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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

economist.com

581–590 of 609 posts

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#581
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram will be the thing for “old people” soon enough

Not if they manage to pull off Instagram for Kids

I can’t understand how Instagram for Kids can succeed. Any parent that knows half of the bad stuff Facebook allegedly does (and how other “for Kids” efforts have utterly failed to protect the children) would never let their kids on such a platform. I would sooner buy a product labeled Crack Cocaine for Kids; it would be safer for them.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#582
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Netflix has always been the odd-duck in FAANG. Yeah, mostly cos they make no money ;)

1.7 billion in profit on ~7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2021 counts as "no money" these days?

Yeah, because it essentially happened because they stopped producing content in 2020, due to the pandemic.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/netflix-says-cash-flow-posit...

Netflix have needed external financing to stay in business up till this year. This is very unlike the rest of FAANG (Amazon is similar, but do throw off a lot of free cash).

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Lies aren't opinions. "Hillary Clinton is a Gila Monster" is not an opinion but a complete fabrication. That's what mainstream liberals are deeply concerned about, not conservative ideas about taxation.

Maybe I'm behind on the times but I don't think liberals are kept up at night by the idea of someone putting on facebook that the clintons are a race of green skinned aliens.

In actual fact I think, as per usual, the situation is more complicated than that. Some of the censoring may be for fabrications, but the people who decide what is and isn't a fabrication are biased, and therefore leads to opinions at very least being caught up in the mix

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#584
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Users would need an order of magnitude superior alternative, and most critically, users would need to move en mass. Yeah. Network effect. Arguably nothing on Earth has ever had such a powerful network effect as Facebook. I dislike FB for all of the usual reasons, plus a few of my own. But I still have an FB account. I don't check it very often, and I've got notifications turned off. But ditching my FB account entirel…

The problem is, that only an engaged user is valuable for a facebook advertiser. What will be the point in putting ads on facebook when most users use it like you do today?

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#585
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone pay to advertise in Economist when they can advertise to "people interested in economics, earning over 150k, last thought about cigarettes three weeks ago" etc. Isn't the economist subscription-based? Regardless, I'll bite: Isn't an important reason because someone wants to signal to the world that "everyone knows" their company is a sexy, category-defining beast? E.g., there are Coca Cola machines…

Also the quality of integrated ads is far higher. I read integrated ads occasionally. I never read FB or Google ads.

Not a FB fanboy here, but instagram ads have been the most relevant and interesting ones to me. I actually like seeing them pop up in my feed.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Harley Davidson has learned, you can't lean on an aging population long-term, as they tend to stop aging.

There's a lot of late 20s early 30's that grew up when FB was coming up that won't leave anytime soon.

As MySpace, Orkut, and Friendster learned, that’s not a guarantee.

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple search for "hunter biden laptop" on Facebook immediately kicks up three news articles, dozens of site posts, and (in the bubble I can see from my own friends list) several dozen posts on the topic from the point of view that the laptop was real. If this is Democratic censorship in action, it's incredibly bad at its goals.

It was censored on all tech platforms at once when the story broke so the information wouldn't hit mainstream weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Yes eventually they had to allow it because it was blatant censorship, but the damage is done.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

#590
There is pretty much no such thing as a "reputational point of no return" for organizations. Entire nations can go from "invasive aggressor" to "trading partner" in a matter of decades or even years.

Microsoft went from "Helloween Documents" in 1998 ... oops, pardon the metal-head, "Halloween Documents" ... to running a major business on GNU/Linux, contributing to the kernel, publishing open source, ... Today you're just some nutty old curmudgeon if you make anti-Microsoft remarks around 20-something devs.

The article also conflates Facebook Inc with the facebook.com social site. If facebook.com is losing young Americans, that doesn't mean Facebook Inc is losing them, if they happen to be switching to another site also owned by Facebook Inc.

(Facebook Inc lying to advertisers about the user base sizes and demographics of facebook.com is an issue, no doubt, but the argument being insinuated in the article is that Facebook Inc is losing users to competitors.)

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