| Letztes Update:

Mehr Gründe für Euren persönlichen Facebook-Exit gefällig?

"Director of Monetization" - der Jobtitel eines Mannes, der mal bei Facebook gearbeitet hat und sich heute dafür schämt. Sehr zurecht, wie man gleich lesen wird. Allerdings fällt es mir schwer, Leuten ihre Reue abzunehmen, wenn sie sich einem Laden wie Facebook andienen, und dann noch freiwillig einen Job machen, dessen erstes und wesentliches Ziel ist, mit allen Mitteln Geld rauszuquetschen. Aber gehen wir mal um seinetwillen davon aus, dass Tim Kendall tatsächlich so etwas wie Reue empfindet. Benefit of the doubt.

Tim hat in einem Hearing vor dem "House Committee on Energy and Commerce" ein Statement von sich gegeben, das Facebook - aus meiner Sicht wirklich kriminelle - Methoden vorwirft, die Menschen aktiv und bewusst Schaden zuzufügen. Ich zitiere mal eine lange Passage:

[...] To [mine as much attention as humanly possible], we didn’t simply create something useful and fun. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.

Tobacco companies initially just sought to make nicotine more potent. But eventually that wasn’t enough to grow the business as fast as they wanted. And so they added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.

Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs. But that incendiary content alone wasn’t enough. To continue to grow the user base and in particular, the amount of time and attention users would surrender to Facebook, they needed more.

Tobacco companies added ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to the brain. Extreme, incendiary content—think shocking images, graphic videos, and headlines that incite outrage—sowed tribalism and division. And this result has been unprecedented engagement -- and profits.

Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right person, at the right time, in the exact right way... that is their ammonia. Social media preys on the most primal parts of your brain. The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions— it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage.

When you see something you agree with, you feel compelled to defend it. When you see something you don’t agree with, you feel compelled to attack it. People on the other side of the issue have the same impulses. The cycle continues with the algorithm in the middle happily dealing arms to both sides in an endless war of words and misinformation. All the while, the technology is getting smarter and better at provoking a response from you.These algorithms have brought out the worst in us. They’ve literally rewired our brains so that we’re detached from reality and immersed in tribalism.This is not by accident. It’s an algorithmically optimized playbook to maximize user attention -- and profits.

[...]

These services are making us sick. These services are dividing us. It’s time we take account of the damage. It’s time we put in place the necessary measures to protect ourselves—and our country.

Hmm, man müsste Facebook zwingen (analog zu den Zigarettenschachteln mit ihren Bildern von verwüsteten Lungen und Zungen) Bilder von verwüsteten Menschen, Städten oder sowas einzublenden. Permanent, auf jeder Seite, in jeder App.