Zuckerberg is fuelling a deadly addiction, says man who created first Facebook

THE founder of the original Facebook claims that the social media platform has caused “countless deaths” by failing to protect users.

Aaron Greenspan claimed Mark Zuckerberg Facebook’s chairman and chief executive, had designed the platform to be as “addictive as tobacco”, in defiance of his warnings.

Mr Greenspan’s allegations reopen a long-running feud with Mr Zuckerberg, who he says sacrificed safeguards on cyberbullying, extremists and data security to pursue growth at all costs. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Greenspan, who won a confidential payout from Facebook after claiming he came up with the concept first, said: “Facebook’s addictive qualities may not kill anyone directly as cigarettes do every day but it is now established that the site has led to countless deaths.”

Mr Greenspan, who created the “Universal Face Book” at Harvard four months before Mr Zuckerberg registered Facebook.com, cited a leaked memo written by Andrew Bosworth, the vice-president of Facebook.

In it, Mr Bosworth acknowledged the site’s pursuit to “connect people” might “cost someone a life by exposing someone to bullies” or deaths in a “terrorist attack coordinated on our tools”.

Mr Greenspan said: “Andrew … pronounced in a now infamous memo that such deaths were merely the cost of Facebook’s growth, a ‘de facto good’.

“With growth equated to good, the analogy to cancer as a result of the addictive process is especially apt. Mark and I fundamentally disagreed over the importance of quality versus quantity.

“Mark floored the accelerator for 15 years straight to achieve maximum quantity and he succeeded at that.

“Had I remained involved somehow, I would have stressed the importance of quality in the trade-off even more. That would have meant a much smaller network.”

Mr Greenspan’s feud with Mr Zuckerberg over who came up with the idea for Facebook is less well known than the social media boss’s legal battles with the Winklevoss brothers, which featured in the Hollywood film The Social Network.

Facebook denied the platform was designed to be addictive, saying it was working with experts to better understand excessive use and develop products that encourage healthy use.

It said it was also continuing to invest heavily in security and privacy as it recognised its responsibility to keep people safe.

Mr Bosworth insisted that the sentiments in his leaked mail were not something he agreed with.

He added they had been designed simply to raise “hard topics” and “bad ideas” for discussion if only to eliminate them.