FAANG stock trends, like it or not, dictate the larger tech sector, and right now 2/5 just took a 20% hit in the space of a week.
What matters more than the article we're all commenting on?
I wouldn't say FB represents everything I hate, as I mainly use it as a contact book.
"Hacker News" also hates crypto, Tesla, Brave, and other random things and I don't think the same way about. (I wonder why that is? </rhetorical>)
TLDR: speak for yourself, not all "hackers".
Precisely. It's actually a very long term battle between Meta, Apple and Google. Not even a widespread outage can stop them.
It would be a mistake to write them off immediately over this atrocious earnings call, no matter how much I think of them as a mafia. Business-wise, it is far from over.
Oh wow, they made $11! Let's forget everything else.
At one point the crowd here was like oh fb ipo so embarrassing, to oh fb eng so hot much react, to oh fb so evil now, crash and burn pls. Such fickleness. Surely we can do better than that.
There is also a popular claim that Facebook contributed to genocide. Here's an article [2]. Facebook hired an investigator that concluded that their involvement was without their knowledge. Tragic and reckless, sure. Intentional? I doubt it. I think it's an issue of scale and navigating complex regulatory and social structures.
Shadow profiles are another hot topic. The big issue is that, if you agreed to let Facebook read your contacts, it linked your friends phone numbers to distinct 'profiles' in the background. Presumably these could also be tied to their advertising profiles.
Cambridge Analytica was a company that abused a bug in API access (allegedly unbeknownst to Facebook - this exploit was available to all 3rd party apps) to collect information not only about willing participants, but their friends as well.
As for VR, there are numerous claims and hesitancy about privacy abuse through tracking and sensing technologies that are essential to VR development. I appreciate some hesitancy, but it is a bit sensationalized.
Beyond all of this, there are lots of claims of monopoly abuse. There is actually an FTC lawsuit that could lead to a landmark antritust case, but that is yet to be seen. I don't really think they have a monopoly as there are numerous competitors.
I apologize as I don't have links for everything, but that's an overview of my thoughts. I think Facebook is simply navigating the regulatory and social landscape in a way that any novel company or platform would be required to navigate. I think we often forget that this technology is new and will experience growing pains, even if at such massive scale. I think a lot of the blame for the fraying of U.S. democracy, the decline in mental health, and other social issues are incorrectly attributed to things that have brought change in the past few decades. More realistically, I think the U.S. (where most of the claims are relevant) is simply declining after several hundred years of abusive reign as the world's superpower.
[1]: https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Instagram-Te...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...
It seems like you simply take Facebook at their word.
> More realistically, I think the U.S. (where most of the claims are relevant) is simply declining after several hundred years of abusive reign as the world's superpower.
You do realize that you have provided no actual explanation for the decline.
Can you explain how your account, with a meaningless username, was created in 2014, only to become active around 9 months ago?
Who should be held accountable for all of this? Facebook? What a joke. If they are truly guilty, regulators have all the power in the world to hold them accountable.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
Yes, and Facebook is contributing to the acceleration of those things.
Is that not something you have considered?
Do you think Facebook or other social media are the main contributors to the acceleration of those things? Why?
Can you explain why your account was created in 2014 but was only activated 9 months ago to begin defending Facebook?
The point your parent poster is making is that sensationalism and the easily outraged tend to ignore the nuance between unintended butterfly effect consequences that are hard to prevent vs deliberate malice by the company itself for its own profit.
It's a good idea to reflect a bit on hatred to see if it's really warranted. It's very easy to think "oh look at all these negative things I heard, facebook should shut down". What's hard is to realize that what you read online and your mental categorization of things doesn't always neatly mirror reality accurately. Nobody thinks we should ban chocolate on the grounds that violent people eat it and the rest of us would still have food even if chocolate was gone; we only get molded to think this way about things like Facebook because of media narratives.
https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/white-supre...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-facebook-russia...
So outrageous it's easy to find evidence for all of them?
What you're saying may be true – I've no idea. But I'm not sure we can yet dismiss the idea that social technology like Facebook, used as it is, might push us over a line we wouldn't otherwise cross.
> The earnings for this company are truly staggering. ...
> You people are nuts.
> While I don't love FB as an entity, as a business they are making fucking bank. ...
Purdue Pharmaceuticals made a lot of money, too.
Were you like a very early employee or are you just that naive?
FB's intent became quite clear, quite fast in their history. Like, remember when they became so famous for their lack of ethics that even a hollywood movie came out whose plot is pretty much only about that?
And that was 12(!) years ago ... so, I am truly wondering, from where exactly did you get this idea of a company trying to change the world for good?
Some people can't be bought. What about you?
Yes, I’d take a high paying job at Facebook. I live in a status quo, unfair, corrupt capitalist society in the west. I know I have to play the game.
Sure, if we're just talking about comparing generalizations or wild scenarios, but in context that person probably has access to other opportunities that rival or exceed Facebook's comp or social impact.
I hope Zuckerberg pulls off Meta and what he's trying to do. He's an extremely good CEO, and the alternative is more power in the hands of TikTok and CCP controlled social media which I think is a lot worse.
I'm glad to see the investment they're making in trying to build a new platform, I hope we see AR hardware from Apple soon too.
While there is no such thing as a perfectly-ethical company within a Capitalist framework, there are degrees of ethical behavior that rightly influence a company's reputation.
Would I choose to work or support a company that clubs baby seals?
Less hyperbolic, would I choose to support a company that continually seeks to profit from promoting extremism in dialogue, creating self-perpetuating echo-chambers which have real-world consequences (re: the very real danger to American democratic processes), in addition to brainwashing people's parents into believing in utter hogwash and tearing families apart?
Yes, they are making bank. But at what cost? And should that cost influence your interaction with said company?
The earnings for this company are truly staggering. They made 11$/user. Their earnings were up 34% year-over-year – on a base of 29B dollars. They made 10B more this year than they did last year, and the comments in here are all about, "boy Apple fucked them, and Meta suxor!"
You people are nuts.
While I don't love FB as an entity, as a business they are making fucking bank. They are running a printing press, and the world is eating it up. Y'all need to switch to decaf or something. Their numbers are truly staggering.