Paul Hosford: Is Ireland now suffering the hangover from wining and dining social media giants?

Through whistleblowers and our own eyes, we now know that social media platforms are not the bright hopes they and their founders once claimed

The owners of the most popular social media platforms have long since realised that their business models are based around feeding a serotonin hit that comes quicker with conflict, division, and inflammatory content than by simply offering a place to see friends’ holiday photos.

In her tell-all book Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work, the former director of public policy at Facebook, Sarah Wynn-Williams, tells some stories about Ireland.

The book, which sees the Kiwi Ms Wynn-Williams transformed from a wide-eyed believer in the possibility of social media to a herald on the dangers of the platforms and the apathy and ego of its founders, largely centres on the work of the Facebook policy team, which oversaw relations with governments across the world. In one section, Ms Wynn-Williams claims that her boss, the company’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, was given a phone by the government.