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Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

nytimes.com

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Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#161

Post by adventured »

jmastrangelo wrote: post #124
istjohn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp and IG _were_ alternatives, but our timid regulators were happy to let FB buy them up. Naivete is thinking the free market can regulate itself. Markets are not naturally free. They only function when zealous regulators keep the gears well-oiled.

>WhatsApp and IG _were_ alternatives Are they though? They're nearly completely separate products with different activities and goals. If WhatsApp and Instagram were never acquired, I don't see them actually being very different at all from the consumer's pov, though I see them being less successful businesses without Fb's ad network and infrastructure. I don't think these two are actually competition for facebook, f…

> Are they though? They're nearly completely separate products with different activities and goals.

Yes. By Facebook's own admission, photos are the center of the Facebook core platform, along with the social networking properties - comments, likes, status signaling, feedback - of the service that surround photos.

Instagram was a dramatic threat to the center of Facebook: personal, social networked photo sharing, with the previously mentioned social qualities. It's the only serious, direct threat Facebook has faced since the early days of the network.

It's also worth at least $100 billion today. If you stripped Instagram off of Facebook, with how their metrics would now look (stagnant, weak, at risk of decline), I'd be skeptical Facebook would be worth more than $150 to $200 billion. Buying Instagram not only removed the only serious threat to Facebook that they've faced, it provided a dramatic moat that they could utilize for defense or drowning enemies (which is what they put it to use for in trying to kill or otherwise slow down Snapchat).

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#162

Post by hodgesrm »

jmastrangelo wrote: post #149

While we're discussing Facebook and anticompetitive practices, I'd like to bring the effects of FANG/Unicorns and their current compensation. I think we are seeing a drop in people leaving established tech to startups, but I think most of this is due to the _ludicrous_ amount of money an engineer/PM can make being a 9-5er at one FB/G. Engineers who meet expectations and get promoted at the minimum allowed rate can be…

It's not clear that many of the people you are describing would have joined a startup anyway. There's big difference in the personalities who thrive in startups and those that thrive in large bureaucracies. An alternative view is that Silicon Valley and other tech centers are increasing dominated by the latter type of person.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#163

Post by dragonwriter »

panglott wrote: post #105
dragonwriter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole business model of Silicon Valley The thing you point to is the model for which Capitalism selects, not some local quirk of Silicon Valley.

A lot of the infrastructure of capitalism is oriented around generating and sustaining small- and medium-sized businesses, and while large corporations will always want to increase market power most sectors have antitrust reasons to avoid outright monopoly. The tech sector feels free to aim for monopoly and generate monopoly rents.

> A lot of the infrastructure of capitalism is oriented around generating and sustaining small- and medium-sized businesses

A lot of the infrastructure of modern mixed economies is dedicated to maintaining some space for such businesses against the natural forces of capitalism, as part of the broader purpose of modern mixed economies of providing sufficient mitigation of the clear adverse effects of capitalism to relieve pressure for more radical reform, sure.

That is not inconsistent with the fact that the basic nature of the capitalist property system is to promote the creation of productive monopolies from which monopoly rents can be extracted. Actually, that fact is why that effort is necessary.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#164

Post by nullandvoid »

patwolf wrote: post #64

"Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy. But his company is a threat to our economy and democracy." "Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks." I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when someone is defined simply as "good". It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". For example, if w…

I mean this is a childhood friend and co-founder talking about him.. It's obviously going to be a different tone than a whistle-blower / media etc trying to take him down ( and perhaps rightly so but that's a different discussion ).

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#165

Post by nashashmi »

oldjokes wrote: post #73
patwolf wrote: post #64

"Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy. But his company is a threat to our economy and democracy." "Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks." I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when someone is defined simply as "good". It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". For example, if w…

I'd be ok with calling Zuckerberg a good person if anything he has ever done has indicated he's honest or open to serious change. But he's not. The pattern is pretty clear. Ever since the Beacon fiasco he's been saying that privacy is important and that he's going to take it seriously and make changes, while every action he and those around him take moves blatantly in the opposite direction. He's been lying every tim…

Great that you brought up beacon.

Beacon was the way to keep privacy in check yet still make money. But when all went against it, they pulled out and then led a silent fooler's march towards tricking people into giving data and making that data available to payers. All made legal with a very broad TOS that they can do whatever they want with the data that they choose.

We should have just stuck with Beacon and marketplaces in a privacy rich world.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#166

Post by c0vfefe »

dominotw wrote: post #125
c0vfefe wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because targeting is very profitable.

so effective advertising does require surveillance? Is there way to to know if companies like FB would be sustainable without surveillance or would they simply die out ? in other words, would banning surveillance business kill FB, Google ect? Would we still want that law if that was the case?

This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition. Tracking-based advertising isn't used out of necessity any more often than negotiating a $200k TC increase is. It's about maximizing profit, not simply about sustained survival.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#167

Post by dexwell »

istjohn wrote: post #71
Nextgrid wrote: post #14

It’s time to outlaw stalking-based business models. If you just break up Facebook but don’t outlaw the underlying scummy business model something else will just take its place.

People are waking up to the importance of privacy. If FB had competing social networks, consumer choice would matter. As it is, we have false choices like FB vs. IG.

I recently launched Cardbox, an app that reimagines your address book as your definitive social network. No timeline, no posts, no ads, no data monetization; just contacts.

As an independent place to stay connected, it enables people to leave social media without losing their social network (an important distinction). It also makes it easier to discover and try out new apps (just link them to your card).

Check it out maybe :) https://cardbox.app/

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#168

Post by jmastrangelo »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #159
jmastrangelo wrote: post #149

While we're discussing Facebook and anticompetitive practices, I'd like to bring the effects of FANG/Unicorns and their current compensation. I think we are seeing a drop in people leaving established tech to startups, but I think most of this is due to the _ludicrous_ amount of money an engineer/PM can make being a 9-5er at one FB/G. Engineers who meet expectations and get promoted at the minimum allowed rate can be…

what's the median age (in your estimation) of a level I director at FB? and what's "absurd amount of money" for good engineers? Something like 400 - 600K?

From my (likely poor) estimation, an internally promoted director likely has ~10 - 15 years of experience, and externally hired directors can range from that little to much much more. These are usually very talented people who could be C-suite executives at smaller companies so their compensation makes sense.

When I said "absurd amount of money" it was more of a rhetorical device, I don't actually think that its unreasonable, and yeah I meant ~500k or so.

Considering the value good engineering and leadership bring to a tech company, this pay makes perfect sense, hell it still may be lowballing the value they generate for the organization. But it is still a high amount of money for a 9-5 individual contribution job compared with other industries.

I'm more making the point that tech used to pay middlingly compared to other professional jobs (doctor/lawyer etc.), and Mechanical/Electrical engineering for the most part still do pay middlingly. I think this encouraged the talented to strike out for startups far more often as the opportunity cost of doing so was lower, especially in times with new technology waves where there was a lot more "low hanging fruit".

I'm not saying the pay is anticompetitive or a bad thing, I'm merely commenting on a trend that I've seen where startups make less and less sense for talented individual engineers and I wonder how that will affect the tech scene in the next decade.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#169

Post by rfrey »

patwolf wrote: post #64

"Mark Zuckerberg is a good guy. But his company is a threat to our economy and democracy." "Mark is a good, kind person. But I’m angry that his focus on growth led him to sacrifice security and civility for clicks." I always find it difficult to take an argument seriously when someone is defined simply as "good". It glosses over a lot of things, like what motivates a person and how we define "good". For example, if w…

Prefacing a criticism with "XXX is an upstanding person, but..." is just shorthand for saying "I am aware of and actively trying to avoid ad-hominem arguments, and genuinely believe my concerns are with the institution/setup/company/regulation and not with individuals."

I think it's a legit rhetorical device.

Re: Chris Hughes Says It’s Time to Break Up Facebook

#170

Post by jmastrangelo »

hodgesrm wrote: post #162
jmastrangelo wrote: post #149

While we're discussing Facebook and anticompetitive practices, I'd like to bring the effects of FANG/Unicorns and their current compensation. I think we are seeing a drop in people leaving established tech to startups, but I think most of this is due to the _ludicrous_ amount of money an engineer/PM can make being a 9-5er at one FB/G. Engineers who meet expectations and get promoted at the minimum allowed rate can be…

It's not clear that many of the people you are describing would have joined a startup anyway. There's big difference in the personalities who thrive in startups and those that thrive in large bureaucracies. An alternative view is that Silicon Valley and other tech centers are increasing dominated by the latter type of person.

> An alternative view is that Silicon Valley and other tech centers are increasing dominated by the latter type of person.

Definitely possible and likely true to some extent. Smart people who don't have a particular passion and may have chosen finance/consulting in another era are considering tech.

Though I do see a lot of people move in and out of being high leadership at smaller companies/startups and into manager/director positions at FANG.

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