If You're Addicted To Facebook, It's Not Your Fault, Former Employee Confessed

Have you ever noticed yourself compulsively checking your news feed on Facebook? If the answer is yes, you should know that this may be no coincidence. Interestingly, a former high-ranking employee at Facebook has admitted that the social giant intentionally makes the platform very addictive.

The confession was made in a hearing on Facebook’s role in radicalizing America through mainstreaming extremism. Tim Kendall, the former head of monetization at the social giant, compared the company’s actions with big tobacco firms that look to make their products the most addictive possible.

“We sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.” And it has gotten worse as the platform now has resulted in the spread of hateful content.”

He admitted:

“The social media services that I and others have built over the past 15 years have served to tear people apart with alarming speed and intensity. At the very least, we have eroded our collective understanding — at worst, I fear we are pushing ourselves to the brink of a civil war.”

If you wonder why people can get addicted to a site, Kendall has an explanation for you, describing how new upgrades make sure Facebook users will always come back.

He said that tobacco firms initially tried to make nicotine sound more important, but that was not enough to help their business grow as fast as they wanted. Therefore, they added methol and sugar to cigarettes so that users could hold the smoke in their lungs for a longer time. As for Facebook, the company added features like photo tagging, status updates, and likes, making reputation and status primary and creating the foundation for the teenage mental health crisis.

Facebook hasn’t responded to requests for comments on the matter.

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