Anti-Social Facebook Managers Addicting Children on Social Media

Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke out repeatedly on the innate social nature of human beings. Before we can talk, we are talked to. Social interaction is firmly rooted in human nature as well as how we are constituted in groups and societies. Whereas Williams called for more compassion to emerge out of our social nature, a political realist might point out that we don’t have to look very closely to find a power-dynamic existing in practically any group. Nietzsche argues in Genealogy of Morals that exploitation naturally exists in how we as a social species are constituted because the will for power is the strongest human instinct. This motive can operate stealthily as compassion and even altruism. The Jansenist priest, Pierre Nicole, wrote an essay in 1677 to point out that what we moderns call enlightened self-interest is nonetheless rooted in self-love even when it is extended in acts of compassion that appear to spring solely from other-regard. On August 26, 2026, a landmark settlement was announced to end a trial in which 47 U.S. member states sued Meta, which owns and operates Facebook. Regardless of whether Meta executives agreed to pay $17 billion just to get rid of the bad publicity or because the accusations were true, the dollar figure alone suggests that Facebook’s management had indeed been intending to manipulate children by addicting them to feeds.  In other words, the company had been short on compassion even under the rubric of social media. Nietzsche would not have been at all surprised at such power being played to extract value from human beings under stealth.

Speaking on the settlement, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones said, “For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health.”[1] The design features, such as unlimited “scrolling” and “likes,” were intentionally put in place to addict kids; that did not come about as an unintended by-product. Although Meta was not required to admit guilt formally, it is reasonable to assume that a business would pay such a hefty penalty as $17 billion were there not something to the case against the company in terms of evidence even of intent. So besides protecting “children from online harm,”[2] the settlement has value societally in exposing the intent to addict at the detriment of even children. The operative perspective at Facebook was likely one oriented to viewing humans for our use-value alone.

It is no accident that extracting use-value from human beings was part of a secret seminar at Stanford University. Also in 2026, Theo Baker, a student at Stanford, publicly exposed the seminar, which was being taught by Justin Lewis-Weber, a CEO in Silicon Valley. In his book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University, Baker reports that the course explicitly taught students how to extract value from people. Gaining utility from people without regard to how they are impacted, whether mentally or physically, stems from self-love manifesting narrowly as selfishness even if under the subterfuge of helping children to be more social with their peers. In other words, the students were learning manipulation tactics that could be used under the subterfuge of altruism. Phoebe Gates, founder of Phia, used the course to recruit employees. In 2026, wire fraud charges were filed against that company.

The upshot from all this is that the public (and elected representatives) knew very little of the sordid mentality underlying Meta’s corporate culture; even just from the $17 billion settlement we can only infer guilt because why else would a company agree to settle at such a cost? Many years earlier, Facebook had been found to have sold user-information to Cambridge Analytic, a political organization, but that was treated as a “one off” rather than as indicative of the way Facebook executives actually did business—and Facebook (or Meta) is a business; it is not social even though its industry is social media.

In terms of business ethics, intentionally or even unintentionally but continuing to addict young users of Facebook and Instagram violates Kant’s “kingdom of ends,” wherein rational beings are (ethically) to be treated not just as means (to one’s own self-interest), but also as ends in themselves. It is by the use of reason, Kant argues, that we assign value to things, so reason itself must have absolute value. A being that has reason thus has absolute value and should not be used merely as a means. This does not exclude using other people for one’s own ends, but this should not be the end of the matter, for other people should also be treated as ends in themselves. Addicting kids does not fall under “ends in themselves,” and so Meta can be held to have acted unethically. As much as business ethics focuses on ethical decision-making, ethical theories provide the real grist for the mill. Furthermore, the continuing negative impact of corporate culture is very relevant, as the case of Enron illustrates (e.g., “burn baby burn.”).  Even a highly squalid (ethically speaking) corporate way of doing business can be hidden from the public and regulators, and managers can dismiss ethical concerns very easily. So as in the case of Facebook (Meta), an episodic approach is typically assumed by external stakeholders; connecting the dots would take more effort and insight into the way corporate decisions are really being made.

Finally, we can pause for a moment to glance at the sheer pathos of distance that exists between Williams’ claim that the inherently social human nature can easily afford being more compassionate and the selfish addicting of kids at Facebook. Religion and business management seem to be disparate domains, and the easy compartmentalization by business managers who identify themselves as Christian renders the separation all too ubiquitous. The distinctively Christian divine command of love as universal benevolence, especially to outsiders and even enemies as selfless (or self-in-abeyance) compassion, runs counter to the firm-centric perspective and profit-centric rubric in business. The contrast is so distinct, even severe, that it is no surprise that business practitioners who self-identify as Christian have resorted to compartmentalizing their work from even themselves as human beings. The statement, “I’m a manager,” supports the construction of a “manager compartment,” but look at the underlying assumption: that a person’s essence is solely a matter of one’s functionality. It is easy to extend from this perspective to viewing social-media users solely in terms of their functionality, and thus use-value, as if value is a function of use.

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1. Barbara Ortutay and Kelvin Chan, “Meta Reaches $17 Billion Settlement with States in Landmark Trial over Teen Social Media Addiction,” APnews.com, August 26, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Does Refusing Rolling Stone Magazine's Use of a Criminal's Picture For Marketing Purposes Violate Corporate Social Responsibility?

In 2013, the editors at Rolling Stone must have been kicking themselves after several retail chains announced that they would not be selling the issue that displays Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a young hottie. Criminal charges had been made against him for the Boston marathon bombing that took place in April of that year. Selling a magazine by playing off the good looks of a terrorist was more than several—but not all—retailers could stand. Were the offended retailers being socially responsible, or is the matter of CSR not as clear-cut as has typically been assumed.

This picture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was on the cover of an issue of the Rolling Stone. From a marketing perspective, why might the editors have selected this particular photo? To which market segment might the choice be oriented? Image Source: hdwallpaperfresh.com  

Tedeschi Foods, a grocery-store chain based in New England, issued a rather emotional statement for a company: “Tedeschi Food Shops supports the need to share the news with everyone, but cannot support actions that serve to glorify the evil actions of anyone. With that being said, we will not be carrying this issue of Rolling Stone. Music and terrorism don’t mix!”[1] Had Rolling Stone’s editors sought to glorify the evil actions of an alleged bomber, or had the intent been to profit from them? If the latter, couldn’t the news companies that splashed pictures of Tsarnaev on the television screen (while not showing commercials) be accused of the very same thing? Music and terrorism may not mix, but selling news and showcasing bombers apparently do. Is the Rolling Stones in the business of news or music?
Rite Aid issued a statement that it too would not be selling the paper, “Out of respect for those affected by the Boston Marathon Bombing.” CVS issued a similar statement. “As a company with deep roots in New England and a strong presence in Boston, we believe this is the right decision out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones.”[2] Did the CVS executives really want to respect the victims, or did the underlying rationale have more to do with the positive PR impact on CVS’s image from “showing” compassion and respect in line with societal norms? The phrases “deep roots in New England” and “strong presence in Boston” can be read as advertisements using pathos, or emotion, to persuade New Englanders and Bostonians to identify with, and thus buy from, the “hometown” company.
Walgreens simply stated that it would not be selling the issue. K-Mart had a similar statement, according to the Huffington Post. Ironically, those two retailers might have been more principled in the decision, as they were less oriented to profiting from their respective announcements.
Bucking this collective push away from the controversial cover, the 7-Eleven convenience-store chain announced that it would be selling the issue. This decision raises the question of whether companies should have identical social policies, given that the relevant societal norm does not differ.[3] Did the 7-Eleven executives make the wrong decision, given the relevant societal norm? Or does that norm conflict with another—namely, that consumers should be the ones to make the decision through their purchasing decisions. The other retailers preempted the consumers from “voting with their wallets.” In other words, the societal norm against popularizing people who did bad things, allegedly or not, conflicts with the value of economic liberty in a market economy. Which is more in line with societal values in the U.S.:  compassion for victims or economic freedom? It depends on which value is or ought to be prioritized. In advocating a fit with societal norms and values, corporate social responsibility cannot say which norm or value should be prioritized—only that the company should closely fit itself with whichever societal norm or value is “picked.” To privilege particular societal norms or values over others as if the emphasis were mandated or implied in being socially responsible makes corporate social responsibility dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. That is, it makes CSR ideologically prescriptive rather than a theory explaining why only some companies survive in the long run and a tool being used by managers to steer their companies through choppy waters.
In terms of the Rolling Stone cover, it may indeed be arbitrary for retail chains to boycott the issue after television news networks made so much money off the story by showing the bomber’s picture. In other words, the double-standard may point to the arbitrariness in the corporate social responsibility movement. On the other hand, the retailers (excepting 7-Eleven) may have drawn the line at the magazine cover because the particular head shot together with the Rolling Stone context may have been designed to sell the bomber as a sexy guy—something the television coverage did not do. Whereas profiting by showing various pictures strains a societal norm but does not break it, profiting by sexualizing a young terrorist may indeed cross the line.
At any rate, this case study demonstrates that corporations do indeed differ with respect to how or whether to be socially responsible. That is to say, social responsibility is a judgment call on which people can and do differ.

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1. “Rolling Stone’s ‘The Bomber’ Issue Banned By CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid And Kmart,” The Huffington Post, June 17, 2013.

2. “Rolling Stone’s ‘The Bomber’ Issue Banned By CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid And Kmart,” The Huffington Post, June 17, 2013.
3. This assumption does not apply to the environment of international business, as different societies have differing societal norms on a given topic.

Living the Urban Life: Increasing Economic Inequalities?

Richard Rinaldi, an innovative photographer in New York City, devised an interesting photo series, titled "Touching Strangers." It provides an answer to the following question: If brought together literally through touch, will two people who have never met begin, after some initial discomfort, to feel comfort, even a feeling of caring for the other person? Richard traversed the streets of Manhattan looking for pairs to put together. Seeing one person, and then another, who together would make an interesting picture, he would ask them simply to stand together. The  resulting picture would depict any initial reluctance. Then, he would arrange the two so they are touching each other in a friendly way.

A curious thing came out in the resulting pictures: a feeling of caring. Astonished, the subjects invariably reported that merely from the touching they actually had actually begun to care about a stranger! Reflecting on this feedback, Richard said in an interview that his “experiment” reveals humanity that lies within us, that we wish there were more of in the world, and that existed in the past. By “the past,” the photographer was referring to the photo shoots.

If we are willing to go a bit farther back in our reflection, say to the state of nature, whether mythic or historical, we can profit from the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which can explain why we do not feel more caring and compassion as we inhabit great edifices of modern business, government, and society. Indeed, it may be that those tremendous artifacts within which we work, argue, and live may have gradually changed human nature itself—and not for the better.

In his Discourse on Inequality,[1] Rousseau argues that humanity was in a much better condition in the state of nature, before all the artificialities of society changed us. Indeed, the question we might ask the eighteenth-century philosopher is whether forming commercial enterprises, governments and societies has modified human nature itself, or merely our proclivities. Rousseau’s view of “primitive” humanity is best grasped in a bundle.

With “savage man, wandering about in the forests, without industry, without speech, without any fixed residence, an equal stranger to war and every social connection, without standing in any shape in need of his fellows, as well as without any desire of hurting them, and perhaps even without ever distinguishing them individually one from the other, subject to few passions, and finding in himself all he wants, let us, I say, conclude that savage man thus circumstanced had no knowledge or sentiment but such as are proper to that condition, that he was alone sensible of his real necessities, took notice of nothing but what it was his interest to see, and that his understanding made as little progress as his vanity.”

We are naturally inclined to far less social interaction than is foisted on us by living in towns and cities. Less social intercourse meant less conflict and even fewer desires—hence my question of whether human nature was different. All that the savage man desired was limited to whatever nature could provide of its own making, rather than by means of man’s cultivation of forest and field. “The first sentiment of man was that of his existence, his first care that of preserving it. The productions of the earth yielded him all the assistance he required; instinct prompted him to make use of them.”

Like Hesiod’s and Ovid’s idyllic descriptions of a Golden Age, whose natural wealth literally grows on trees for the easy taking, Rousseau (unlike Aristotle, whose notion of natural wealth involves the labor of cultivating land) views labor for the savage’s subsistence as nugatory; real labor kicks in when people start to desire wealth. In the simple life enjoyed by primitive man, free time gave rise to more and more “conveniences.”  Through regular use (given declining marginal utility), they “lost almost all their aptness to please, and even degenerated into real wants, the privation of them became far more intolerable than the possession of them had been agreeable; to lose them was a misfortune, to possess them no happiness.

"There being no wealth or property and only limited contact with other humans at first, pride and jealousy from comparisons with others were either not yet in human nature or latent in its bowels. Hence, Rousseau rejects Hobbes’ theory that constant warfare exists in the state of nature and thus justifies the institution of government—even a tyrant. In fact, Rousseau refers directly to Hobbes’ theory in remarking, “so many authors have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle than he in his primitive state.” To Hobbes life in the state of nature is short, cruel, and brutish. Rousseau totally rejects this view.

Rousseau argues that pity, or empathy for others who are suffering, is  a sentiment natural in human beings:

"(P)ity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is this pity which hurries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see in distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, stands for laws, for manners, for virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her sweet and gentle voice: it is this pity which will always hinder a robust savage from plundering a feeble child, or infirm old man, of the subsistence they have acquired with pain and difficulty, if he has but the least prospect of providing for himself by any other means.”

In the state of nature, the compassion is not yet overwhelmed by the vices borne of the close proximity of other people in society. Empathy can check anger and fighting in the state of nature. Before the institution of property and law to protect it, “goodness of heart” was “suitable to the pure state of nature.” Furthermore, “nothing can be more gentle than he in his primitive state, when . . .  he is withheld by natural compassion from doing any injury to others. . . . For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, Where there is no property, there can be no injury.”

Rousseau embraces Locke’s theory that property arises from one’s labor. “(I)t is impossible to conceive how property can flow from any other source but industry; for what can a man add but his labour to things which he has not made, in order to acquire a property in them? . . . enjoyment forming a continued possession is easily transformed into a property.” To Rousseau, mine and yours came about in the process of societalization. “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.”

Furthermore, because man in the state of nature was oriented to “his real necessities,” no impetus kicked in to trigger industry. Hence, there was no economic inequality beyond that which nature grants. Referring to human beings in the state of nature, Rousseau maintains,

"(A)s long as they undertook such works only as a single person could finish, and stuck to such arts as did not require the joint endeavours of several hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy, as much as their nature would admit, and continued to enjoy with each other all the pleasures of an independent intercourse; but from the moment one man began to stand in need of another's assistance; from the moment it appeared an advantage for one man to possess the quantity of provisions requisite for two, all equality vanished; property started up; labour became necessary; and boundless forests became smiling fields, which it was found necessary to water with human sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to sprout out and grow with the fruits of the earth.”

The increased industry involved the development of reason and understanding, which have also led to problems. The savage man needed only to learn “to surmount the obstacles of nature, to contend in case of necessity with other animals, to dispute his subsistence even with other men, or indemnify himself for the loss of whatever he found himself obliged to part with to the strongest.” As the mind grew more enlightened, “property, and along with it perhaps a thousand quarrels and battles” more than countered the epistemological benefits. Whereas Hegel hails the progression of reason through human history, Rousseau sees a link between the expanding use of reason, increased wealth, and more wants and thus comparisons and conquest. In other words, modern man uses reason much more than is natural, and this had led to problems confined to society rather than based in the savage man.

In political terms, “Those who heretofore wandered through the woods, by taking to a more settled way of life, gradually flock together, coalesce into several separate bodies, and at length form in every country distinct nations.” From the increased interaction between people, jealousy and warfare take off. “Every one [sic] begins to survey the rest, and wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem acquires a value. . . . From these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence. . . It was thus that every man, punishing the contempt expressed for him by others in proportion to the value he set upon himself, the effects of revenge became terrible, and men learned to be sanguinary and cruel.” Increased contact with others from that of our natural state leads to tremendous problems. Interestingly, the increased cruelty suggests that the human race has become weaker, as it is the weak person who seeks to dominate who is intentionally cruel.

According to Rousseau, our bad qualities have surged ahead of our pre-existing good ones. Society and the ensuing established relations among people draw on “qualities different from those . . . derived from their primitive constitution.” The question is perhaps whether the bad qualities had been merely latent, or altogether absent from human nature. Put another way, have the artificial aspects of society changed human nature or merely altered the balance between a number of instincts that we have come to see as good and bad?

In referring to different characteristics of man coming to dominate others, Rousseau implies that human nature has not changed. On the other hand, he also writes that “natural compassion” has “suffered some alteration” as human interaction has increased. Moreover, "the spirit of society" and "the inequality [that] society engenders" have changed and transformed "all our natural inclinations." This would seem to go beyond merely increasing some and decreasing others, suggesting instead that human nature itself has been altered, even transformed.

The implications from the change in context being able to transform human nature could only be highly significant. It would seem that societal artifacts, including systems of business and government, can render humans less humane in our very nature, which is perhaps to say human, all too human.

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1. All quotes are from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1910).