful)
Not reddit. Not slashdot. Not Twatter. Those are not addictive. Large amount of porn in reddit and Twatter are not bad for teen mental health. Facebook is special.
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:2)
Porn is never marketed for teens and the fact porn is easily available on the internet behind little more than a consent box is a totally different issue.
I live in a country with the moral police. Sex with multiple partners is illegal. Pornography wholly banned. I of course know how to still find it, so where there is a will...
I am all for debating moral guidance at some level of governance. One could argue chaplains is one acceptable aspect of such though of course very different.
You don't want to open tha
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:1)
Reddit is also not marketed as porn website. Twitter literally only exists to create anger and discourage any long form conversation or explicitly does away with idea of explaining one self.
The fact is right in front of you and no amount of arguing will make it false. Facebook is targeted because it didn't cooperate with Democrats after Trump won.
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Hmmm. . .the former alleged president won? And I suppose all those Republican judges that threw out his specious claims of "stealing" were in on the conspiracy. Those bastards!
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:2)
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:2)
I was. Facebook is under scrutiny since 2016.
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Facebook is targeted because it didn't cooperate with Democrats after Trump won.
So when will Q swoop in and save us? Tell us, Obi Wan!
Also, did Mexico ever pay for that wall? Asking for a friend.
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PROTIP: Puberty is the event with which humans become interested in sex, love and hence porn too. (The equivalent to waning off, food and then cooking shows. ;)
Arbitrary age definitions made up by partially literal organized child rapists, are invalid, and if anything, deliberate harm.
It's just that we keep grown-ups and teens apart, to let them ease into it among each other, and avoid all to easy manipulation by more experienced humans. Which is mostly justified, but partially also because we deliberately
The real fear... (Score:2)
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My ultimate discovery was that porn is a much more realistic take on our human desire to reproduce than the so-called "family friendly" narrative which society force feeds us growing up.
Well, most people would rather engage in pornographic behavior than in "family friendly" behavior.
Re:Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Straw-man, saying one particular thing is bad does not at all suggest that nothing else is bad.
Facebook is just facing extra criticism lately because of revelations that they actually have hard data on how terrible their services are and probably even know how they could make it better but Zuckerberg refuses to do so.
Cf. to the tobacco companies that knew exactly how terrible smoking is and not only didn't try to mitigate that harm but took steps to make their products even more addictive than before.
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:2)
So you know the meaning if strawman?
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:2)
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Utter rubbish. Zuck is by far the largest single shareholder of the firm. The board is toothless. However, it is clear the sheep just don't care. Convinced that the world is interested in their every meal, vacuous thought or bowel movement, they are eager to trade their personal data for a taste of narcissism. And parasites like Facebook/Twitter/etc are happy to oblige.
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Cf. to the tobacco companies that knew exactly how terrible smoking is and not only didn't try to mitigate that harm
Cigarettes are literally poison. The only way you'd mitigate the harm would be to stop selling them, and no for-profit business is going to willingly close up shop for the greater good.
Facebook isn't an intrinsically toxic product. People are just nasty to each other online, and that's because humans are an inherently aggressive and territorial species.
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Facebook is just facing extra criticism lately because of revelations that they actually have hard data on how terrible their services are and probably even know how they could make it better but Zuckerberg refuses to do so.
Isn't this conflating cause with effect though? Hypothetically, it would seem that the _least malicious_ ad-funded social network would have a design something like this: You can add people you know to your network (if they accept the connection request). You can choose to follow businesses or news outlets you like, or are curious about. You can explore the nodes in your friends' networks (if they permit this exploration). When you log in, you see a reverse chronological timeline of everything posted by eve
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That's a classic strawman argument. (Particularly popular with SJWs nowadays.)
Nobody said Facebook was special. So you can relax. :)
Let it be the beacon. A great entry to get a wave of change going. And in your mind, just s/Facebook/social media/.
(In fact Dunbar's number plus the general emotional anonymity that is inherent to the Internet, means that that is even true *by definition*, and there *never* will be any social medium that is not. ... If you want something good, ... well, if that makes him Nostra
Re: won't somebody think about the children? (Score:2)
As it did with cigarette companies, "the government needs to step in,"
Graphic photos of diseased lungs right at the top of every page. That'll stop the over-sharing double quick time.
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While suitably graphic, diseased lungs lack a cause and effect association with social media necessary for personal relevance. I suggest hands with shredded stumps for fingers above a blood smeared phone.
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Yeah, don't infer too much from what hasn't been said. That only works reliably if they have an extensive list and suspiciously omit something that ought have been on there.
Those other platforms certainly are also issues, that was never denied by the article. But since facebook is so large and influential, as well as Zuckerberg being as close to an alien
Re: Yes, ONLY Facebook (Score:1)
Porn, at any age, is only a "problem" for superstitious retards. They grew up in deranged families who taught them to feel shame for their bodies and their normal needs and this crates the mentally ill people who complain about porn online and offline.
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Throw them into the same bag before throwing it into the sea.
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Which makes it a particularly ironic criticism coming from the CEO of Salesforce.
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Large amount of porn in reddit and Twatter are not bad for teen mental health.
Jesus Christ is your view of what makes social media bad misplaced.
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Facebook compared to the others, it is really hard to get the crap removed from your feed.
Slashdot you can know to ignore the comment section of some stores.
Twitter and Reddit seem better at suggestions.
Facebook goes your friends with your crazy political relative. So you must want to see more crap. As well how easy it it to share the crap, that also gives you more likes because it promoted the content.
So the harmless look at your crazy relative pictures of their kids and their accomplishment are way at t
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Advertising (Score:1)
So, Salesforce is in the business of advertising...
and people who communicate directly with each other might, just possibly, interfere with Salesforce' business model...
and, oddly enough, Facebook allows people to bypass Salesforce' advertising..,
Nah, couldn't be any conflict of interest there,...
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You worked really hard to drag that one out of your ass, didn't you? ;)
I suggest looking up "viral marketing".
Yes, that Nutella meme and that indestructible Nokia meme were both ad campaigns. So is the bacon meme, very likely. As are many memes. Sorry to tell you.
Getting people to talk about you is the single most effective marketing tool.
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However, strictly speaking Facebook is not in the advertising business. That might be what they want the regulators, Congress and the general public to believe, but that is not how they market themselves to the companies that advertise on their platform. Instead - without using these words - they make claims that show that they consider themselves to be in the manipu
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"They understand and use memes and emotional or psychological triggers to manipulate their user base in a way that goes *way* beyond advertising. "
This makes Zuck Minister of Propaganda. The suit fits him so well.
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Facebook is not in the advertising business. That might be what they want the regulators, Congress and the general public to believe, but that is not how they market themselves to the companies that advertise on their platform. Instead - without using these words - they make claims that show that they consider themselves to be in the manipulation business. They develop massively detailed profiles of their target audience. They understand and use memes and emotional or psychological triggers to manipulate their user base in a way that goes *way* beyond advertising.
No. Absolutely not. Advertising is explicitly about manipulating people into making poor decisions. Facebook is merely the latest iteration of that.
There are fundamentally two kinds of advertising, the kind that makes people feel bad because they don't have something, and the kind that makes people feel good because they do have something. The former is designed to induce first purchases, and the latter is designed to induce additional purchases. But both kinds are (again, fundamentally) based upon making y
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I see the challenge you're making here and in a limited sense I agree with you. However, in this case I think you are over-simplifying.
Traditional advertising develops a campaign based on a a target demographic, identifies the placement and format of advertisements, runs a campaign, captures the impact on sales, refines the approach, rinse and repeat. No argument from me th
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No. Absolutely not. Advertising is explicitly about manipulating people into making poor decisions.
Well, it's about manipulating people into making a decision, but not necessarily a bad one.
It may or may not be a good decision, but the end goal is that you behave, buy, or consume something in such a way that it benefits them. That's their definition of "good".
I concede that advertising probably results in more bad decisions than good ones but it's not really about bad or good for the advertisers, it's just about gettin' yo' money. They'll be just as happy taking your cash irrespective of whether the deci
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um (Score:1)
[N]owadays the human race seems even more abhorrent, and in many more twisted and amplified ways, and it's because of Facebook, the biggest and least accountable communications and media platform in history.
Facebook is a glorified blog. Hutus didn't need FB to hack Tutsis to death, nor has any previous human atrocity for thousands of years needed FB.
Re: um (Score:2)
EVERY kind of social media (Score:5, Insightful)
I define social media by the fact that it does not allow for structured discussions. There is no discussion trees, no quoting and you are limited in the amount of text that you can write. Sometimes even hyperlinks are not allowed and actively censored.
This leads to people not being able to discuss and instead they are forced yell at each other.They see statements and are forced to view them outside ANY context and as such are prone to knee-jerk reactions. The rhetoric equivalent of a drive-by-shooting.
On the other hand, they make it impossible, even when there is a notification function, to jump to that point of interest and easily refamiliarize yourself with what's been going on.
Facebook is especially guilty of this. When I still had an account, it used to be that I would get a notification about my friends posting in large "threads". Upon clicking, I would NEVER actually get directed to that post. Just somewhere in that thread... at hundreds of replies, it was impossible to find the context. Especially since they would not let you see all the messages... you got a window of like 20 around the one you were directed to... You had to click "show more messages" dozens of times to get the big picture. So you didn't get the big picture, usually. All I could do is abort or participate by exploding over some "idiocy" that just flew past my vision.
On phpBB or vBulletin, I was easily able to follow ten separate discussions at once and carry sub discussions with several people PER topic. Social media has done all it could to make that impossible.
The like systems meanwhile give you tiny dopamine spikes so you'll come back.
So tl:dr, social media makes you, on purpose, dopamine resistant and thus addicted AND keeps you under constant stress and anger.
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I define social media by the fact that it does not allow for structured discussions. There is no discussion trees, no quoting and you are limited in the amount of text that you can write.
Fb threads, though only to three levels total. Nothing prevents you from quoting people if you are not too lazy to do it the old way, with quotation marks. You are not really limited in the amount of text you can write, as you can write multiple comments in a row. So I guess Facebook is not social media to you? Nice worthless definition there, sport.
On the other hand, they make it impossible, even when there is a notification function, to jump to that point of interest and easily refamiliarize yourself with what's been going on.
That's a valid complaint, as Facebook really is horrible at this. But that's because they're generally incompetent. Lots of stuff doesn't work right on their si
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A discussion three levels deep isn't a discussion at all.
And having to do it the old-fashioned way means most people don't do it even if you do. That still leaves you clueless to which post somebody else replied a lot of the times.
As for your last argument: It may have started out as incompetence... then they noticed it worked for getting views. So any and all drive to get better immediately died.
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A discussion three levels deep isn't a discussion at all.
Says you. I've had plenty of conversations on Facebook, some of them perfectly serious, and I was able to follow the thread of conversation. In fact, we managed to do this on USENET before trn even existed. The problem is you.
Re: EVERY kind of social media (Score:2)
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Technically, not a whole lot differentiates usenet posts and email messages.
Sure, they have essentially the same format. I've used UUCP plenty, run some nodes etc., so I'm well-acquainted with both. Literally all of the sorting and threading is client-side, except separation by group.
I'm not saying USENET wasn't superior to Facebook in terms of threaded discussion, or in lots of other ways in fact. I'm saying it's entirely possible to have full-fledged conversations there, and that it does have threading features.
Frankly, USENET threads used to get way more nested than was actually
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A discussion three levels deep isn't a discussion at all.
Wow. That's ridiculously untrue.
Frankly, it displays a rather breathtaking level of ignorance.
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On the other hand, they make it impossible, even when there is a notification function, to jump to that point of interest and easily refamiliarize yourself with what's been going on.
That's a valid complaint, as Facebook really is horrible at this. But that's because they're generally incompetent
This is where you go in the wrong direction. The messages coming from the whistle-blowers and insiders are that this is not the case. Everything on Facebook is by design and its designed to make sure you are pumped up and remain engaged on Facebook. The point is - there is no dirty trick they won't engage in to keep people coming back for another hit of dopamine.
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Everything on Facebook is by design
Look, it would be foolish to assume that everything they do is an accident, but it's at least equally foolish to assume that everything they do is on purpose. They have clearly fucked up many times, and will obviously fuck up again. You're ascribing a level of competence to Facebook that they simply do not possess.
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I'm not some fruit-cake conspiracy theorist, but given that they employ buildings full of phycologists and UX designers I find it hard to believe that their comment structure is accidental, even if some elements are. I can't remember if I posted my other comment, but is it also coincidence that hitting return posts a comment - a result more likely to lead to more, shorter, less nuanced comments. Yet for actual posts, hitting return gives you a line break - allowing for longer and more engaging initial posts
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Obviously they want to maximize engagement. But most facebook comments are short, and hitting return SHOULD submit them. You can get a newline with shift-enter, if you want one.
The real psychological manipulation facebook engages in comes when deciding what to show you. Everything else is negligible compared to the way they deliberately withhold content from you that you want to see, and instead show you things they think will piss you off.
This is, of course, what slashdot does with front page stories. The
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Everything else is negligible compared to the way they deliberately withhold content from you that you want to see, and instead show you things they think will piss you off.
I can't argue with that.
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"This leads to people not being able to discuss and instead they are forced yell at each other."
Oh please, they were "forced" to yell at each other on the intertubes as soon as they realized they could yell at someone and escape any repercussions, i.e., email.
Re: EVERY kind of social media (Score:2)
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One word in your last sentence deserves a strong emphasis: Social media makes you, on purpose [nypost.com] , dopamine resistant and thus addicted AND keeps you under constant stress and anger.
And that's why I agree government intervention is necessary.
Remember the internet back in the 90's? Where it cost money to run servers to host sites, and the more popular the site, the more money it cost? Companies trying to provide information found it very difficult to maintain a website, because it was a drain on their finan
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And that's why I agree government intervention is necessary.
Yeah, and next they can set limits on gaming and Netflix, because fuck the freedom to decide how to spend your own free time, right? You can always just move to China if you truly believe the government knows what's best for you.
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So tl:dr, social media makes you, on purpose, dopamine resistant and thus addicted AND keeps you under constant stress and anger.
It could also just be inept design principles. Google pushed this hard with their "Material Design" principles, where all the features you'd expect to have are stripped out and what little functionality remains is all hidden behind a hamburger menu.
It's clean and modern to strip out all the functionality that you anticipate to be rarely utilized by most of your users. (and it's also idiotic)
Re:EVERY kind of social media (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion the main issue with social media is the many to many communication.
Quickly you get to people talking to people they don't know, without context. Then the people you talk to become "names on a screen" so you don't empathize with them which is never good for good communication.
Also text is pretty bad at communicating nuance in discourse. And that is not helped with one line responses people make online.
Social media, not the best place for discussing complex social issue.
Though pretty good for entertainment or for quick low stake information.
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I define social media by the fact that it does not allow for structured discussions.
Cool story, but completely and utterly wrong. I suggest you adopt the actual definition of social media, the one which has nothing at all to do with structure or discussion. That way when you talk to other people you will be speaking the same language.
Slashdot is social media, and Facebook / Reddit / Twitter do all allow for structured discussions if you every actually bothered to look more closely.
It's All New Cigarettes. (Score:2)
So far this week I've heard: Exxon used the Cigarette lobby playbook. Big Pharma was the new big tobacco. Facebook is the new tobacco.
The hyperbole kills me. On the other hand, you could probably say this about almost all of the large corporations. They all use the "Tobacco Playbook." In America, that is just known as "Business as Usual."
--
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. - Colin Powell
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I seriously doubt that you could even define what "Socialist Media" is.
But go ahead, I need a good laugh.
Clarificarion (Score:2, Informative)
> [N]owadays the human race seems even more abhorrent, and in many more twisted and amplified ways, and it's because of Facebook,
Let's be clear here: the human race *is* abhorrent in many twisted ways. Facebook has just made it uncomfortably obvious. Regulating Facebook is about returning the veil of ignorance over our self-awareness.
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Maybe your being facetious (or maybe too much time on social media has skewed your perceptions.), but I totally disagree.
I travel round pubs for work and meet a vast cross section of people. Very few of them are abhorrent. So the question is really - are they being more abhorrent online, or is a small minority simply being way more visible? In either case, as the article points out, Facebook is deliberately driving growth in abhorrence for profit.
Given that I haven't found it hard to spot this growth in abh
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No mod points to offer, but I agree. Facebook is designed to empower those who are most committed to pushing their point of view on others using the most abhorrent language.
Facebook's engagement algorithms, intentionally or not, reward rapid spread of compelling stories/comments/memes independent of their value or accuracy. Throughout history lies move far more quickly than truth. Facebook's management knows that and has been willfully negligent in empowering spreaders of chaos.
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Most people have an incentive not to show you their abhorrence. Social pressure dictates that they be pleasant to you, and pretend to be nice people. I'm not saying that people aren't voluntarily nice, or that they secretly pretend to be nice. I'm saying that, if most people had the choice to act without consequences, they would act according to their desires and interests. And our emotional state can make these things shift dramatically.
Surely you've gotten extremely angry with someone over a trivial matte
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Interesting points. I wonder then if the argument is purely one of semantics. Most of the things you describe I wouldn't consider abhorrent ('inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant'). I mean, there's a huge range of neutral and negative states before something is abhorrent. Losing your temper over a trivial matter is not abhorrent. Hunting down the other person and turning up at their house with friends and baseball bats is abhorrent (or swatting them). But I disagree that most people would do that. I th
You want government to step in? (Score:2)
Government? The entity that uses Farcebook to siphon your private data you smear all over it?
Good luck with that.
Nice clickbait title, slow news day much? (Score:2)
More tech and less Dicecrap please.
Second-hand Facebook (Score:2)
Re: Second-hand Facebook (Score:1)
If Facebook is "The new cigarettes", then what is the Facebook-equivalent of second-hand smoke?
Communication with Facebook users outside Facebook. Their minds get contaminated with all the crap on Facebook, and part of it gets transferred to non-users. Not as harmful as Facebook itself, but still harmful. Disclaimer: I smoke. I never had Facebook account.
Salesforce is just as bad ... (Score:1)
IMHO Salesforce is just as bad because they host a large proportion of the phishing scam sites.
The addiction surely is (Score:2)
Some people need their daily dose of stupid.
You had me at (Score:1)