Answer questions from the articles, and Summarize article

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 1/8

DOW JONES, A NEWS CORP COMPANY

DJIA ▲ 26616.71 0.85% Nasdaq ▲ 7505.77 1.28% U.S. 10 Yr ▼ 0�32 Yield 2.662% Crude Oil ▲ 66.24 1.11% Euro ▲ 1.2427 0.24%

This copy is for your personal, non­commercial use only. To order presentation­ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will­facebook­sacrifice­billions­in­revenue­to­save­its­users­1515326401

TECH KEYWORDS

Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society Facebook’s chief has signaled he will do what it takes to curb the social network’s negative e�ects—but

how far will he go?

|

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with entrepreneurs and innovators at a round-table discussion in St. Louis on

Nov. 9. PHOTO: JEFF ROBERSON�ASSOCIATED PRESS

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 2/8

When scientists started linking cigarettes to cancer, the tobacco industry silenced them—only acknowledging the extent of the truth decades later, under legal duress.

Imagine if, instead, they had given these researchers license to publish papers, or even taken the information to heart and crippled their own moneymaking machines for the good of their addicted users.

No one has accused Facebook of causing cancer, but Mark Zuckerberg now stands at a similar crossroads.

In the face of pressure brought by a growing roster of Facebook investors and former executives, many of whom have publicly stated that Facebook is both psychologically addictive and harmful to democracy, the Facebook founder and chief executive has pledged to “fix” Facebook by doing several things, including “making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.”

Mr. Zuckerberg has also recently told investors he wants his company “to encourage meaningful social interactions,” adding that “time spent is not a goal by itself.”

So here’s the multibillion-dollar question: Is he willing to sacrifice revenue for the well- being of Facebook’s two-billion-plus users?

Mr. Zuckerberg has already said the company will hire so many content moderators to deal with fake news and Russian interference that it will hurt profit, but whether he will go further and change the basic fabric of Facebook’s algorithms in the name of users’ mental health, he has yet to say.

Jan. 7, 2018 7�00 a.m. ET

By

Christopher Mims

FB 1.34% ▲

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 3/8

Clearly, Facebook, a company Mr. Zuckerberg started when he was in college, has

changed so much that even its creator is playing catch-up to the reality of its globe-

spanning power.

In June, he changed the company’s mission from “connecting” the world to bringing

the world closer together. He said he used to think giving people a voice would make

the world better on its own, “but our society is still divided. Now I believe we have a

responsibility to do even more.”

In December, Facebook researchers surveyed the scientific literature and their own

work and publicly acknowledged that while direct communication and sharing

between individuals and small groups on Facebook can have positive effects, merely

lurking and scrolling through others’ status updates makes people unhappy.

In a survey conducted in early 2017, the U.K.-based Royal Society for Public Health

asked 1,500 young people to evaluate the five biggest social networks, to measure

whether they are good or bad for mental health. The results showed all but one service

Facebook researchers have acknowledged that while direct sharing between individuals and small groups on

Facebook can have positive e�ects, merely scrolling through others’ updates makes people unhappy. PHOTO: ISTOCK

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 4/8

had a negative effect on mental health. Facebook, Twitter , Snapchat and the Facebook-

owned Instagram all pushed survey participants to contrast their lives with others, a

phenomenon known as social comparison. The exception was YouTube, in part because

the dynamic is usually one-to-many communication, with person-to-person socializing

happening in comments.

Another study, conducted by researchers at Tel Aviv University, also established that

Facebook can cause people to feel their own lives don’t measure up to those of others.

Interestingly, the effect is especially pronounced in young people, but diminishes with

age: It was virtually nonexistent in those over age 30, says Ohad Barzilay, one of the

researchers.

Social networks can also make us miserable by convincing us that whenever we’re

away from our friends, we’re missing out on social bonding occurring among them,

says Jacqueline Ri�in, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University who collaborated on a

Researchers in a survey of young people early last year found four of the �ive biggest social networks—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat—prompted users to engage in social comparison, contrasting their own lives with others’. Shown, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel, in Cannes, France, in June 2015. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 5/8

study of the fear of missing out, or FOMO. The misery can kick in even if what we are

experiencing—an awesome vacation, perhaps—is objectively better than what our

friends are up to.

Ms. Ri�in’s work indicates that FOMO isn’t about envy but something far more primal:

If our kith and kin are bonding without us, we might soon find ourselves left out of the

tribe.

Studies suggest that how much you use social media is at least as significant as how

you use it. This has been true of everything humans consume for all of history, so it is

hardly a surprise.

“Let’s pretend that one of the findings that comes out of this research is that the best

thing for people would be to batch their Facebook use and only look at it once a week,”

says Robert Kraut, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied online

communities for more than 20 years and has collaborated with researchers at

Facebook, publishing work derived from Facebook’s own data. “What would be the

business consequence if the research came to that conclusion?”

We might soon find out. Facebook likely has the power to push us away from harmful

ways of using the service—if it wants to. Facebook already uses some of the most

sophisticated artificial intelligence known to humanity to stimulate us to “engage”

with its product and advertisements. Facebook’s public statements indicate it thinks it

can use those same tools to keep users from overindulging.

Facebook already is taking steps to change parts of its service—primarily the News

Feed, the beating heart of Facebook’s success since its introduction in 2006. As

outlined in a recent blog post by the company’s chief researcher, those steps include

things that Facebook itself believes will reduce engagement on the service, including

hiding clickbait and fake news and promoting posts from friends.

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 6/8

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 7/8

Conveniently, Facebook is now pushing the aspects of its services that it and others

argue are better for our mental health. As users continue to share less of their own lives

on Facebook, the social network is pushing them to join and use its Groups function.

The company is also showing more ads in its Messenger app, one of the places where

the person-to-person communication it suddenly favors takes place.

Facebook is built on the idea of bringing the world closer together, as its mission

statement so boldly pronounces. The irony that Mr. Zuckerberg must confront is that

the very means of that connection—what the company euphemistically calls

engagement, but which experts say is more accurately described as addiction—appears

to be detrimental to the humans whose thriving he seems earnestly to want to

promote. Unlike CEOs who in the past were confronted with the harms of their

products, Mr. Zuckerberg seems more ready to acknowledge them.

Facebook might well live up to Mr. Zuckerberg’s stated goals. Or, it could bow to

economic logic: In the first nine months of 2017 alone, the company’s “engaging” News

Feed algorithm helped drive revenue up 47%.

Write to Christopher Mims at [email protected]

Can families learn to live in harmony with technology? Join the conversation in our new Facebook group: Parenting in the Age of Tech

Appeared in the January 8, 2018, print edition as 'Facebook’s Mr. Fix-It Confronts Dilemma.'

Copyright ©2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non­commercial use only. To order presentation­ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

A screenshot of a vacation post on Instagram. PHOTO: INSTAGRAM

1/27/2018 Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-facebook-sacrifice-billions-in-revenue-to-save-its-users-1515326401 8/8