I think of any tech product as a tool similar to a knife. The way knife can be used for cutting vegetables as well as for stabbing someone, similarly a technology can be used for both productive and negative use-cases. It's upto the individual on how they want to use it.
Having said that I agree facebook could have done a better job at solving above difficult problems.
> I think of any tech product as a tool similar to a knife.
Tools are designed for their use-case. A butter knife won’t be useful for stabbing, while a hunting knife will excel at it. An airliner delivers passengers, a bomber delivers destruction. Both are planes, both are tools, and both have wildly different applications.
If you knowingly keep developing a tech product which actively harms people at a societal and individual level, you don’t get to hide behind “it’s just a tool, it can be used for good or bad”. It will be used for whatever you designed it, and Facebook is designed to empower its creator with utter disregard for anyone else. You don’t use Facebook, it uses you.
- an intrusive surveillance system that puts the FBI to shame
- a system of increasingly isolated and toxic echo chambers
- a disinformation and propaganda machine powerful enough to shape public opinion, influence elections, and facilitate civil unrest and extremism
- an "attention economy" where people are encouraged to scroll infinitely so they view more advertisements
- something that makes people feel worse about themselves and generally depressed
etc.