Should social media companies be held liable for creating products that make people hate each other? Harvard Law School Distinguished Fellow Vivek Wadhwa says yes they should. Wadhwa says that tech companies should be held liable for creating defective products and he specifically names WhatsApp and Facebook as defective.
Harvard Law School Distinguished Fellow Vivek Wadhwa called out Facebook as a defective product in an interview on Fox Business:
They Are Creating Filter Bubbles That Make Us Hate Each Other
Imagine if you had a car that kept crashing or a washing machine at home that chewed up your clothes. Any product that was defective you would hold the manufacturer’s liable. Their technologies are creating lots of problems. They are creating these filter bubbles that are making us hate each other literally. A filter bubble is where conservatives only get extreme conservative views and the liberals only get extreme liberal views and they are getting ripped apart.
They Are Using Psychology Against Us Like Rats in a Cage
They are also making us get addicted. They are using psychology against us. Like rats in a cage you give them pellets they eat it and if you stop giving them the pellets they become desperate so that whenever you give them something they start overeating. This is like a sociology experiment from the 1940’s, they are replicating it to make us addictive. We keep checking our smartphones, it’s the reward we get for checking our smartphones. At work, we have Slack on our machines and we are checking it. At home, your kids are swiping left and swiping right. Love has become a transaction.
The Tech Industry is Dominating Our Happiness
The entire system is rigged against us and the tech industry is dominating our happiness. We should hold them accountable. Take WhatsApp which is the most used application in Brazil. With WhatsApp, there is no way to monitor it and there have been dozens of deaths because of misinformation spread on WhatsApp. You can’t trace back the source of fake news to the originator. The product is defective. It is really dangerous and is like having a car without seatbelts.
Facebook is a Defective Product
Facebook is also a defective product because of the way they are feeding you news. Facebook was okay when it started as a social media thing. Later on, when they adding the news feed, they started what news you are going to read. That’s where the filter bubbles come in.
When They Serve Us Fake News They Should be Liable
What do you do if a car is defective? You hold the manufacturer liable. You allow consumers to sue them and make them liable there. Why not the tech industry? Why should the tech industry get away with having defective products the way it does? When they serve us fake news they should be liable for that.