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Facebook should be regulated like a cigarette company, because of the addictive and harmful properties of social media, according to Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff.

Last week, venture capitalist Roger McNamee – an early investor in Facebook – wrote a Guardian column warning that the company would would have to “address the harm the platform has caused through addiction and exploitation by bad actors”.

“I was once Mark Zuckerberg’s mentor, but I have not been able to speak to him about this. Unfortunately, all the internet platforms are deflecting criticism and leaving their users in peril,” McNamee wrote.

Earlier, Sean Parker, Facebook’s first President, had described the business practice of social media firms as “a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology”. Parker now describes himself as “something of a conscientious objector” to social media.

As part of its attempt to win back control of the narrative, Facebook has announced it will begin taking into account how trusted a publisher is as part of its News Feed algorithm. The company’s metric for determining trust, however, is a simple two-question survey, causing some to query its potential.