{"id":27877,"date":"2017-11-11T17:08:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T22:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27877"},"modified":"2017-11-11T17:09:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T22:09:24","slug":"how-facebook-and-google-threaten-public-health-and-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27877","title":{"rendered":"How Facebook and Google threaten public health \u2013\u00a0and democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Facebook and Google threaten public health \u2013\u00a0and democracy<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The sad truth is that Facebook and Google have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. And this has come at a cost to our health<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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\u2018Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on.\u2019 Photograph: Anadolu Agency\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I<\/span><\/span>n an interview this week with Axios, Facebook\u2019s original president, Sean Parker, admitted that the company intentionally sought to addict users and expressed regret at the damage being inflicted on children.<\/div>\n
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This admission, by one of the architects of Facebook, comes on the heels of last week\u2019s hearings by Congressional committees about Russian interference in the 2016 election, where the general counsels of Facebook, Alphabet<\/a> (parent of Google and YouTube), and Twitter attempted to deflect responsibility for manipulation of their platforms.<\/p>\n

The term \u201caddiction\u201d is no exaggeration. The average consumer checks his or her smartphone 150 times a day, making more than 2,000 swipes and touches. The applications they use most frequently are owned by Facebook<\/a> and Alphabet, and the usage of those products is still increasing.<\/p>\n

In terms of scale, Facebook and YouTube are similar to Christianity and Islam respectively. More than 2 billion people use Facebook every month, 1.3 billion check in every day. More than 1.5 billion people use YouTube. Other services owned by these companies also have user populations of 1 billion or more.<\/p>\n

Facebook and Alphabet are huge because users are willing to trade privacy and openness for \u201cconvenient and free.\u201d Content creators resisted at first, but user demand forced them to surrender control and profits to Facebook and Alphabet.<\/p>\n

The sad truth is that Facebook and Alphabet have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. They have consciously combined persuasive techniques developed by propagandists and the gambling industry with technology in ways that threaten public health and democracy.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Facebook and Google threaten public health \u2013\u00a0and democracy The sad truth is that Facebook and Google have behaved irresponsibly in the pursuit of massive profits. And this has come at a cost to our health \u2018Substance cannot compete with sensation, which must be amplified constantly, lest consumers get distracted and move on.\u2019 Photograph: Anadolu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4068,16980,16979,204,1493,378,3771,3854,16977,16978,819,3931,4318],"class_list":["post-27877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-addiction","tag-alphabet","tag-axios","tag-democracy","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-guardian","tag-public-health","tag-roger-mcnamee","tag-sean-parker","tag-twitter","tag-youtube","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27877"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27880,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27877\/revisions\/27880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}