Sean Parker on tech industry's 'tricks': 'Social media feeds our narcissism'

Facebook's earliest evangelist says company's first responsibility is to its shareholders, and engineers' algorithms have 'unintended consequences'

A generation ago, Sean Parker would have us believe, parents worried that their children were becoming couch potatoes, passive consumers of information dominated by TV. But he said that concern has now shifted in the opposite direction, acknowledging that technology companies have employed "tricks" that encourage users to become "narcissistic, self-involved assholes".

In a characteristically frank discussion at the Techonomy conference in California's Half Moon Bay, the Napster co-founder said society had gone from worrying about one paradigm to worrying about another.