Why These People and Brands Are Fed Up With Facebook

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Throughout the past couple of years, numerous former Facebook contractors, employees and executives have spoken up anonymously and on the record about internal thinking at the company. Some have decided to warn the public about the dangers the platform poses.

Related: A Laid-Off Facebook News Curator Reveals What Fueled 'Trending' Topics

In November 2017, former Facebook vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya spoke negatively about social media platforms during a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

“I feel tremendous guilt,” Palihapitiya said of his contributions at Facebook. “I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of our minds, we kind of knew something bad could happen. … I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. … The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. … We are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion.”

Palihapitiya, who is the founder and CEO of Social Capital and an owner of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, also said during the talk that he doesn’t use tools such as Facebook anymore.

Facebook released a statement following these remarks, according to Wired: “Facebook was a very different company back then and as we have grown we have realized how our responsibilities have grown too.”

Palihapitiya has since walked back his comments:

I made some strong remarks about social media platforms, including Facebook, at an event at Stanford last month that...

Posted by Chamath Palihapitiya on Thursday, December 14, 2017

Early Facebook investor and mentor Roger McNamee has published several op-eds, such as one in The Washington Post that details the need for Facebook to “admit that its algorithms and advertising business model invite attacks by bad actors” and take action to prevent further abuse.”

McNamee reportedly identified attempts to sway the election through Facebook content early on, and he wrote an email to Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg nine days before the 2016 U.S. general election explaining his disappointment and embarrassment for assisting with the company’s success.

Former Facebook privacy manager Sandy Parakilas also published an op-ed in The New York Times on Nov. 19, 2017, titled, “We Can’t Trust Facebook to Regulate Itself.” In it, Parakilas called for government oversight because, he argued, “nothing less than our democracy is at stake.”   

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