Mark Zuckerberg owns the majority of voting shares. It's his company, over which he specifically wanted to retain control. Therefore, calling on the board to reign him in is... Misplaced.
If you think the actions of Meta are wrong and should be prevented, you need to act on the regulatory level, not appeal to the very shareholders who profit off the behaviour.
Who wants to fight a battle that could be a lifelong one and along the way some lose their enthusiasm for the cause…
I would rather make a lifelong campaign “don’t do drugs”… if you make national all-year-long donate-funded campaigns on every corner, social networks’ providers would need to regulate themselves as they’ll have higher churn rate.
Recent campaigns don’t work too much as they are endemic.
When we have a captured government and unaccountable corporations like we do, it seems like the best route is to compete with them via carefully designed not-for-profit products which contain strictly good features and none of the enshittified ones, as brainstormed here:
tru, although i don't think there's anything at this point that can compel meta or zuck to do jack squat especially in the default country. as we've already seen.
these days with what might as well be branch capture by these bazillionaire entities, id be very surprised to see any actions attempted at the regulatory level against zuck against meta against any of this class ever actually make it into law. am i jaded sure but im mostly stepping back and looking at the game board at this point. i will be very surprised if things ever balance / restore in my lifetime, for now i literally do think the rest of my life is not going to have any chapter where the law puts zuckerberg or meta in its place.
The idea of that data ending up in new undetermined hands may-or-may-not be a worse thing, but it reminds me of this bit from Making Money, by Terry Pratchett:
> 'Vetinari, are we to believe that you knowingly put the most important bank in the city into the charge of a known bank robber?'
> [...] 'Should he have left it in the hands of unknown bank robbers?'
Rather than investigate all the things where investigative journalism could potentially make a difference to real human beings' lives, the Guardian has chosen to pursue a plea for the majority owner of Meta's voting shares (61%) to step down from his position of power. Let us politely ask Sisyphus to stop pushing the boulder instead.
There's no reason to think this (silly) opinion piece is sapping the work of their investigative staff. In an attention economy it might even be drawing eyeballs to it.
i kinda wish he would do that and then forget this reality. it did dawn on me that when he was talking about how great it would be to meet AI friends that this guy is just desperately trying to escape a world he feels rejected/hated at large in and get to one where he can feel beloved and accepted. All of these billionaires seem to have a similar weirdly sad story where they just want to haul everyone off to follow some dumb idea of a new world, buncha broken people.
I’m not sure the next CEO would do any better. The social media craze is built for addiction and that’s their business model. Investors won’t be on board, sadly.
i think calling it doomerism underplays the realities of the actual landscape right now.
there is like literally no history to go off of here that indicates there could be consequences for mark or meta.
there is, however, kind of a lot of history showing nothing will happen to him or meta. and the conditions that enabled him to be consequence-free are exist in pretty much the entire judicial apparatus at this point.
it's not so much that it's doomerism as it is... just look at it. lol. we are sailing literally the opposite direction of accountability right now as a nation.
Has there ever be a social media plattform that cheered you on for Self-Improvement? DuoLingo comes to mind or some DIY project- like building a piece of furniture?
Just not rewarding flexing, but creating and world improving?
People love to hate Duolingo, but I actually learned things on it getting real results. And it showed me that language learning does not have to be massive suck.
All in all, it is actually one app that is beneficial or at least harmless.
When did you use it? It was a more authentic language-learning tool in the beginning, but was then gradually enshittified in order to maximize engagement on the platform, not actual language mastery. A lot of the most competent language-consultant staff were let go, too.
Today on the shadow libraries, you have your pick of a number of self-teaching textbooks for free, allowing you to find an approach that fits your learning style. No need to rely on a dodgy corporate app.
After it was "gradually enshittified in order to maximize engagement on the platform, not actual language mastery". I used it first time years before, stopped, came back after supposed enshittification, started entirely different language and had actual success with it.
> Today on the shadow libraries, you have your pick of a number of self-teaching textbooks for free
No, self teaching textbooks are not better for me.
Instructables.com used to be very much like this. The community was built around people posting guides for building DIY projects, with some of them being extremely impressive and creative.
I just took a look, and it appears to have changed now though. At least, from the logged out perspective.
It's strange that while many parts of the world rely on WhatsApp for essential services, this weak link is almost never in the news. Don't people know that WhatsApp is under Meta? What if he pulls the plug? Is there anything preventing MZ from doing that? I'd sever that dependence first.
We can nope out of FB, IG, but what about WhatsApp?
Roughly 30% of global population uses it. It's the backbone of many South American and Continental European countries. All controlled by a private corporation.
I don't use it personally but my wife and the extended family does. Asking them to get off of the juice has been a fail. Network effects, inertia.
So these musings (not yours, The Guardian's), but kind of like "off with their heads" don't address the infrastructure cancer.
I live in the US btw and use the iOS Messages app. Don't have WhatsApp installed, even if my wife insists, on principle.
If Meta burns in flames or does something with WhatsApp, I won't feel a sting, but others will and much of the world along. I might miss FB Marketplace, that's the only reason I go there.
It's curious decoupling WhatsAPP isn't on EU's and others' agenda. If it is, but I haven't seen it.
> through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200bn, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to those with wealth like his, so the first step to safeguard society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products.
It’s The Guardian - they just propose left-wing hyperbolic noise with no connection to the real world rather than offer any kind of solutions. Not even aware that Zuck is the biggest shareholder and has all the voting rights, it’s his baby and he owns it, he doesn’t have to resign to make the world a better place in The Guardian’s favour.
Read the last paragraph it calls on the shareholders to push back on Mark Zuckerberg. He owns most of the voting rights so its effectively calling on him to push back on himself.
At what price, tho? He harms children, he hijacked the attention of billions and helped the rise of facism and hate, which if not addressed will lead into very dark times again, all for a measly 3% out perform?
There's also the allegation that a) Facebook greatly overcounted (on purpose) the impressions from autoplaying videos and b) their ads target more people in an area than physically exist
"Value" is a tough thing to translate. Market cap, and whatever. Considering the fact so many people express difficulty in deleting their accounts - it won't let you, or it gets reactivated later - I'm just going to state the quiet part out loud here; Facebook's valuation is mostly or entirely fraud
If the rise of fascism and hate is due to people being able to talk to each other on Facebook with insufficient censorship, it seems your actual problem is the system of governance that gives everyone a right to vote, even if they do it based on some nonsense they read online.
You are romantizising what Facebook and Instagram have become. The problem is not that people talk to each other. The problem is, that they created algos that optimize for maximal engagement and they get that by triggering the basic human feelings that create the biggest reaction: fear and anger. They literally hacked the human brain chemistry. And they don't stop when they detect that the human is struggling and getting darker and darker thoughts, but they keep pushing to extract even the last second of precision engagement.
"How long and often" people engage with content is a perfectly reasonable metric to optimize and a very close correlate of interest. There are, in fact, plenty of things going on in the world people should get mad about, or that they should worry about. Some people think that's climate change, some people think that's migration, some people think that's rising fascism, some people think that's Mamdami opening grocery stores. The fundamental problem people have is when other people get mad about stuff they like. That's the "fear", "anger", "hate." People who get mad about the things I like are obviously just irrational, emotionally driven puppets of The Algorithm whereas I am Englightened, Rational, and came to my opinions only through Reason and Logic.
What people don't like is huge masses of people coming together and having opinions that counter our modern mainstream elite consensus. Because elites are generally pretty smart that means a lot of these opinions are, frankly, dumb. Some of them simply represent different values (pro vs anti immigration, as one example.) Both are considered intolerable.
It is also perfectly true that people spend lots of time on non-politicized content. Baby videos, cat videos, feel-good human interest stories, all sorts of positive stuff is also massively popular on these platforms. That gets ignored in favor of inveighing for tight control over the political discourse because social media spreads crimethink.
The Western democratic ideal is that you have to convince the masses you're right - a disturbingly large portion of the movers and shakers have decided that instead, we should control what the masses are allowed to say and know, so we don't have to fight those battles.
I very much doubt that they listen to countries in tier 1 and 2 also. If not for the fear of US's relatively stronger regulations, don't think Meta would even pay attention to any complaints in US either.
This would not change with the change in leadership in Meta simply because 18Bn is fairly affordable for Meta's scale, but they should be worried about setting the legal precedent (though they denied any wrong doing).
Other countries may not have the same ability to impose penalties owing to their weaker laws also.
Interesting how the author compares the situation to smoking. Were any of the execs of the tobacco companies asked to step down because smoking was found to be harmful to health? My guess is they simply continued and adapted based on how they could remain a profitable company with continued shareholder satisfaction.
I wonder what's the net value Meta offers for the world today. I had a similar thought about Elon the other day, for all his billions, only several million people use Tesla or Starlink, and SpaceX is cool I guess, but value and wealth don't seem to be strongly coupled. How many Tesla investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?
> How many Tesla's investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?
It me. That said, I didn't buy TSLA because I was expecting to cash out a few years later when he started acting like a threat to democracy and his own judicial system; when I bought it I thought they had a good business model and I thought they were undervalued.
Now they're overvalued, have lots of visible competitors eating their lunch.
Worse, even if they succeed, given Musk has yet to pay out dividends on that stock and also enough control over the board to give him as many shares as he wants, I think even success would render the stock monopoly money.
Musk probably made more dollar millionaires than anyone in history. Facebook advertisers use it because it works and reaches a hell of a lot of people.
I don't think Facebook advertisers are being particularly irrational, it's just very interesting to point out how this ad business, despite leaving most of its users ultimately unsatisfied, can be so profitable.
I don't think that is an answerable question. It is just an excuse for people justifying a hamfisted intervention into society that actually would do more harm than good.
There is a malaise in the west and Meta is just a symptom. More institutional power is a bad idea when institutions are dysfunctional.
If you think Meta is bad now, just wait until Zuck is replaced by a soulless, profit-obsessed corporate CEO whose primary job is maximizing shareholder profit. Meta as a company can get far worse.
People should really be careful what they wish for.
Yup, and additionally said stooge would probably be optimizing for their own position and package in a way Zuck doesn't have to. There's a whole new category of selfishness and shortsightedness out there.
Meta could drop a new feature tomorrow and have the tech media in a shambles within 15 minutes. Their product family is used by 3.6 billion people every day. OAI and Anthropic are still measuring per month.
Honestly, the world has grown past the need for Meta. I would not cry if it completely shut down, problem is, what will fill the void? It would be nice to have something not controlled by Big American Corporation (or Chinese, or any, for that matter), but somehow I don't see it happening.
When I open Instagram that is still connected to all my old friends, class mates, travel buddies and whatever I get 90% third party ads and 10% posts that might even be a few months old, and most of that is just "look at me" type of content.
I always find it surprising when I hear of someone younger using facebook. I associate it with retired/elderly folks who love posting cryptic messages about their health or how their day has gone wanting attention.
Most people under 40, 30 and even 20 I know are on Instagram, and many under 40 and 30 are on Facebook. Maybe it varies with country, education level or some other factors.
Central Europe here myself (Switzerland to be precise) signal and telegram are the dominant IM and Instagram is just as dead as Facebook, sure some might use it but nobody expects anyone else to to.
Okay but like, you can make that happen. You can just stop using it.
Interestingly I did learn of a niche which is completely unserved except by Meta recently: child-locked messaging apps.
Messenger for Kids basically does everything you want it to - restricted functionality, restricted contact lists etc. I won't use it, but I only found out about it because I was hoping someone had built a Signal client which did exactly that.
Doubtful that it's illegal, they have lawyers. Hard to say it's unethical either given that there is a clear option to pay instead of be tracked (which is in any case trivially defeated by an ad-blocker). For centuries until yesterday people paid for journalism like they paid for any other service.
> In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary ‘Consent or Pay' advertising model. (…)
> The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA, as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads' service.
Echoes of America's gay wedding cake case. In the US this would presumably be struck down as "compelled speech", and rightly so IMO. People refuse to pay for journalism and now publishers are prevented from allowing them to consent to pay with their personal data. They can't win, and yet we need journalism.
The solution to this whole thing has been obvious since the start: Put the power where it belongs, with the user agent (browser), by making the Do Not Track signal legally enforceable.
I'm very pro-Brussels but they've made an absolute hash of this whole thing. Cookie banners are ruining the web, which is the only open app ecosystem we have.
First, I'm not "praising" anything other than choice on the part of publishers and users. If DNT is set to 1 then a publisher should be free to withhold their content. If everybody sets it to 1 then they might well choose to make some compromises. Or not. I don't care. Just make the banners go away.
That's exactly what I do. Or rather I just mash whatever is the nearest button to smite the banner. "Refuse", "Accept", who cares? I'm blocking user-side anyway, as the web was designed for. This whole situation is completely dumb and unnecessary and makes me furious. The EU Commission should have known better.
PS: Using a Chromium-based browser would be like begging to surrender what's left of the software freedom that I just described.
That assumes that you never visit a new site. Indeed it's why I think twice before clicking links to new sites. Honest question: Are you happy with the current state of affairs, really, and just waiting patiently for all the world's websites to decide to comply with EU law so that we can have a usable web again?
About visiting new sites, that's not a problem in practice, even HN mostly shows the same websites.
About my experience, I am relatively happy with the current state of affairs. I don't want websites to use my personal information without my consent. I still like cookie banners more than ads, in particular ads that follow me across websites or devices. Also note that many websites don't track their users - and these don't show cookie banners.
> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users
Why would it be interested in that? It's interested in increasing shareholder profits.
> It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta
What, like in the leadership of a political party? Meta does not work for the public good; if anything, it's rather the opposite. And it's not like another one of their people would change course and work and make it a public benefit company.
Eh dunno. My impression is that from the PoV of his notional bosses - Meta shareholders - he’s doing everything ”right”. Revenue up, addiction/recurring revenue stable, keeping fines low.
I’d be happy to see Meta gone altogether, but unless I missed the memo, Meta isn’t particularly upset about what it’s been up to (beyond bland press releases).
If "competitive capitalism" is how you want to frame it, then Zuckerberg should have been thrown out for essentially burning $83 billion dollars on a VR world that is never, ever going to pan out. That's going into a hole at over $400k per user. It's a disaster and any CEO of any functional company would be out on their ass, but Meta and Facebook are quite dysfunctional.
> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.
It is singularly idiotic that people think people, companies, boards, governments, or anyone else should be "good", and that society will progress by rooting out "evil" ones, as adjudicated by their own standards.
People and by extension companies of people and by extension corporations, NGOs, governments, and everything else in society behaves according to incentives. "Safety of users" or "approval of The Guardian employees" does not rank particularly highly in the incentive scale next to money for anybody, least of all Facebook shareholders, lol.
The factors that influence behaviors are pretty simple. Money, negative money, threat of judicial or ultrajudicial retribution, etc. The people as a whole have levers to pull in order to shape society as they would like. Wishing for good and praying for evil to be dispelled are not among them, that's just like any other superstition.
Sometimes, the Guardian publishes articles like this that just serve no purpose.
Zuckerberg is never resigning from Meta. Investors don't want him to resign from Meta.
What it is time for, though, is to ask ourselves as a society if the ad-fueled privacy-infringing depression-triggering attention-grabbing social media feeds are worth it.
People used to smoke. Now they dont. Change is possible.
Mark Zuckerberg owns the majority of voting shares. It's his company, over which he specifically wanted to retain control. Therefore, calling on the board to reign him in is... Misplaced.
If you think the actions of Meta are wrong and should be prevented, you need to act on the regulatory level, not appeal to the very shareholders who profit off the behaviour.
> you need to act on the regulatory level
This. Otherwise it's just a fruitless game of whac-a-mole as new reptiles inevitably step up to sustain the profit opportunity.
Who wants to fight a battle that could be a lifelong one and along the way some lose their enthusiasm for the cause…
I would rather make a lifelong campaign “don’t do drugs”… if you make national all-year-long donate-funded campaigns on every corner, social networks’ providers would need to regulate themselves as they’ll have higher churn rate.
Recent campaigns don’t work too much as they are endemic.
When we have a captured government and unaccountable corporations like we do, it seems like the best route is to compete with them via carefully designed not-for-profit products which contain strictly good features and none of the enshittified ones, as brainstormed here:
https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/
Building something as described in that article would cause people to drop all of the existing platforms almost overnight.
tru, although i don't think there's anything at this point that can compel meta or zuck to do jack squat especially in the default country. as we've already seen.
these days with what might as well be branch capture by these bazillionaire entities, id be very surprised to see any actions attempted at the regulatory level against zuck against meta against any of this class ever actually make it into law. am i jaded sure but im mostly stepping back and looking at the game board at this point. i will be very surprised if things ever balance / restore in my lifetime, for now i literally do think the rest of my life is not going to have any chapter where the law puts zuckerberg or meta in its place.
I liked how the article was aimed at Mark personally.
Not everyone gets super voting shares, but everyone gets a life and has to live on the same planet.
Meta should just close. It's like wanting to change CEO for the dioxin factory.
Maybe they should rebrand again. It took a few renames to get the stink off of Blackwater (private military contractor).
Closing sale! 50%+ Off Sale on data for the majority of humans on Earth!
The idea of that data ending up in new undetermined hands may-or-may-not be a worse thing, but it reminds me of this bit from Making Money, by Terry Pratchett:
> 'Vetinari, are we to believe that you knowingly put the most important bank in the city into the charge of a known bank robber?'
> [...] 'Should he have left it in the hands of unknown bank robbers?'
Is your username a reference to Terr_ _________?
Rather than investigate all the things where investigative journalism could potentially make a difference to real human beings' lives, the Guardian has chosen to pursue a plea for the majority owner of Meta's voting shares (61%) to step down from his position of power. Let us politely ask Sisyphus to stop pushing the boulder instead.
There's no reason to think this (silly) opinion piece is sapping the work of their investigative staff. In an attention economy it might even be drawing eyeballs to it.
One must imagine Mark happy, living in his metaverse.
i kinda wish he would do that and then forget this reality. it did dawn on me that when he was talking about how great it would be to meet AI friends that this guy is just desperately trying to escape a world he feels rejected/hated at large in and get to one where he can feel beloved and accepted. All of these billionaires seem to have a similar weirdly sad story where they just want to haul everyone off to follow some dumb idea of a new world, buncha broken people.
They didn't do this instead of that.
I’m not sure the next CEO would do any better. The social media craze is built for addiction and that’s their business model. Investors won’t be on board, sadly.
I think everyone is infected by doomerism.
Why care about the long term consequences if the world is going to be over in the next 20 years.
i think calling it doomerism underplays the realities of the actual landscape right now.
there is like literally no history to go off of here that indicates there could be consequences for mark or meta.
there is, however, kind of a lot of history showing nothing will happen to him or meta. and the conditions that enabled him to be consequence-free are exist in pretty much the entire judicial apparatus at this point.
it's not so much that it's doomerism as it is... just look at it. lol. we are sailing literally the opposite direction of accountability right now as a nation.
At the billionaire level that seems to be the case.
Actually, they all seem solely interested in the future. The bunkers are a drop in the bucket for them, so why not?
Has there ever be a social media plattform that cheered you on for Self-Improvement? DuoLingo comes to mind or some DIY project- like building a piece of furniture?
Just not rewarding flexing, but creating and world improving?
Duolingo has nothing to do with self improvement, it's just a shiny presentation for highly addictive game.
We should reward quality of engagement, not just length of it.
People love to hate Duolingo, but I actually learned things on it getting real results. And it showed me that language learning does not have to be massive suck.
All in all, it is actually one app that is beneficial or at least harmless.
When did you use it? It was a more authentic language-learning tool in the beginning, but was then gradually enshittified in order to maximize engagement on the platform, not actual language mastery. A lot of the most competent language-consultant staff were let go, too.
Today on the shadow libraries, you have your pick of a number of self-teaching textbooks for free, allowing you to find an approach that fits your learning style. No need to rely on a dodgy corporate app.
After it was "gradually enshittified in order to maximize engagement on the platform, not actual language mastery". I used it first time years before, stopped, came back after supposed enshittification, started entirely different language and had actual success with it.
> Today on the shadow libraries, you have your pick of a number of self-teaching textbooks for free
No, self teaching textbooks are not better for me.
"Quality of engagement" is as hard to measure as "length of engagement" is easy.
Instructables.com used to be very much like this. The community was built around people posting guides for building DIY projects, with some of them being extremely impressive and creative.
I just took a look, and it appears to have changed now though. At least, from the logged out perspective.
Duolingo has joined to the addiction club
It's strange that while many parts of the world rely on WhatsApp for essential services, this weak link is almost never in the news. Don't people know that WhatsApp is under Meta? What if he pulls the plug? Is there anything preventing MZ from doing that? I'd sever that dependence first.
We can nope out of FB, IG, but what about WhatsApp?
For those who use WhatApp, sure. I do not know a soul who does. It depends on your region.
Roughly 30% of global population uses it. It's the backbone of many South American and Continental European countries. All controlled by a private corporation.
I don't use it personally but my wife and the extended family does. Asking them to get off of the juice has been a fail. Network effects, inertia.
So these musings (not yours, The Guardian's), but kind of like "off with their heads" don't address the infrastructure cancer.
I live in the US btw and use the iOS Messages app. Don't have WhatsApp installed, even if my wife insists, on principle.
If Meta burns in flames or does something with WhatsApp, I won't feel a sting, but others will and much of the world along. I might miss FB Marketplace, that's the only reason I go there.
It's curious decoupling WhatsAPP isn't on EU's and others' agenda. If it is, but I haven't seen it.
> through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200bn, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to those with wealth like his, so the first step to safeguard society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products.
What is the author's model of a company?
It’s The Guardian - they just propose left-wing hyperbolic noise with no connection to the real world rather than offer any kind of solutions. Not even aware that Zuck is the biggest shareholder and has all the voting rights, it’s his baby and he owns it, he doesn’t have to resign to make the world a better place in The Guardian’s favour.
It’s an opinion piece
Read the last paragraph it calls on the shareholders to push back on Mark Zuckerberg. He owns most of the voting rights so its effectively calling on him to push back on himself.
It's an article written by a guest contributor - not an editorial written as the voice of the newspaper
For comparison:
He outperformed the Nasdaq 100 which made 18% (plus dividends) in the same time.
And he way outperformed Warren Buffet who made 14% in the same time.
At what price, tho? He harms children, he hijacked the attention of billions and helped the rise of facism and hate, which if not addressed will lead into very dark times again, all for a measly 3% out perform?
There's also the allegation that a) Facebook greatly overcounted (on purpose) the impressions from autoplaying videos and b) their ads target more people in an area than physically exist
"Value" is a tough thing to translate. Market cap, and whatever. Considering the fact so many people express difficulty in deleting their accounts - it won't let you, or it gets reactivated later - I'm just going to state the quiet part out loud here; Facebook's valuation is mostly or entirely fraud
If the rise of fascism and hate is due to people being able to talk to each other on Facebook with insufficient censorship, it seems your actual problem is the system of governance that gives everyone a right to vote, even if they do it based on some nonsense they read online.
You are romantizising what Facebook and Instagram have become. The problem is not that people talk to each other. The problem is, that they created algos that optimize for maximal engagement and they get that by triggering the basic human feelings that create the biggest reaction: fear and anger. They literally hacked the human brain chemistry. And they don't stop when they detect that the human is struggling and getting darker and darker thoughts, but they keep pushing to extract even the last second of precision engagement.
"How long and often" people engage with content is a perfectly reasonable metric to optimize and a very close correlate of interest. There are, in fact, plenty of things going on in the world people should get mad about, or that they should worry about. Some people think that's climate change, some people think that's migration, some people think that's rising fascism, some people think that's Mamdami opening grocery stores. The fundamental problem people have is when other people get mad about stuff they like. That's the "fear", "anger", "hate." People who get mad about the things I like are obviously just irrational, emotionally driven puppets of The Algorithm whereas I am Englightened, Rational, and came to my opinions only through Reason and Logic.
What people don't like is huge masses of people coming together and having opinions that counter our modern mainstream elite consensus. Because elites are generally pretty smart that means a lot of these opinions are, frankly, dumb. Some of them simply represent different values (pro vs anti immigration, as one example.) Both are considered intolerable.
It is also perfectly true that people spend lots of time on non-politicized content. Baby videos, cat videos, feel-good human interest stories, all sorts of positive stuff is also massively popular on these platforms. That gets ignored in favor of inveighing for tight control over the political discourse because social media spreads crimethink.
The Western democratic ideal is that you have to convince the masses you're right - a disturbingly large portion of the movers and shakers have decided that instead, we should control what the masses are allowed to say and know, so we don't have to fight those battles.
Facebook doesn't even listen to countries beyond tier 2 as per their own disclosures - https://www.theverge.com/22743753/facebook-tier-list-countri...
I very much doubt that they listen to countries in tier 1 and 2 also. If not for the fear of US's relatively stronger regulations, don't think Meta would even pay attention to any complaints in US either.
This would not change with the change in leadership in Meta simply because 18Bn is fairly affordable for Meta's scale, but they should be worried about setting the legal precedent (though they denied any wrong doing).
Other countries may not have the same ability to impose penalties owing to their weaker laws also.
Interesting how the author compares the situation to smoking. Were any of the execs of the tobacco companies asked to step down because smoking was found to be harmful to health? My guess is they simply continued and adapted based on how they could remain a profitable company with continued shareholder satisfaction.
Mark Zuckerberg is the PT Barnum of tech and Meta is his predatory circus. Meta doesn't make much sense without him.
I wonder what's the net value Meta offers for the world today. I had a similar thought about Elon the other day, for all his billions, only several million people use Tesla or Starlink, and SpaceX is cool I guess, but value and wealth don't seem to be strongly coupled. How many Tesla investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?
Aye.
> How many Tesla's investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?
It me. That said, I didn't buy TSLA because I was expecting to cash out a few years later when he started acting like a threat to democracy and his own judicial system; when I bought it I thought they had a good business model and I thought they were undervalued.
Now they're overvalued, have lots of visible competitors eating their lunch.
Worse, even if they succeed, given Musk has yet to pay out dividends on that stock and also enough control over the board to give him as many shares as he wants, I think even success would render the stock monopoly money.
We've rediscovered the need for academia from first principles
Musk probably made more dollar millionaires than anyone in history. Facebook advertisers use it because it works and reaches a hell of a lot of people.
I don't think Facebook advertisers are being particularly irrational, it's just very interesting to point out how this ad business, despite leaving most of its users ultimately unsatisfied, can be so profitable.
I think you are projecting your biases.
I’m probably biased, but do you really think Meta is, on net, a positive to the world?
I don't think that is an answerable question. It is just an excuse for people justifying a hamfisted intervention into society that actually would do more harm than good.
There is a malaise in the west and Meta is just a symptom. More institutional power is a bad idea when institutions are dysfunctional.
This article is very shortsighted.
If you think Meta is bad now, just wait until Zuck is replaced by a soulless, profit-obsessed corporate CEO whose primary job is maximizing shareholder profit. Meta as a company can get far worse.
People should really be careful what they wish for.
Yup, and additionally said stooge would probably be optimizing for their own position and package in a way Zuck doesn't have to. There's a whole new category of selfishness and shortsightedness out there.
Meta could drop a new feature tomorrow and have the tech media in a shambles within 15 minutes. Their product family is used by 3.6 billion people every day. OAI and Anthropic are still measuring per month.
It wont get better with a replacement. Look at all the other big tech companies, it only gets worse.
Split it up as with AT&T Bell or Standard Oil, or stop complaining.
That isn’t going to stop them.
Some of the baby bells got back together again.
> Last week, Meta[...] agreed to a settlement of up to $18bn [...].
>
> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users [...]
Where did that "but" clause come from? Has that ever been a priority?
we will look back on it as the big tobacco of our generation
No, that will be the gambling endemic in every aspect of our society.
OxyContin, Enron, WorldCom, Super-size-me, Pets.com, Asbestos in the ceiling tiles...
It was always burning since the world's been turning
The company lives and dies with him.
Meta as a company is too successful. It's influence on the western world is undeniably extensive.
Looking at the this picture & share holder value, Zuck is a successful CEO. I doubt any Meta insider would like Zuck to step-down.
I for one, would like Meta to crash & burn. People need to be free of its influence.
Honestly, the world has grown past the need for Meta. I would not cry if it completely shut down, problem is, what will fill the void? It would be nice to have something not controlled by Big American Corporation (or Chinese, or any, for that matter), but somehow I don't see it happening.
What void tho? The majority of people _I know_ below 40 don't use Facebook or any related service at all.
The people you know aren't exactly representative of the whole country. Most people I know are on instagram.
When I open Instagram that is still connected to all my old friends, class mates, travel buddies and whatever I get 90% third party ads and 10% posts that might even be a few months old, and most of that is just "look at me" type of content.
So I have to assume it's dead
Do they use Instagram or WhatsApp?
> or any related services.
So nah, most don't. I know some do, but the main socialisation isn't happening there.
I always find it surprising when I hear of someone younger using facebook. I associate it with retired/elderly folks who love posting cryptic messages about their health or how their day has gone wanting attention.
Same here. Also interesting how defensive people seem to get when they are somehow stuck using these networks trough their social circle or area
I think you're forgetting that Meta owns Instagram and WhatsApp.
I am not forgetting that no. Signal and Telegram are the main drivers and Instagram is just as dead as Facebook itself is.
Most people under 40, 30 and even 20 I know are on Instagram, and many under 40 and 30 are on Facebook. Maybe it varies with country, education level or some other factors.
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It's different by location. E. g. in Europe many people uses Facebook, many under 40s too.
In the US: 25–34 years: Around 25.7% to 25.9% (the largest single demographic group).
Central Europe here myself (Switzerland to be precise) signal and telegram are the dominant IM and Instagram is just as dead as Facebook, sure some might use it but nobody expects anyone else to to.
It's still used for stuff like events or groups
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Okay but like, you can make that happen. You can just stop using it.
Interestingly I did learn of a niche which is completely unserved except by Meta recently: child-locked messaging apps.
Messenger for Kids basically does everything you want it to - restricted functionality, restricted contact lists etc. I won't use it, but I only found out about it because I was hoping someone had built a Signal client which did exactly that.
Or European, for that matter. Don't fancy submitting my ID to get access.
WELL THEN, if Joan Donovan thinks so.
So says The Guardian, while showing me an illegal “Reject and Subscribe” tracking banner. Mixed messages.
Doubtful that it's illegal, they have lawyers. Hard to say it's unethical either given that there is a clear option to pay instead of be tracked (which is in any case trivially defeated by an ad-blocker). For centuries until yesterday people paid for journalism like they paid for any other service.
Under GDPR it is illegal.
> Data subjects must be allowed to withdraw this consent at any time, and the process of doing so must not be harder than it was to opt in.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
There is also FB specific:
> In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary ‘Consent or Pay' advertising model. (…)
> The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA, as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads' service.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Echoes of America's gay wedding cake case. In the US this would presumably be struck down as "compelled speech", and rightly so IMO. People refuse to pay for journalism and now publishers are prevented from allowing them to consent to pay with their personal data. They can't win, and yet we need journalism.
The solution to this whole thing has been obvious since the start: Put the power where it belongs, with the user agent (browser), by making the Do Not Track signal legally enforceable.
I'm very pro-Brussels but they've made an absolute hash of this whole thing. Cookie banners are ruining the web, which is the only open app ecosystem we have.
You praise both “Do Not Track being legally enforceable” and “consent to pay with personal data”. Note that they are mutually exclusive.
First, I'm not "praising" anything other than choice on the part of publishers and users. If DNT is set to 1 then a publisher should be free to withhold their content. If everybody sets it to 1 then they might well choose to make some compromises. Or not. I don't care. Just make the banners go away.
> I don't care. Just make the banners go away.
It’s easy, let them track you and don’t clear cookies. Be clear about your consent to tracking; then you don’t see cookie banners.
Looks like there is even an extension for that: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/i-dont-care-about-c...
That's exactly what I do. Or rather I just mash whatever is the nearest button to smite the banner. "Refuse", "Accept", who cares? I'm blocking user-side anyway, as the web was designed for. This whole situation is completely dumb and unnecessary and makes me furious. The EU Commission should have known better.
PS: Using a Chromium-based browser would be like begging to surrender what's left of the software freedom that I just described.
Sounds like you’re not accepting the cookie banners in a meaningful way. Accept all cookies and never clear them - then you see no cookie banners.
That assumes that you never visit a new site. Indeed it's why I think twice before clicking links to new sites. Honest question: Are you happy with the current state of affairs, really, and just waiting patiently for all the world's websites to decide to comply with EU law so that we can have a usable web again?
About visiting new sites, that's not a problem in practice, even HN mostly shows the same websites.
About my experience, I am relatively happy with the current state of affairs. I don't want websites to use my personal information without my consent. I still like cookie banners more than ads, in particular ads that follow me across websites or devices. Also note that many websites don't track their users - and these don't show cookie banners.
> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users
Why would it be interested in that? It's interested in increasing shareholder profits.
> It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta
What, like in the leadership of a political party? Meta does not work for the public good; if anything, it's rather the opposite. And it's not like another one of their people would change course and work and make it a public benefit company.
We haven't see any meaningful improvement from Meta for years.
Eh dunno. My impression is that from the PoV of his notional bosses - Meta shareholders - he’s doing everything ”right”. Revenue up, addiction/recurring revenue stable, keeping fines low.
I’d be happy to see Meta gone altogether, but unless I missed the memo, Meta isn’t particularly upset about what it’s been up to (beyond bland press releases).
> put safety above profit.
I think does not reflect the reality of how competitive capitalism works.
If "competitive capitalism" is how you want to frame it, then Zuckerberg should have been thrown out for essentially burning $83 billion dollars on a VR world that is never, ever going to pan out. That's going into a hole at over $400k per user. It's a disaster and any CEO of any functional company would be out on their ass, but Meta and Facebook are quite dysfunctional.
He's not going to
He went out of the way to make his company structure prevent that (also Elon)
... says The Guardian tabloid.
hilarious and ironic
> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.
It is singularly idiotic that people think people, companies, boards, governments, or anyone else should be "good", and that society will progress by rooting out "evil" ones, as adjudicated by their own standards.
People and by extension companies of people and by extension corporations, NGOs, governments, and everything else in society behaves according to incentives. "Safety of users" or "approval of The Guardian employees" does not rank particularly highly in the incentive scale next to money for anybody, least of all Facebook shareholders, lol.
The factors that influence behaviors are pretty simple. Money, negative money, threat of judicial or ultrajudicial retribution, etc. The people as a whole have levers to pull in order to shape society as they would like. Wishing for good and praying for evil to be dispelled are not among them, that's just like any other superstition.
Unfortunately framing everything as incentives is the only non-emotional way to analyse these meta-behaviours (get it?).
Sometimes, the Guardian publishes articles like this that just serve no purpose.
Zuckerberg is never resigning from Meta. Investors don't want him to resign from Meta.
What it is time for, though, is to ask ourselves as a society if the ad-fueled privacy-infringing depression-triggering attention-grabbing social media feeds are worth it.
People used to smoke. Now they dont. Change is possible.
Absolutely idiotic take. Why is the Guardian peddling this opinion piece?
Stepping down as CEO would do nothing, so unless you plan on forcing him to sell his share IDK what the point of the article is.
Mark Zuckerberg (13.68% equity; 61.2% voting)[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms
They peddle confusion, not solutions or sense.