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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

economist.com

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Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#171

Post by yanderekko »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #36
shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

The argument being made isn't that people will stop using Facebook. It's that Facebook won't be able to hire the talent it needs. That's a longer, but more damaging feedback loop, assuming you believe it (the counter argument is they will be able to pay people enough to hire them anyway).

On the flipside, if Facebook is losing talent because those talented workers are demanding that the company degrade its products, then having to pay a premium can be partially or wholly offset by the positive revenue impact of avoiding this sort of activist employee.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#172

Post by deltree7 »

dogman144 wrote: post #44
mchanson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article doesn't disagree with your take: "The firm risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco. If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Even if its ageing customers stick with the social network, Facebook has bigger ambitions that could be foiled if public opinion continues to curdle."

> Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Spot on, and not just young, liberal. Old-ish and privacy minded. Mid-aged and right. Two crowds are critical though: - this is the talent pool: college campuses. FB's changing tone (sponsoring scholarships, sponsoring scholarships for non tech -> tech transfers, etc) is evident. - this is the management pool: mid-30's to 40's, married, coastal EMs or PMs, that have t…

HN delusion about their own self-importance is strong on this one.

There are millions of talented Engineers who'd die to work for Facebook, Google, Netflix.

Top 0.1%ile of 8,000,000,000 is 8 Million.

Most woke, liberal graduates were protected from competition from other countries due to their location advantage. Ironically these woke employees are demanding remote work, displaying their usual cluelessness about unintended consequences.

Like Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, its time for CEOs of tech companies to voluntarily kick out these entitled SJWs and hire true Capitalists, Libertarians, Indians, & Chinese. There are millions of them in this world and they are extremely talented and hard-working.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#173

Post by cletus »

I'll take wishful thinking for $1000, Alex.

To be fair, there are generally two reasons for these kinds of predictions:

1. People in a bubble think something is way more important than it is. I hate to say it but user data privacy is in this category. Like 1% of people actually care about this. I'm not saying that's right but it's true; and

2. People who make a lot of noise about an issue to make people care or to bring about some desired outcome. Think Yelp complaining about Google "stealing" their content.

The second can be really harmful too. A good example is articles posted about how [high X]% of people have suffered from "sexual harassment or assault". To be clear, both of those things are bad but they are different levels of bad. Cat-calling on a construction site shouldn't be treated equivalently as a violent assault.

But people do it to make things seem more alarming than they actually are and I think it has the negative effect. These bad faith arguments actually turn people off.

It also leads to situations like a 19 year old having sex with a 16 year old is on the same sexual offender list as a child molestor.

I digress.

The only thing you see here is that the Economist doesn't like Facebook. That's it. I mean there's some bad PR for FB recently but companies have survived much, much worse for much, much longer. And FB will continue to attract talent as long as they pay them.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#174

Post by hyperbovine »

shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of {AOL,MySpace,Friendster}. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#175

Post by KaiserPro »

yanderekko wrote: post #135
jdhn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it seems like most of the critiques of social media coming from big / old media are just symptoms of having their revenue bled away I feel that so many people blindly hate Facebook that they overlook this point. The loudest critics of social media are the old vanguards of news who are upset that the new kid on the block took their ad money.

>The loudest critics of social media are the old vanguards of news who are upset that the new kid on the block took their ad money. Also activists who are clearly engaging in motivated reasoning in arguing that Facebook needs to do more to censor conservative opinions.

> Also activists who are clearly engaging in motivated reasoning in arguing that Facebook needs to do more to censor

censor _everything_

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#176

Post by rubyist5eva »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

> The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced.

I'd argue the opposite. We got Exxon out of the Standard Oil breakup and Microsoft is just as scummy, if not even more scummy than ever. AT&T got broken up and several of the Baby Bells just ended up all merging together and now we have Verizon. Antitrust enforcement has had a net-zero effect at best.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#177

Post by hunterb123 »

djur wrote: post #163
whitepaint wrote: post #21

I don't really know much about US politics, but could this recent attack on Facebook be a political move and a power grab? Attack FB so they block certain groups / certain topics and promote what the regulators want? I listened to the whistle-blower's testimony and I didn't hear any reasonable solutions (in my opinion at least; I am a software developer myself). Also, it seems there might be some regulations imposed.…

A lot of people in this thread are casting political attacks on Facebook as a Democratic thing, so I'll just point out that conservative Republican Senator Josh Hawley has been attacking Facebook for years, including proposals to strip them of Section 230 protection and to allow people to sue them in federal court for "harmful content". https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-demands-answers-faceboo... https://s3.docume…

Your very first link is Hawley sending a letter because Facebook censored a Hunter Ukraine story.

Republicans are pissed because of the censorship (the big ones being lab leak and Hunter Biden's laptop, but there are smaller things all the time, 15 days bans for sharing a story the narrative doesn't agree with).

There's a good argument to make if FB wants to act like the arbiter of truth, the "truth" they choose should be legally liable.

Democrats are pissed because FB doesn't go far enough or something. They want ALL conservative media off the site.

Democrats want to amplify that censorship, Republicans don't want any censorship. Who is on the right side?

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#178

Post by cm2012 »

jdhn wrote: post #108
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

>there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent Really? Are they forced to pay more because people are actively avoiding the company, or because they have to pay more for top talent due to competitors?

yeah FB comps are no higher than Google, and lower than Netflix

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#179

Post by fullshark »

latte wrote: post #165

Why is Facebook singled out vs. all social media? I feel worse after half an hour spent reading Twitter, Reddit or even Hacker News than after half an hour spent on Facebook or Instagram. The amount of hate I see on the first three platforms is much higher.

The answer is simple: because FB is seen as a conservative propaganda distribution network and the others are not. The subreddit that was seen as a conservative propaganda network: r/the_donald was successfully eliminated and liberals want to do the same to FB.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#180

Post by ghostoftiber »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
shoto_io wrote: post #3

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

> most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB This is close to a straw man argument. Nobody claims users will abandon Facebook. The article posits, instead, strengthening headwinds. Headwinds in hiring (there is already a double-digit premium Facebook must pay for talent). From recurring whistleblowing, and its impact on morale and productivity. Headwinds in projects and partnerships, like Libre/Diem be…

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced.

I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO became Esso and Mobil, who became ExxonMobil, and ostensibly went right back to doing what it did best (owning most of the domestic oil market). Breaking up the company doesn't actually change the practices or culture of what got the company there in the first place. The new companies which are spun off oftentimes don't even know how to operate as companies and so they're easy pickings for the nucleus of the original company.

How many competitors to Windows popped up after the microsoft antitrust suit? Is there a "windows specific browser" to compete with Edge or IE which is from a former microsoft company?

The same thing for smoking. If we look at smoking as "I light something on fire and jam it into my food hole" then yes, the numbers look promising according to the CDC website. If you look at a Vice article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee...), however, all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. That's the other reason why they're pushing so hard to regulate vaping - the idea that there's an "open source" "anyone can make this" alternative simply cuts out their business.

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