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Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

#31

Post by badpun »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #5
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the amorality of the billionaire class strange. He could be as good as somebody running a public enterprise, a research lab, a hospital. A state energy utility. Instead he's running a giant meme tank feeding racist shit to win clicks and running fake AI ads boosting scam investments. He's good at that. But is he actually any good at building things which enrich society without making him money?

From his perspective, though, he's just responding to how society chooses to allocate capital. It's not his fault that society apparently values crappy websites more than hospitals, and if he didn't do it, someone else would have.

Same argument goes for Hitler though. If he didn't do it, there'd be another fascist leader exploiting the masses' love of fascism in early 1930s Germany.

Re: Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

#33

Post by notahacker »

muzani wrote: post #27
notahacker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think that's fair. He's generally been excellent at pissing off users in ways which grow his reach without them leaving and he's been willing to spend big on nascent competitors and actually managed not to destroy their platforms, but I do get the feeling (i) real activity on Facebook actually is tailing off now and (ii) he left a money on the table going for low value ads based on click patterns rather than building…

i) I'm sure everyone agrees with this, except maybe a few fans. The best thing he did was slowly wean the whole company off FACEBOOK, even if it's with the Meta smokescreen. Instagram is their core now. ii) I would disagree on this. Meta is king of low value ads. Google is great at targeted ads, but sometimes you want something to reach as many eyes as possible, as cheaply as possible. They've barely avoided many of…

Oh, they're A+ at low value ads (I don't even think it's the ads that's ultimately consuming the platforms, it's the unpaid content also being overoptimized for clickbait so people end up seeing fewer of the friend updates that brought them to the platform and more of the politics and clickbait videos they can get literally everywhere else). Just feels like they could easily have leveraged their user base into a slice of AirBnB's business and eBay's business and even stuff that's been difficult to scale without Facebook's user base like a much bigger Eventbrite, and that being useful would have given it more sticking power.

Instagram was clearly a great acquisition, much better than it looked at the time. But I'm not sure it's ever been as big or that it's destined to last longer or make more money. WhatApp is where it's at for me and a non-trivial number of others, and they're not making money off those conversations.

Re: Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

#34

Post by seattle_spring »

bluecheese452 wrote: post #18
bruce511 wrote: post #15

Why do you care? I mean that seriously. Sometimes when one asks a question the asking may be more insightful to you than the answer. I mean, you'll get a bunch of answers here, reflecting a bunch of opinions. But why do you care about what they think? And what does it matter to you what Zuck is or not. It doesn't sound like you're asking about billionaires in general (or the number of them, or the harm they are doing…

Why do you care why he cares? Why post this long essay?

I might be wrong in this case, but anyone I've ever met who refers to Zuckerberg as "Zuck" is a current or former employee of Meta.

Make what you wish of that information.

Re: Ask HN: Is Zuckerberg just a „one-hit-wonder"?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

ggm wrote: post #3

I find the amorality of the billionaire class strange. He could be as good as somebody running a public enterprise, a research lab, a hospital. A state energy utility. Instead he's running a giant meme tank feeding racist shit to win clicks and running fake AI ads boosting scam investments. He's good at that. But is he actually any good at building things which enrich society without making him money?

[deleted]
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