And unfortunately the valuation means there are a lot of powerful people invested in making that a reality.

One of the many weird things about the stock market is that it doesn't really reflect how investors feel about a given company, so much as it reflects how investors are predicting how other investors will feel about a company in the coming years.

So, a slightly more optimistic way of looking at it is that investors think that other investors think that there's a dark future ahead, but may not believe so themselves. It's quite possible that no one really believes in that particular dystopian future, but everyone thinks that everyone else does.

I'm a lot more optistic about a world where everyone is socializing on the internet than one where everyone is burning carbon.

My level of optimism depends on whether I think FB can make enough profit to sustain their current valuation based on their current advertising alone, or whether they'll need to broaden their horizons in terms of monetising the data they hold.

It's fairly easy to imagine monetisation strategies that could be pretty negative in the long term.

If I try to imagine the worst things Facebook could do, I don't get scared, because they don't seem that lucrative.

Blackmail me based on private conversations?

Resell my photo uploads to shutterstock?

Charge the intelligence agencies $1k per user for a backdoor to my encrypted FB chat messages?

They could influence elections, shift social policy to help certain people, and generally engineer the social world in their own image. It will be very hard to tell if this is happening.

They could become the whole internet. In many places they already are. This is a very sad future for someone who sees the internet as a tool of human liberation and direct connection.

I don't care so much about them selling our information. It's worthless even to me. These other things are much more subtle and valuable.

They can make users miserable by messing too much with them or trying to squeeze more money out of them

>where everyone is socializing on the internet

Or, as we used to called it in my day, not actually socializing.

So kids these days are exchanging enough words but not touching enough bodies?

According to me, yes. And mostly not doing enough stuff together and eye to eye -- which makes those words easier and less meaningful when they are not accompanied by actual effort, money, being there, etc.

Digital is a nice way to keep touch or contact new people, but bad replacement for physical socializing. Of course it's also easier and needs far less commitment, courage and empathy, and you can't beat that for people...