Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#11

Post by kornhole »

hayst4ck wrote: post #9
johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7x earnings seems egregiously low. It’s gotta bump back up 20% within a month. This is a total mispricing of the stock

I don't know about that. I want to see Facebook fail. I think the world would be a better place without Facebook. I am pretty confident I am not the only one who thinks that and I think the number of people who see things that way is increasing. If I knew someone was engaging with Facebook, I would think less of them. In the same way Facebook grew due to social factors, it can also wither due to social factors. Faceb…

I don't participate for ethical reasons which implies that I believe those who do are unethical, ignorant, or trapped. Some call me radical, but I take it as a compliment.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#12

Post by plorkyeran »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #7
bpodgursky wrote: post #2

Zuckerberg still holds absolute voting control over the stock. Unless it tanks enough that he can get legitimately sued, or employees quit en masse... I think all other shareholders need to settle in and enjoy the ride.

I'm still shocked super voting shares are a structure that we decided as a society should even be legal. With some of the most powerful monopolies today being also controlled by people basically accountable to nobody, it feels really dystopian we can't remove them somehow.

That's more of an argument against private ownership of companies over a certain size than weird voting rules for shares. Zuckerberg has merely retained the power that he would have had if Facebook had stayed private.

If Meta does collapse due to Zuckerberg's missteps and there's a lot of very angry shareholders, it's possible that it'll result in this type of split-class voting shares becoming illegal. Financial regulations tend to be reactive rather than proactive, so things default to being legal until they very clearly are a problem.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#13

Post by midoridensha »

hayst4ck wrote: post #9
johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7x earnings seems egregiously low. It’s gotta bump back up 20% within a month. This is a total mispricing of the stock

I don't know about that. I want to see Facebook fail. I think the world would be a better place without Facebook. I am pretty confident I am not the only one who thinks that and I think the number of people who see things that way is increasing. If I knew someone was engaging with Facebook, I would think less of them. In the same way Facebook grew due to social factors, it can also wither due to social factors. Faceb…

I'm no fan of Facebook either, but if they collapse and die one day soon, one thing I'll really miss is FB Messenger. I just haven't found anything remotely like it that works as well for keeping a friends list, letting me chat with them, and letting me do video chats, both on my phone and (very importantly) on a PC.

Everything else fails in some way, usually the PC part. Most chat apps have some video chat function, but it sucks and is totally useless because it's only on the phone; there's no way to do it on a PC, so what's the point? I don't want to see shaky video from someone holding their phone in their hand. I can chat with people using Zoom, but that's a pain because it requires a native application, it's only for video chats (not for keeping a long-running text chat), so while it's great for business meetings it sucks for personal use.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#14

Post by ocdtrekkie »

plorkyeran wrote: post #12
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still shocked super voting shares are a structure that we decided as a society should even be legal. With some of the most powerful monopolies today being also controlled by people basically accountable to nobody, it feels really dystopian we can't remove them somehow.

That's more of an argument against private ownership of companies over a certain size than weird voting rules for shares. Zuckerberg has merely retained the power that he would have had if Facebook had stayed private. If Meta does collapse due to Zuckerberg's missteps and there's a lot of very angry shareholders, it's possible that it'll result in this type of split-class voting shares becoming illegal. Financial reg…

Sort of, but public companies generally can grow much larger than private companies. There's something to be said for the fact that Zuckerberg is using a public company like his private company because it's architected to give everyone else less control. If it was all his money, fine whatever, but he's burning shareholder value and shareholders have no power to do anything about it, and that seems wrong, IMHO.

But yeah, I haven't checked, but to my knowledge split-class voting shares are relatively recent innovations? It may take some corporate collapses before any change is made to the regulations.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#15

Post by hayst4ck »

midoridensha wrote: post #13
hayst4ck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. I want to see Facebook fail. I think the world would be a better place without Facebook. I am pretty confident I am not the only one who thinks that and I think the number of people who see things that way is increasing. If I knew someone was engaging with Facebook, I would think less of them. In the same way Facebook grew due to social factors, it can also wither due to social factors. Faceb…

I'm no fan of Facebook either, but if they collapse and die one day soon, one thing I'll really miss is FB Messenger. I just haven't found anything remotely like it that works as well for keeping a friends list, letting me chat with them, and letting me do video chats, both on my phone and (very importantly) on a PC. Everything else fails in some way, usually the PC part. Most chat apps have some video chat function,…

> keeping a friends list

This was the early genius of facebook and why the WhatsApp purchase was (in retrospect) genius. Facebook wanted to replace your phones contact list. They wanted to be the authoritative list of your friends.

After having de-facebooked myself, the contact list as authoratative friends list works ok, but it is a downgrade. The video is too.

I am relatively happy with signal, but yeah, not as good in terms of usability.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#16

Post by helpfulclippy »

johnwheeler wrote: post #3
bpodgursky wrote: post #2

Zuckerberg still holds absolute voting control over the stock. Unless it tanks enough that he can get legitimately sued, or employees quit en masse... I think all other shareholders need to settle in and enjoy the ride.

7x earnings seems egregiously low. It’s gotta bump back up 20% within a month. This is a total mispricing of the stock

They have one of the worst brand reputations in tech. Their business model in general is being targeted by regulators and policymakers in jurisdictions big and small all over the world, and the various abuses of their specific platform is often used as a clear example of why. TikTok is giving them very strong competition, and their efforts to play copycat are not being received well by users. Investors are now far less enamored with tech, and capital is tight in general since the economy is in a precarious situation. Their CEO is unaccountable, and people he relied on to build a successful business to begin with (eg. Sheryl Sandberg) are gone, and he’s spending all his focus on a completely different product that lacks traction. He insists on centering himself as a personality in media, despite the fact that he is uncharismatic and his appearances tend to reinforce the brand’s negative reputation.

Even if VR is the future, there’s no indication that Meta is the company that knows how to build something people want here, let alone profit it at, but it continues to pour massive amounts of money, talent and executive attention into this, and it sounds like they’re not planning to change course.

Meta has earned its price drop.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#17

Post by Uw7yTcf36gTc »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14
plorkyeran wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more of an argument against private ownership of companies over a certain size than weird voting rules for shares. Zuckerberg has merely retained the power that he would have had if Facebook had stayed private. If Meta does collapse due to Zuckerberg's missteps and there's a lot of very angry shareholders, it's possible that it'll result in this type of split-class voting shares becoming illegal. Financial reg…

Sort of, but public companies generally can grow much larger than private companies. There's something to be said for the fact that Zuckerberg is using a public company like his private company because it's architected to give everyone else less control. If it was all his money, fine whatever, but he's burning shareholder value and shareholders have no power to do anything about it, and that seems wrong, IMHO. But ye…

they have the power to leave the stock. nobody is forcing them to be stuck with this arrangement but themselves.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#18

Post by johnwheeler »

helpfulclippy wrote: post #16
johnwheeler wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7x earnings seems egregiously low. It’s gotta bump back up 20% within a month. This is a total mispricing of the stock

They have one of the worst brand reputations in tech. Their business model in general is being targeted by regulators and policymakers in jurisdictions big and small all over the world, and the various abuses of their specific platform is often used as a clear example of why. TikTok is giving them very strong competition, and their efforts to play copycat are not being received well by users. Investors are now far le…

Well, it also makes 40B a year, so, there’s that.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#19

Post by helpfulclippy »

johnwheeler wrote: post #18
helpfulclippy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have one of the worst brand reputations in tech. Their business model in general is being targeted by regulators and policymakers in jurisdictions big and small all over the world, and the various abuses of their specific platform is often used as a clear example of why. TikTok is giving them very strong competition, and their efforts to play copycat are not being received well by users. Investors are now far le…

Well, it also makes 40B a year, so, there’s that.

For now.

Re: Meta: Shares in Facebook owner dive 20% as investors lose faith

#20

Post by [deleted] »

Uw7yTcf36gTc wrote: post #17
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, but public companies generally can grow much larger than private companies. There's something to be said for the fact that Zuckerberg is using a public company like his private company because it's architected to give everyone else less control. If it was all his money, fine whatever, but he's burning shareholder value and shareholders have no power to do anything about it, and that seems wrong, IMHO. But ye…

they have the power to leave the stock. nobody is forcing them to be stuck with this arrangement but themselves.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN