Facebook defends itself against critics of social media

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc on Friday struck back against scientific researchers and tech industry insiders who have criticized the world´s biggest social media network and its competitors for transforming how people behave and express emotion.

Facebook, in a corporate blog post, said that social media can be good for people´s well-being if they use the technology in a way that is active, such as messaging with friends, rather than passive, such as scrolling through a feed of other people´s posts.

It was the second time this week that Facebook had published such a rebuttal, signaling a new willingness to defend a business model that translates users´ attention into advertising revenue.

On Tuesday, the company released a statement saying that former executive Chamath Palihapitiya, who at a conference publicly blamed Facebook for "destroying how society works," had been gone for six years and was unfamiliar with the company´s recent efforts to improve.

Palihapitiya on Thursday revised his view, writing in a Facebook post that the service "is a force for good in the world.

"Online services such as Facebook and its Instagram unit, Twitter Inc, Snap Inc´s Snapchat and Alphabet Inc´s YouTube are under attack for their seemingly addictive nature and perceived promotion of anti-social behaviors.

A study in March by U.S. researchers found that using such services at least two hours daily was correlated with reporting feelings of social isolation.