Social-Media Must Confront Downsides of Scale, Instagram Co-Founder Says
November 14 2018 - 12:49AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif.- -- Social media platforms have reached a
crucial point where the executives overseeing them need to find
ways to anticipate and block bad actors, Instagram co-founder Kevin
Systrom said.
Over the last eight years, social-media services like Instagram
and Facebook Inc. have attracted an unparalleled number of users.
Instagram has more than a billion users, while Facebook's monthly
user base exceeds 2 billion.
"The reach is so tremendous that it's almost like the laws of
physics no longer apply," Mr. Systrom said at The Wall Street
Journal's WSJ Tech D.Live conference on Tuesday. "Now that we're at
this scale, what are the implications?"
Problems like the Russian meddling in elections and the
Cambridge Analytica crisis earlier this year underscore how
important it is for executives to grapple with the downsides of
their platforms, said Mr. Systrom, who recently left the company he
founded and plans to start another venture with his Instagram
co-founder. Doctored photos and videos aren't convincing yet, but
they're "getting on the margin of real, " he added.
Last week, the gunman who killed 12 people at a Southern
California bar was posting on Facebook and Instagram immediately
before and during the massacre.
All these together should put the growing social-media industry
on notice, he said. "You start to realize...how important it's
going to be for the future of the world that we police these things
well, we take it very seriously and put real resources against
solving the problems," he said.
Mr. Systrom and his Instagram co-founder, Mike Krieger, resigned
from the company they founded in September after mounting tension
between the pair and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, the
Journal previously reported. Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for
$1 billion.
When asked about his departure, Mr. Systrom said he had no
regrets about his six years at Facebook. But, he added, "at heart,
I want to be building new things and six years is a long time."
While at Instagram, Mr. Systrom championed a new standalone
video app tied to Instagram called IGTV. At the WSJ Tech D.Live
conference, he said he wouldn't be surprised if adoption of the app
took time because it was a bet that people would "consume video
vertically on their mobile phones."
"I'm sad I didn't get to work more on it," he said.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 14, 2018 00:34 ET (05:34 GMT)
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