I've said it before and I'll say it again - social media is not the root of the problem here. I believe that there could be a great social media platform that respects its users and their privacy. But the minute you let marketing and sales into the room the game changes. They are the ones that see their users as the advert dollars, not the people building the platform. The highly paid executives whose only goal is to squeeze every last penny out for their own personal gain are the issue. This is a systemic problem in technology today: when the goal is profit first, the end user is lost as the target market.

I'm working for a small company currently and am watching the same thing play out on a much smaller scale. The company was growing organically at a good clip. We've had zero customer churn in 6+ years and service some of the largest companies in their respective verticals. Company fires the current CEO based on board recommendations, hires a CRO who was in sales at Oracle for 7 years, CRO brings in his overpriced underlings to "manage", CRO starts refocusing all concerns around the sales process (starting with making everyone spend an inordinate amount of time learning/relearning MEDDPICC) and tying up hours of the work week in unproductive oversight meetings. Now I haven't been here long but I've seen this play out before. CRO will sit here for 2+ years and milk it into the ground blaming everyone for every failure but himself. He'll even throw his guys under the bus if needed (which is why they're there in the first place - ownership buffer). We're starting to see product issues because of the focal shift internally and the distraction this guy is creating. It's so unfortunate - I've yet to hear the CRO talk about a customer outside of the subject matter of revenue. It's sick and twisted. These types of "executives" are narcissists through and through and they are the toxic seed that kills great companies.