Facebook is a disease

By Staff Writer | 04 Apr 2019 at 08:26hrs
Linus Torvalds
Linux creator and principal developer Linus Torvalds has expressed his disdain for social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Speaking in an interview with Linux Journal, Torvalds labelled the platforms a "disease", arguing that they seem to enable bad behaviour.

"I absolutely detest modern 'social media' – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behaviour," Torvalds said.

"The whole 'liking' and 'sharing' model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control."

"In fact, it's all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage."

Torvalds said the idea of sharing opinions and ideas anonymously did not lend itself to reasonable discourse and that anonymity is important if you're a whistleblower, but your rants on social media should not be visible unless they are attributed to you personally.

This follows a recent call-to-action from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who urged students at Stanford University to delete their Facebook accounts.

Acton criticised the profit models used by Facebook and said the company was not capable of properly curating content on its platform.

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