Tesla's self-driving product is a great example of this. They got consumers to buy into the vision of self-driving cars way before it was actually ready. This allowed them to sell a lot more cars and pre-orders as well as have a narrative for investors to pump their stock. If they get FSD to work, it will be great. But, even if it never is a successful product, they've benefitted tremendously from the narrative itself and have been able to turn it into sales and cheap capital to invest in the business.
Maybe. But on the other hand, Tesla was starting out with a _lot_ more user goodwill than FaceBook.
Tesla isn't perfect, they have (IMHO) a good basic product, but with some build quality issues, labour issues, over-promising self-driving issues etc, and yet ... these issues have not shifted the narrative from basically favourable. Part of me still wants one, even though I know it's not going to drive itself. Maybe narratives are sticky?
So, FaceBook is going into this with a massively negative narrative. Shifting it will be hard. We're all really cynical about FaceBook already.
In a way it does; because if it is widely perceived as phony and yet another distracting ploy, then it much less chance of actually changing the narrative around the reputation of "the company formerly known as FaceBook". In fact, further "sleight of hand" manoeuvres would fortify the dodgy reputation.