Sean Parker: Facebook was designed to exploit human "vulnerability"
Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and former president of Facebook, said the thought process behind building the social media giant was: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" Parker was interviewed by Axios' Mike Allen Wednesday:
"That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever ... It's a social validation feedback loop ... You're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology ... [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway."
Exclusive scenes for Axios readers from a book out next Tuesday by N.Y. Times writer at large Amy Chozick, "Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling":
"At the election-eve rally in Philadelphia with Bruce Springsteen, Hillary joined Obama onstage. He crouched down a little to kick a step stool closer to her podium. 'When you’re president, it’s gonna be permanently there for you,' Obama whispered in her ear before kissing her cheek and exiting stage right."
An off-record spaghetti dinner for reporters at campaign chairman John Podesta's home in D.C.: "Maggie Haberman sat near the center of the main table. She didn’t have to work the room. Everyone came up to her. "
Email: "Hillary could’ve acknowledged it was a mistake and apologized, but even as I joined the delirium of the scrum, I understood her instinct. She thought using a private email was another nonstory ('the biggest nothing burger') started by the Times and amplified by her political rivals. Every elected official ... used a personal email. Why should she apologize?"
"[T]he day Trump announced he was running, I admitted to a couple of Times editors that I’d watched eight seasons of The Apprentice and that we should do a story about it. They told me political reporters wouldn’t be writing about Trump. 'We have enough candidates to cover,' one editor said. 'Let the TV writers do it.'"
" [O]ur Polish housekeeper, Wanda, ... is so bad at her job that a couple of friends who’ve also used her for years came home early once to find Wanda watching TV in their bed. But she is a solid person and charges eighty dollars to clean a two-bedroom apartment, including laundry. She also happened to clean Don Jr.’s and Eric Trump’s New York apartments. In 2014, Eric and Lara invited Wanda to their wedding at Mar-a-Lago — which, despite what anyone thinks about the Trump sons, was a class-act thing to do."
Go deeper: The cover of tomorrow's N.Y. Times Sunday Review features an adaptation from Amy's book, "'They Were Never Going To Let Me Be President' ... Covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign from before it started to the very last moment."
WashPost review by Carlos Lozada: "It’s a buffet-style book — media criticism here, trail reminiscences there, political analysis and assorted recollections."
