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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

#351

Post by ravenstine »

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.

In reality, neither do most people in our group, if you can even call it that. Just like all the other times an exodus from Facebook was declared, a year later it's as if nothing had happened and we come to find out that everyone still uses it to some capacity. Not to fault anyone, but all of this has been said before. Frankly, if these issues mattered to people, they would have left Facebook a long time ago. None of the blown "whistles" so far have tooted a message everyone didn't already know.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#352

Post by dogman144 »

deltree7 wrote: post #172
dogman144 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 unin…

Very much missed the point with a motivated reading of the intent behind what I'm saying. Nicely done!

My comment wasn't directed at 0.1% pile. It's directed at mid-tier, good-not-great CS programs that FB is both targeting in ways that other FAANGs don't, and also have put on heavy marketing programs at. Signal or noise, hard to say, but they wouldn't be doing it if the need didn't exist .

What matters more is the self-fulfilling prophecy of if the PMs/EMs with the cultural sway decide to check out. It's incorrect to think these types don't matter due to the externalities tied to them, not just their management talent (there are a lot of good managers). An example is will the future Sheryl Sandbergs work, or not work at FB. These dinner table conversations are what starts to decide that, and their decision has a material impact on the company's future.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#353

Post by cto_of_antifa »

ditonal wrote: post #290
dont__panic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess that they mean 10% or more total compensation versus comparable positions elsewhere. But I could also see this meaning $10k a year or more because 10% TC is such an insane number. In my experience, Facebook's offers do tend to beat Google's by $10k or so. But it's all so random and all over the place that it's tough to know if that's a consistent number.

Yeah it's not even true that FB is paying a premium. A thread full of people complaining about misinformation happily posting inaccurate information about Facebook. Go look at levels.fyi. Facebook pays close to market for senior engineers (~450k), more or less in line with companies like Uber, Robinhood, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. In fact, Facebook doesn't even crack the top 5 on levels for senior SWE comp so…

Just want to point out using the word "rape" in such a casual and nonspecific way is not okay.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#354

Post by Frondo »

RandallBrown wrote: post #345
wayoutthere wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively…

Being able to passively keep in touch with many of the thousands of people I've met in my life is incredibly valuable to me. It feels incredibly sad to just let those relationships die because you're focusing your energies on the people that are currently around you.

Not trying to nitpick, and not arguing with the sense of sadness you feel -- I sympathize -- but I wouldn't call "passively keeping in touch" with thousands of people "relationships." It's something, but I'm not sure what, it seems like we may not have a good word for "casual strangers," the level of familiarity beneath acquaintance that we know because we met them once and then know only what they post in one social media database or another.

Also, to be honest, I felt the way you did before I deleted a twitter account with about 2k following and 10k followers. I felt like it was dominating my attention, and that made me mad. In a fit of pique I deleted it and it's almost funny how quickly I realized I didn't know any of them, and the passive consumption of their social media database entries was scratching some kind of itch but the same one I get from e.g. binging Star Trek series.

Very strange all around.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#356

Post by wayoutthere »

RandallBrown wrote: post #345
wayoutthere wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But ditching my FB account entirely means I'd lose access to dozens of people I wouldn't have a great way of contacting otherwise. That used to be a fear of mine, but after deleting my account I’ve found it to be a core feature. It forces me to be intentional with my relationships; if I want to stay in touch with someone I have to make the effort. Otherwise, the relationship is likely more parasocial than actively…

Being able to passively keep in touch with many of the thousands of people I've met in my life is incredibly valuable to me. It feels incredibly sad to just let those relationships die because you're focusing your energies on the people that are currently around you.

I think the sad part was realizing those relationships had died long ago, and that being friends on Facebook just makes it feel like they haven’t. It pushes into that parasocial territory which IMO is the biggest problem with social media: if our need for human connection is hunger, parasocial relationships are counterfeit food that makes you feel full but contains no calories.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#357

Post by syntheticnature »

kongin wrote: post #55
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 has gotten worse with its young liberal staff. And I don't mean in the dark patterns for more clicks sense, I mean in the cpu cycles to do a basic operation. Maybe it's time for the old crusty developers making $60k on embedded systems to take a shot at it.

As an embedded developer in my 40s+... if you're good at it, $60k is chump change.

+Not sure what counts as old and crusty, but...

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#358

Post by beowulfey »

ethbr0 wrote: post #230
mkr-hn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been so long since a company reached Facebook's heights and fell that a whole generation doesn't know what it looks like. AOL was the Facebook of its time: a joke to system admins, a default ban on small game servers and IRC channels. Meanwhile, most people had no idea anyone had a problem with AOL. Like with Facebook, there were people reporting on its follies like Observers.net[0], but it mostly went unremarke…

I'd hesitate to generalize AOL's fall into Facebook's future. AOL's core proposition was being better than the Internet (more curated, coherent, and faster). When the web and internet exploded in size and scale, AOL's value evaporated. The dumb mergers and other mistakes were window dressing on this landscape transformation. And for years (decades? still?) afterwards, people used AOL Instant Messager (AIM), because i…

We are in unknown territory with Facebook, but I have no doubt it will fall eventually. The laws of thermodynamics hold true for institutions as much as everything else—one day Facebook will lose to entropy and it will become a fraction of the size it is now.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#359

Post by baby »

snowwrestler wrote: post #103
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.

You’re essentially arguing that your group of acquaintances is a bellwether, or at least strongly predictive of national or global outcomes for one of the biggest companies in the world. I don’t know your acquaintances, but in general that seems pretty unlikely to me. The threat to Facebook is not mass consumer hate and abandonment. It’s that no one likes them enough to stand up for them anymore, which empowers the r…

True, and what we're seeing these days is a play to affect public sentiment.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#360

Post by jonny_eh »

rctec wrote: post #343
jonny_eh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One notable exception was video games. In retrospect the success of the Xbox is extremely strange.

The success of Xbox resulted from what was essentially an internal con job. It survived to launch and succeeded because the team responsible managed to keep a straight face about several important lies about what Xbox would be to the rest of the company's leadership and BG himself.

> several important lies

Can you please elaborate? I'm pretty familiar with Xbox's history but I'm not aware of any lies.

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