Friday, May 10, 2019

The Chris Hughes apostasy | The Interface

A socially awkward alumni club... Also see Chris Hughes Essay on Breakup Draws an Objection From Facebook | NYT
"Consider how many early Facebook executives have now come out against Facebook’s existence in its current form:
  • Moskovitz is a top donor to Color of Change, which are campaigning to have Zuckerberg fired. (On Twitter, Moskovitz told me (On Twitter, Moskovitz told me I had mischaracterized this donation, saying it was intended solely to aid Democrats. When I asked what his argument against a breakup was, he said: “If the goal is to improve democracy we should break up Fox and Sinclair first.” He later deleted the tweet.)
  • Justin Rosenstein, who led development of Facebook’s like button, warned about the negative effects of social networks on individual psychology. (Rosenstein co-founded the business collaboration company Asana with Moskovitz.)
  • Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, called himself a “conscientious objector” to the social network. “It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways,” he said. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
  • Chamath Palihapitiya, who led Facebook’s all-important growth team in its early days, told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to take "a hard break” from social media. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said. He added that he felt “tremendous guilt” over his time at the company, before walking those comments back after getting an angry phone call from Sheryl Sandberg.
  • Brian Acton, who co-founded WhatsApp, was not an early executive at Facebook. But he famously told people to delete Facebook upon leaving the campaign."
The Chris Hughes apostasy | The Interface

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