Social networks exploit human experience to profit, says Orkut founder

The founder of Orkut, a success on the Brazilian internet until the early 2010s, is not optimistic about social networks. For him, what used to seek unity and empowerment has now become a tool to generate profit, which divides people and leverages fake news.

Orkut Büyükkökten participated this Saturday (12) in the What’s Next auditorium at Campus Party 2022, a technology fair that takes place in São Paulo until next Tuesday (15).

In a lecture with hints of a motivational coach, entitled “Anything goes for the likes? It’s the feeds’ fault”, the Turkish engineer talked about what went wrong on social networks in the last decade.

Today, platforms focus on quantity of engagement over providing a quality experience for their users, he said. This is done through complex algorithms and tools such as feeds, likes, shares and comments.

“Human experience is transformed into data to generate profit,” he says. “A post, no matter how harmful or false, can reach the top of the feeds as long as it generates engagement.”

Orkut also bases its argument on studies that say that excessive use of social networks causes depression and anxiety in young people. As he delved into the matter, however, the online broadcast of the event stalled and only resumed a few minutes later.

The community network without a content feed was created in 2004 by the engineer and decommissioned ten years later. She achieved great success in Brazil, until Facebook took over the internet around 2011.

“Because humans make decisions in predictable ways, companies can use that to manipulate them,” he said. “Social networks are here to stay. That’s where the optimized algorithms are. But we can reverse this negative impact.”

Then he used the expression “carpe diem” (seize the day, in Latin) and made reference to the movie “Dead Poets Society”, from 1989, to say that people cannot obey the algorithms of the big platforms.

How he intends to reverse this negative trend, however, remains a mystery. Since April, the site orkut.com has been showing, in English and Portuguese, a message from Büyükkökten. In it, he says he is “building something new” and mocks the functioning of the networks commanded by Mark Zuckerberg.

The text goes through his personal history and pokes at controversial points on Facebook and Instagram.

“We worked hard to make orkut.com a community where you could meet real people who shared your interests, not just people who liked and commented on your photos”, he says, in a reference to the model of the most popular social networks today.

“Our online tools should serve us, not divide us. They should protect our data, not sell it. They should give us hope, not fear and anxiety. The best social network is the one that enriches your life, but doesn’t manipulate it.” , says. “And that’s why I’m building something new. See you soon!” However, no news has been released since then.