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Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The marke

by hodder 9y ago

Remember the delete Uber campaign, the Equifax breach, the WFC accounts, the Bank of America suits, the Intel chip vulnerability? The market doesn't. The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere. However, there may be some welcomed changes in data abuse. With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today.

DataWorker 9y ago
Was with you up to that last sentence. On what do you base your valuation exactly?
- tetrep 9y ago
  Well, if you were following along, they mention that the market has not remembered those transgressions, which heavily implies the stock price before this incident will be reached again. The stock will hit a local minima, and then bounce back (the symptom of the market "forgetting").
  - imglorp 9y ago
    Yep. See also INTC, who got hit down to 44 for that little thing that affected most of their products. They're back to 50 today. The gap between those two might be the temporary social fear factor, that vanishes in a few weeks.
- dominotw 9y ago
  > On what do you base your valuation exactly Is it even possible to come up with an answer for this?
  - adambyrtek 9y ago
    When somebody claims that a stock is a "bargain" it's not unreasonable to expect to base that on something more concrete than just a gut feeling.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
edf13 9y ago
It was good for a Short a week or so ago anyway...
sametmax 9y ago
The short memory is a global things. It's the same with bad movies, lying politician and crazy ex gf/bf. You can get away with a pretty much anything as long as it's legal, not a big symbol, or that you have money to bypass the legal issue: the public won't hold you responsible for long. Here it's even worst, because it's also coupled with a total lack of interest. People mostly don't care about co-creating a society. They just want to enjoy the rewards of it right now. Unless pictures of them doing something they are ashamed of are displayed on a highway billboard, data privacy is not even on their map.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- LinuxBender 9y ago
  John Oliver did a good job of highlighting your point when he interviewed Edward Snowden. People interviewed on the streets about cell phone data collection and it did not concern people at all, that is ... until they found out it could involve pictures of their bf/gf's private bits they sexted back and forth. People said that would make them mad.
somuchtyler 9y ago
What are you talking about, during the equifax breach equifax lost 1/3rd of its value
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  Now it's back to early 2017 levels. Not exactly catastrophic.
- gruez 9y ago
  ...and then went back up after everybody realized nothing was going to happen. including last week's drop, it's sitting at 80% of its pre-breach price.
  - Retric 9y ago
    So it's down 20% not 33%? That's still a big drop and not a great recovery.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > ...and then went back up after everybody realized nothing was going to happen. including last week's drop, it's sitting at 80% of its pre-breach price. A sustained 20% drop in market share for a very large, very established company that has fairly few competitors, substantial network effects, and a high barrier to entry. That's a significant drop. It didn't wipe out the company, no, but it's a far cry from saying that "the market doesn't remember" - in this case, the market very clearly did remember.
domevent 9y ago
With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today. And still falling. A dark part of me hopes the sharks looking to make a profit without recognition of how Facebook is in really deep shit just lose everything. A lot of glib predictions about catching falling knives here, but they seem to ignore Facebook not being quite as essential or inescapable as someone’s bank or credit reporting agency. People don’t really understand Equifax, and simple breaches don’t bother them as much actively manipulated. Facebook provides a really nominal service for most people, and I think some here are trying very hard to convince themselves this is something other than their bubble being pricked. Good luck.
- sevensor 9y ago
  > not being quite as essential or inescapable as someone’s bank or credit reporting agency. Given the existence of the shadow profile, FB is exactly as inescapable as a credit reporting agency.
  - Lionsion 9y ago
    > Given the existence of the shadow profile, FB is exactly as inescapable as a credit reporting agency. That's not true. Facebook has data, but their data isn't as valuable and important to individuals as that controlled by a credit reporting agency. For instance, Equifax has info to enable straightforward identity theft, and I need all that data to be there if I want reasonable terms on a loan I may want. The Facebook social graph is mainly valuable to advertisers and intelligence agencies, both of which I can happily ignore day-to-day. It's data could be a tool for identity theft, but I doubt they have the SSNs or CC numbers in their shadow profiles needed to make that easy.
- hodder 9y ago
  Considering you just said you hope I lose everything... I will take the follow up "Good luck" with a grain of salt.
kerng 9y ago
We will see, not unlikely that a split off of Instagram and/or WhatsApp is being put on the table. Who knows. It didn't happen with Microsoft back in the day, so I'm not sure such drastic measure would be seriously entertained.
- oflannabhra 9y ago
  From a market perspective, a split might make FB stock even more attractive. While I'm sure FB can leverage IG data quite effectively by mixing it in with the FB (product) data, I bet investors would salivate at the potential of investing in IG directly. Investing in FB now might result in pre-"IPO" prices for IG. It might be the case that the sum is greater than the parts, but I don't know if the market would respond to a split from a purely rational stance, at least initially.
adamnemecek 9y ago
Uber has fucked up but it's incomparable with this. The main difference is that FB fucked over the world for the next decade or so maybe more. The problem with Equifax is that I can't do anything to retaliate against the company.
- wybiral 9y ago
  Good point. Uber tried to fix things by a shake up (but I still don't use Uber). Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could. Facebook, this kind of stuff is inherent in their business model. Our data is the only obvious thing they can turn into money.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    > Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could You could freeze your credit with Equifax, if you're not looking to take out new credit lines. It costs money, but I've heard it pretty much stops them from making money off your info. That's why the credit agencies are pushing things like "credit locks," which don't have legal mandates behind them meaning they can design the service to suit themselves.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      I just can’t get over how I am paying them money to stop making money off my data
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      Personally I would want them to not keep any records on me at all. They are a financial stalker for others
    - nofinator 9y ago
      I believe Equifax and others are offering a free credit freeze through June 30. Here's the clearest description I could find: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/equifax-credit-freeze/ https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/equifax-credit-freez... However, I'm not an expert and I'd like to hear more about this.
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
It's worth remembering what happened to Microsoft after it was hit with anti-trust action: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/long-antitrust-saga-ends-for-microsoft/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/long-antitru... The stock was literally dead money for decades and the ramifications are clear. The recent selling pressure is driven to an extent by memories of Microsoft and the financial impact. The stock is in no meaningful sense a bargain.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Microsoft's stagnation had far more to do with their failure in mobile and the fact that their operating system and Office markets (where essentially all their money came from) were stagnant to declining. Oh, and all the cool new development (a traditional Microsoft strength) was happening on other platforms. But they finally got a credible cloud strategy together which recognized today's realities which is why their stock is doing better. I won't say anti-trust had no impact but they had more fundamental problems.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    > “Since the antitrust suit, they have become much more cautious and much less aggressive,” said Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, who just wrote about Microsoft in the book “Staying Power.” > “They’re afraid, it seems. Whether it’s antitrust in U.S. or in Europe, they seem to be slowly reacting to the world around them, rather than trying to get in there fast." Certainly some academics would nontrivially attribute the strategic moves to anti-trust-related conservatism
iskander 9y ago
I deleted Uber during that campaign and so did at least a dozen people that I know. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think Lyft's market share roughly doubled within several months. How did "the market" not notice?
- ggg9990 9y ago
  “I dance with a traffic cone on my head and so do a dozen people I know. In fact in the last three months our numbers have quadrupled. The world has definitely taken notice of traffic-cone dancing.”
ben_jones 9y ago
Deletes Facebook angrily, opens Instagram five minutes later.
mrtksn 9y ago
Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to death.
- zerostar07 9y ago
  This is a media campaing, not “the users”
- kbenson 9y ago
  I'm not sure Digg had enough money lying around to just buy the next "cool" thing that comes along, as Facebook has done a few times now.
  - mrtksn 9y ago
    I added IE to my example to illustrate that having all the money in the world may not save you when your brand becomes toxic. Some may say that FB users don't care but with IE it also was just geeks and devs, but it turned into a crusade and now everyone "knows" that the first thing you do after you have a fresh PC is to install Chrome.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      The difference is, if devs don’t support your brower, your browsing experience suffers. Every developer on Earth could leave Facebook and it would not make the experience of using fb any worse. Facebook is not a software platform, it’s an ad platform. If anything fb would get better if we stopped targeting it.
      - mrtksn 9y ago
        I remember the process, it had nothing to do with the dev support. Actually, it was the other way around - IE had all the dev support and websites broke down on Firefox but people were fanatics. There were extensions that let you render the page in IE if it's not working on Firefox. When the Chrome came along, Firefox already put a dent in IE market share and it already became socially unacceptable for techies to use IE but regular people still used IE so the devs were forced to make sure that everything works perfectly on IE too. For the masses, thanks to the developers, IE displayed the websites just fine up until the bitter end. Friends didn't let friends use IE and it was killed.
cryoshon 9y ago
is uber a profitable company? and how can consumers avoid giving business to equifax?
panarky 9y ago
Remember when sexual assault and harassment were routine, and powerful men could do what they wanted with impunity? There was an awakening, the public mood changed, people were energized and emboldened to take action. What used to be an open secret is now taboo and many powerful men have been fired and disgraced. Remember the awakening about the unhealthy effects of sugary carbonated beverages? That wasn't a one-time fad as sales of soda in the US have dropped every year for the last 12 years. Similar awakenings are now happening in economics, politics, law enforcement, and now digital rights and privacy. I'd be very surprised if the outrage fades away with no serious damage to Facebook. Quitting Facebook leads to higher levels of well-being [1]. People are waking up to this reality, just like they woke up to the dangers of smoking, and it's long-term negative for Facebook and their shareholders. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soda-sales-study/u-s-soda-sales-drops-for-12th-straight-year-trade-publication-idUSKBN17L2HN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soda-sales-study/u-s-soda... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27831756 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27831756
- alistairSH 9y ago
  Let me know when we fire Trump for those same transgressions.
- mistermann 9y ago
  My gut feeling on what's really going on here politicians on both sides of the aisle have realized that not only can they use Facebook against their opponent, their opponent can use Facebook against them, or someone else could use it against both of them. I suspect where possible, politicians prefer to minimize the number of highly influential entities. That the public is also helped is just gravy.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Remember when sexual assault and harassment were routine, and powerful men could do what they wanted with impunity? Like, when you could brag about benefitting from that, and still be President? I remember that like it was the day after yesterday...
galieos_ghost 9y ago
The IC and their mockingbirds[1] in the MSM have been furious about losing their ability to completely control public opinion for a long time due to the internet and social media. The fact that Trump was able to win despite 91% negative MSM coverage[2] terrifies them. So they create a controversy out of thin air to force FB and soon other companies to comply and censor anything deemed wrong think. There's absolutely nothing new we've learned about what FB does in the last week, all this information was public and actually praised when Obama used FB data to win. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/12/study-91-percent-of-recent-network-trump-coverage-has-been-negative/?utm_term=.13f4b1513c90 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/...
bitumen 9y ago
How is the top comment here a weak version of, “come on in, the water is fine” when Facebook keeps dripping scandal? A lot of armchair investors and professionally apathetic people the last couple of days, and they’re all making the same claim, “nobody cares.” Meanwhile it’s still being drilled in the media, keeps hitting the front page here, dropped tens of billions, and so on. “Nobody cares” feels more like desperate wishing/spinning, and it’s getting old in a hurry. It also ignores how this is being driven by Trump’s election, which has freaked a lot of people out, and by a general backlash against big tech. A lot of anecdotes are being bandied about, in the face of a lot of realities that are not anecdotal. So buy the stock, but don’t be shocked when like Moore’s Law, past performance fails to predict future gains.
- hodder 9y ago
  I'm not an "armchair investor". I'm a real investor. My money is where my mouth is. I am simply trying to rationally assess the outcome on users, and I don't think this will matter to the vast majority of them. Nobody cares. Do I care? Sure I do. But will a tiny minority of tech users matter to the stock in the long term? Unlikely.
  - j2bax 9y ago
    I would think the negative sentiment in the tech sphere would hurt them more on inability to continue hiring the best talent... Granted, that is assuming that most people can't be bought, which is unfortunately probably not the case.
- thewarrior 9y ago
  Their userbase is largely unaffected. There was an article stating that their app store rank has even gone up. They add millions of users a month. So any losses can be absorbed over time if this dies down. Its quite possible that the stock is oversold at this point. Its not wishing/spinning. At this point it does look quite plausible.
bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago
The sad, sad truth.
liberte82 9y ago
Everyone complaining about Facebook today is defiantly moving to Instagram and Whatsapp... joke’s on them that Facebook owns both. The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Facebook is reaching the end of its lifecycle and the company has prepared itself in advance for the move to newer social media platforms, and that they’re not particularly concerned about people leaving Facebook.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  Most likely the latter. Facebook is for "old people" according to younger family members. However, they're all over Facebook's other properties.
  - Lionsion 9y ago
    > Most likely the latter. Facebook is for "old people" according to younger family members. However, they're all over Facebook's other properties. However, all those were acquisitions. I think Facebook's doomed if it's ever prevented from buying rival social networks. I think trend cycles can throw a wrench in network effects, and Facebook's too established to really innovate in this category.
    - JetSpiegel 9y ago
      > I think Facebook's doomed if it's ever prevented from buying rival social networks Yeah, good luck electing FDR (or even a lite version) in the USA for the next decades.
mtgx 9y ago
The market remembers Uber. Why do you think every single little negative they do turns into a "scandal" and why everyone pounds them in the media? Uber will likely go into bankruptcy soon, if everyone remains very vigilant about their failed self-driving car project. Because without it, Uber is done. The self-driving car project was the last thing the investors hoped would save the company. And it won't. People also remember Equifax. There is just little they could do, because they don't directly deal with Equifax. It's their banks or credit card companies that do. Plus, Congress almost immediately saved Equifax from lawsuits, and people haven't yet had an opportunity to "respond" to that. They will this fall.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere." Maybe FB isn't going anywhere but if users and advertisers do you can be sure the market will reflect that.
- hodder 9y ago
  The point I'm making is that advertisers and users aren't going anywhere.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    But unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that. The fallout from this is still forthcoming.
    - hodder 9y ago
      True. I do not. It is pure conjecture, backed historical examples I provided. Could this be different? Absolutely. I could flip your comment though. Unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that "Fallout from this is forthcoming". There may be no further negative fallout from this.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        >"I could flip your comment though. Unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that "Fallout from this is forthcoming" There are at a number of significant events in FB's future being hauled in front of Congress in the US, being hauled in front of Parliament in the UK, the FTC investigation, numerous state attorney general's investigations and of course shareholder lawsuits. I think its fair to say that the fallout is not yet done.
joering2 9y ago
> With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today. That's very disingenuous for you to say. If you are in it, you should disclaim it so that others know why you paddle it. If you know anything on TA (technical analyst) you know it broke uptrend and major barriers and will temporarily stop around 140-150 before it decides what to do next. In mere you should warn its your personal opinion.
matte_black 9y ago
When Facebook smashes its next earnings this whole scandal will be in the rear view mirror and the narrative will change. I doubled my position in FB.
nacho2sweet 9y ago
Uber just had to sell is SE Asia operation. It has a bad rep now lots of people remember. The worst thing that is happening to facebook right now is if someone told me they worked there I would be like "fuck you guys" to their face. They are viewed as the enemy and their staff is feeling that and a lot of good engineers are going to peace.
sandov 9y ago
I think it's a circular logic People think voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing -> they keep buying from unethical companies -> nothing changes -> voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing. The problem is that it's always the same small group of people who actually change their commercial choices based on companies' ethics. I've avoided Lenovo like the plague since superfish, but I know people who've bought lenovo laptops even knowing quite well about the superfish issue and understanding what firmware level malware means.
heisenbit 9y ago
Remember the 1956 IBM consent degree way back. It changed the course of computer history as IBM had to watch now every step. The FB consent degree was ignored and so far had little effect. I doubt it will continue to be ignored now as the following has changed: - FB leveraged by Russian trolls and via data leakage affected the US Presidential elections. Puts the spotlight of politics on social media and FB in particular - same for Brexit - GDPR in Europe is a big thing with penalties - US branches of government shifting left over the next 4 years in reaction to extremist right policies. - Younger people get Mr. Robot. Older people die. Demographics have been shifting audience away from FB for some time. These are trends that will not go away. They will affect every decision within FB and with it the growth trajectory.
345655433 9y ago
#deleteuber was extremely successful at promoting change at Uber. Travis Kalanick was asked to leave as CEO and lost control over two board seats. There was a struggle for control between two groups of external investors, the ones who wanted to carry on as before and the ones who wanted root-and-branch change, and the latter won. And, although Uber is privately held, its consensus market value is definitely down a lot since the campaign.

by hodder 9y ago

DataWorker 9y ago

Was with you up to that last sentence. On what do you base your valuation exactly?

tetrep 9y ago
Well, if you were following along, they mention that the market has not remembered those transgressions, which heavily implies the stock price before this incident will be reached again. The stock will hit a local minima, and then bounce back (the symptom of the market "forgetting").
- imglorp 9y ago
  Yep. See also INTC, who got hit down to 44 for that little thing that affected most of their products. They're back to 50 today. The gap between those two might be the temporary social fear factor, that vanishes in a few weeks.
dominotw 9y ago
> On what do you base your valuation exactly Is it even possible to come up with an answer for this?
- adambyrtek 9y ago
  When somebody claims that a stock is a "bargain" it's not unreasonable to expect to base that on something more concrete than just a gut feeling.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

edf13 9y ago

It was good for a Short a week or so ago anyway...

sametmax 9y ago

The short memory is a global things. It's the same with bad movies, lying politician and crazy ex gf/bf. You can get away with a pretty much anything as long as it's legal, not a big symbol, or that you have money to bypass the legal issue: the public won't hold you responsible for long. Here it's even worst, because it's also coupled with a total lack of interest. People mostly don't care about co-creating a society. They just want to enjoy the rewards of it right now. Unless pictures of them doing something they are ashamed of are displayed on a highway billboard, data privacy is not even on their map.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 9y ago
John Oliver did a good job of highlighting your point when he interviewed Edward Snowden. People interviewed on the streets about cell phone data collection and it did not concern people at all, that is ... until they found out it could involve pictures of their bf/gf's private bits they sexted back and forth. People said that would make them mad.

somuchtyler 9y ago

What are you talking about, during the equifax breach equifax lost 1/3rd of its value

rorykoehler 9y ago
Now it's back to early 2017 levels. Not exactly catastrophic.
gruez 9y ago
...and then went back up after everybody realized nothing was going to happen. including last week's drop, it's sitting at 80% of its pre-breach price.
- Retric 9y ago
  So it's down 20% not 33%? That's still a big drop and not a great recovery.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > ...and then went back up after everybody realized nothing was going to happen. including last week's drop, it's sitting at 80% of its pre-breach price. A sustained 20% drop in market share for a very large, very established company that has fairly few competitors, substantial network effects, and a high barrier to entry. That's a significant drop. It didn't wipe out the company, no, but it's a far cry from saying that "the market doesn't remember" - in this case, the market very clearly did remember.

domevent 9y ago

With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today. And still falling. A dark part of me hopes the sharks looking to make a profit without recognition of how Facebook is in really deep shit just lose everything. A lot of glib predictions about catching falling knives here, but they seem to ignore Facebook not being quite as essential or inescapable as someone’s bank or credit reporting agency. People don’t really understand Equifax, and simple breaches don’t bother them as much actively manipulated. Facebook provides a really nominal service for most people, and I think some here are trying very hard to convince themselves this is something other than their bubble being pricked. Good luck.

sevensor 9y ago
> not being quite as essential or inescapable as someone’s bank or credit reporting agency. Given the existence of the shadow profile, FB is exactly as inescapable as a credit reporting agency.
- Lionsion 9y ago
  > Given the existence of the shadow profile, FB is exactly as inescapable as a credit reporting agency. That's not true. Facebook has data, but their data isn't as valuable and important to individuals as that controlled by a credit reporting agency. For instance, Equifax has info to enable straightforward identity theft, and I need all that data to be there if I want reasonable terms on a loan I may want. The Facebook social graph is mainly valuable to advertisers and intelligence agencies, both of which I can happily ignore day-to-day. It's data could be a tool for identity theft, but I doubt they have the SSNs or CC numbers in their shadow profiles needed to make that easy.
hodder 9y ago
Considering you just said you hope I lose everything... I will take the follow up "Good luck" with a grain of salt.

kerng 9y ago

We will see, not unlikely that a split off of Instagram and/or WhatsApp is being put on the table. Who knows. It didn't happen with Microsoft back in the day, so I'm not sure such drastic measure would be seriously entertained.

oflannabhra 9y ago
From a market perspective, a split might make FB stock even more attractive. While I'm sure FB can leverage IG data quite effectively by mixing it in with the FB (product) data, I bet investors would salivate at the potential of investing in IG directly. Investing in FB now might result in pre-"IPO" prices for IG. It might be the case that the sum is greater than the parts, but I don't know if the market would respond to a split from a purely rational stance, at least initially.

adamnemecek 9y ago

Uber has fucked up but it's incomparable with this. The main difference is that FB fucked over the world for the next decade or so maybe more. The problem with Equifax is that I can't do anything to retaliate against the company.

wybiral 9y ago
Good point. Uber tried to fix things by a shake up (but I still don't use Uber). Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could. Facebook, this kind of stuff is inherent in their business model. Our data is the only obvious thing they can turn into money.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  > Equifax, I would force to pull my data if I could You could freeze your credit with Equifax, if you're not looking to take out new credit lines. It costs money, but I've heard it pretty much stops them from making money off your info. That's why the credit agencies are pushing things like "credit locks," which don't have legal mandates behind them meaning they can design the service to suit themselves.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    I just can’t get over how I am paying them money to stop making money off my data
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    Personally I would want them to not keep any records on me at all. They are a financial stalker for others
  - nofinator 9y ago
    I believe Equifax and others are offering a free credit freeze through June 30. Here's the clearest description I could find: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/equifax-credit-freeze/ https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/finance/equifax-credit-freez... However, I'm not an expert and I'd like to hear more about this.

TAForObvReasons 9y ago

It's worth remembering what happened to Microsoft after it was hit with anti-trust action: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/long-antitrust-saga-ends-for-microsoft/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/long-antitru... The stock was literally dead money for decades and the ramifications are clear. The recent selling pressure is driven to an extent by memories of Microsoft and the financial impact. The stock is in no meaningful sense a bargain.

ghaff 9y ago
Microsoft's stagnation had far more to do with their failure in mobile and the fact that their operating system and Office markets (where essentially all their money came from) were stagnant to declining. Oh, and all the cool new development (a traditional Microsoft strength) was happening on other platforms. But they finally got a credible cloud strategy together which recognized today's realities which is why their stock is doing better. I won't say anti-trust had no impact but they had more fundamental problems.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  > “Since the antitrust suit, they have become much more cautious and much less aggressive,” said Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, who just wrote about Microsoft in the book “Staying Power.” > “They’re afraid, it seems. Whether it’s antitrust in U.S. or in Europe, they seem to be slowly reacting to the world around them, rather than trying to get in there fast." Certainly some academics would nontrivially attribute the strategic moves to anti-trust-related conservatism

iskander 9y ago

I deleted Uber during that campaign and so did at least a dozen people that I know. I don't know the exact numbers, but I think Lyft's market share roughly doubled within several months. How did "the market" not notice?

ggg9990 9y ago
“I dance with a traffic cone on my head and so do a dozen people I know. In fact in the last three months our numbers have quadrupled. The world has definitely taken notice of traffic-cone dancing.”

ben_jones 9y ago

Deletes Facebook angrily, opens Instagram five minutes later.

mrtksn 9y ago

Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to death.

zerostar07 9y ago
This is a media campaing, not “the users”
kbenson 9y ago
I'm not sure Digg had enough money lying around to just buy the next "cool" thing that comes along, as Facebook has done a few times now.
- mrtksn 9y ago
  I added IE to my example to illustrate that having all the money in the world may not save you when your brand becomes toxic. Some may say that FB users don't care but with IE it also was just geeks and devs, but it turned into a crusade and now everyone "knows" that the first thing you do after you have a fresh PC is to install Chrome.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    The difference is, if devs don’t support your brower, your browsing experience suffers. Every developer on Earth could leave Facebook and it would not make the experience of using fb any worse. Facebook is not a software platform, it’s an ad platform. If anything fb would get better if we stopped targeting it.
    - mrtksn 9y ago
      I remember the process, it had nothing to do with the dev support. Actually, it was the other way around - IE had all the dev support and websites broke down on Firefox but people were fanatics. There were extensions that let you render the page in IE if it's not working on Firefox. When the Chrome came along, Firefox already put a dent in IE market share and it already became socially unacceptable for techies to use IE but regular people still used IE so the devs were forced to make sure that everything works perfectly on IE too. For the masses, thanks to the developers, IE displayed the websites just fine up until the bitter end. Friends didn't let friends use IE and it was killed.

cryoshon 9y ago

is uber a profitable company? and how can consumers avoid giving business to equifax?

panarky 9y ago

Remember when sexual assault and harassment were routine, and powerful men could do what they wanted with impunity? There was an awakening, the public mood changed, people were energized and emboldened to take action. What used to be an open secret is now taboo and many powerful men have been fired and disgraced. Remember the awakening about the unhealthy effects of sugary carbonated beverages? That wasn't a one-time fad as sales of soda in the US have dropped every year for the last 12 years. Similar awakenings are now happening in economics, politics, law enforcement, and now digital rights and privacy. I'd be very surprised if the outrage fades away with no serious damage to Facebook. Quitting Facebook leads to higher levels of well-being [1]. People are waking up to this reality, just like they woke up to the dangers of smoking, and it's long-term negative for Facebook and their shareholders. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soda-sales-study/u-s-soda-sales-drops-for-12th-straight-year-trade-publication-idUSKBN17L2HN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soda-sales-study/u-s-soda... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27831756 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27831756

alistairSH 9y ago
Let me know when we fire Trump for those same transgressions.
mistermann 9y ago
My gut feeling on what's really going on here politicians on both sides of the aisle have realized that not only can they use Facebook against their opponent, their opponent can use Facebook against them, or someone else could use it against both of them. I suspect where possible, politicians prefer to minimize the number of highly influential entities. That the public is also helped is just gravy.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Remember when sexual assault and harassment were routine, and powerful men could do what they wanted with impunity? Like, when you could brag about benefitting from that, and still be President? I remember that like it was the day after yesterday...

galieos_ghost 9y ago

The IC and their mockingbirds[1] in the MSM have been furious about losing their ability to completely control public opinion for a long time due to the internet and social media. The fact that Trump was able to win despite 91% negative MSM coverage[2] terrifies them. So they create a controversy out of thin air to force FB and soon other companies to comply and censor anything deemed wrong think. There's absolutely nothing new we've learned about what FB does in the last week, all this information was public and actually praised when Obama used FB data to win. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/12/study-91-percent-of-recent-network-trump-coverage-has-been-negative/?utm_term=.13f4b1513c90 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/...

bitumen 9y ago

How is the top comment here a weak version of, “come on in, the water is fine” when Facebook keeps dripping scandal? A lot of armchair investors and professionally apathetic people the last couple of days, and they’re all making the same claim, “nobody cares.” Meanwhile it’s still being drilled in the media, keeps hitting the front page here, dropped tens of billions, and so on. “Nobody cares” feels more like desperate wishing/spinning, and it’s getting old in a hurry. It also ignores how this is being driven by Trump’s election, which has freaked a lot of people out, and by a general backlash against big tech. A lot of anecdotes are being bandied about, in the face of a lot of realities that are not anecdotal. So buy the stock, but don’t be shocked when like Moore’s Law, past performance fails to predict future gains.

hodder 9y ago
I'm not an "armchair investor". I'm a real investor. My money is where my mouth is. I am simply trying to rationally assess the outcome on users, and I don't think this will matter to the vast majority of them. Nobody cares. Do I care? Sure I do. But will a tiny minority of tech users matter to the stock in the long term? Unlikely.
- j2bax 9y ago
  I would think the negative sentiment in the tech sphere would hurt them more on inability to continue hiring the best talent... Granted, that is assuming that most people can't be bought, which is unfortunately probably not the case.
thewarrior 9y ago
Their userbase is largely unaffected. There was an article stating that their app store rank has even gone up. They add millions of users a month. So any losses can be absorbed over time if this dies down. Its quite possible that the stock is oversold at this point. Its not wishing/spinning. At this point it does look quite plausible.

bitxbitxbitcoin 9y ago

The sad, sad truth.

liberte82 9y ago

Everyone complaining about Facebook today is defiantly moving to Instagram and Whatsapp... joke’s on them that Facebook owns both. The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Facebook is reaching the end of its lifecycle and the company has prepared itself in advance for the move to newer social media platforms, and that they’re not particularly concerned about people leaving Facebook.

darpa_escapee 9y ago
Most likely the latter. Facebook is for "old people" according to younger family members. However, they're all over Facebook's other properties.
- Lionsion 9y ago
  > Most likely the latter. Facebook is for "old people" according to younger family members. However, they're all over Facebook's other properties. However, all those were acquisitions. I think Facebook's doomed if it's ever prevented from buying rival social networks. I think trend cycles can throw a wrench in network effects, and Facebook's too established to really innovate in this category.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    > I think Facebook's doomed if it's ever prevented from buying rival social networks Yeah, good luck electing FDR (or even a lite version) in the USA for the next decades.

mtgx 9y ago

The market remembers Uber. Why do you think every single little negative they do turns into a "scandal" and why everyone pounds them in the media? Uber will likely go into bankruptcy soon, if everyone remains very vigilant about their failed self-driving car project. Because without it, Uber is done. The self-driving car project was the last thing the investors hoped would save the company. And it won't. People also remember Equifax. There is just little they could do, because they don't directly deal with Equifax. It's their banks or credit card companies that do. Plus, Congress almost immediately saved Equifax from lawsuits, and people haven't yet had an opportunity to "respond" to that. They will this fall.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"The market has a short memory, and FB is not going anywhere." Maybe FB isn't going anywhere but if users and advertisers do you can be sure the market will reflect that.

hodder 9y ago
The point I'm making is that advertisers and users aren't going anywhere.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  But unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that. The fallout from this is still forthcoming.
  - hodder 9y ago
    True. I do not. It is pure conjecture, backed historical examples I provided. Could this be different? Absolutely. I could flip your comment though. Unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that "Fallout from this is forthcoming". There may be no further negative fallout from this.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      >"I could flip your comment though. Unless you have some clairvoyant powers you don't actually know that "Fallout from this is forthcoming" There are at a number of significant events in FB's future being hauled in front of Congress in the US, being hauled in front of Parliament in the UK, the FTC investigation, numerous state attorney general's investigations and of course shareholder lawsuits. I think its fair to say that the fallout is not yet done.

joering2 9y ago

> With that said, I think the stock is a bargain today. That's very disingenuous for you to say. If you are in it, you should disclaim it so that others know why you paddle it. If you know anything on TA (technical analyst) you know it broke uptrend and major barriers and will temporarily stop around 140-150 before it decides what to do next. In mere you should warn its your personal opinion.

matte_black 9y ago

When Facebook smashes its next earnings this whole scandal will be in the rear view mirror and the narrative will change. I doubled my position in FB.

nacho2sweet 9y ago

Uber just had to sell is SE Asia operation. It has a bad rep now lots of people remember. The worst thing that is happening to facebook right now is if someone told me they worked there I would be like "fuck you guys" to their face. They are viewed as the enemy and their staff is feeling that and a lot of good engineers are going to peace.

sandov 9y ago

I think it's a circular logic People think voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing -> they keep buying from unethical companies -> nothing changes -> voting with your wallet doesn't change a thing. The problem is that it's always the same small group of people who actually change their commercial choices based on companies' ethics. I've avoided Lenovo like the plague since superfish, but I know people who've bought lenovo laptops even knowing quite well about the superfish issue and understanding what firmware level malware means.

heisenbit 9y ago

Remember the 1956 IBM consent degree way back. It changed the course of computer history as IBM had to watch now every step. The FB consent degree was ignored and so far had little effect. I doubt it will continue to be ignored now as the following has changed: - FB leveraged by Russian trolls and via data leakage affected the US Presidential elections. Puts the spotlight of politics on social media and FB in particular - same for Brexit - GDPR in Europe is a big thing with penalties - US branches of government shifting left over the next 4 years in reaction to extremist right policies. - Younger people get Mr. Robot. Older people die. Demographics have been shifting audience away from FB for some time. These are trends that will not go away. They will affect every decision within FB and with it the growth trajectory.

345655433 9y ago

#deleteuber was extremely successful at promoting change at Uber. Travis Kalanick was asked to leave as CEO and lost control over two board seats. There was a struggle for control between two groups of external investors, the ones who wanted to carry on as before and the ones who wanted root-and-branch change, and the latter won. And, although Uber is privately held, its consensus market value is definitely down a lot since the campaign.