Facebook whistleblower and director of ‘The Social Dilemma’ talk about social media’s impact

Though Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels have connected relatives and  long-lost friends, provided platforms for oppressed voices, helped people explore their identities and see perspectives and parts of the world removed from their day-to-day lives, there have also been negative consequences.Recently, two leading critics of social media sat down with Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, to explore the potential harms the popular platforms can cause.  Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower who testified before Congress that the social media giant should be subject to more government regulation, and Jeff Orlowski-Yang, director of the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma,” discussed how social media is unraveling personal privacy and society. But that wasn’t what the platforms set out to do, according to Orlowski-Yang.“That was just the unintended consequence of a particular design and a particular business model that grew far beyond [the companies’] expectations and their hopes and desires,” Orlowski-Yang said.It ’s not a new topic. But the speakers gave the audience insight into the well-known issues that for now, evade a workable solution. The event was sponsored bythe Common Experience at UCLA, which each year selects a title for the UCLA community to read, listen to or watch together that could inspire action. This year ’s choice was “The Social Dilemma.”Orlowski-Yang drew...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news