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Is Facebook in danger of not making money? I think the decision is a bit easier: should we make as much money as we possibly can, or should we forgo some profit

• notatoad 8y ago
  My point was that "should we make as much money as we possibly can" is simplifying the question beyond the point of usefulness. Yes, facebook wants to make as much money as they possibly can. But it's not obvious that selling political ads to russians is the best money-making scheme. You can't simplify the issue down to there being one action that is more profitable and one that is less so. the world is more complicated than that. Forgoing some profit in the short term in order to gain some trust from the userbase may be more profitable in the long run. Or maybe it won't be. It's a decision that facebook's leadership has to make, and it's not as simple as "we'll take the option that makes more money". Burning down my house would net me a nice payout from the insurance company, but it's probably not a good financial decision in the longer term. when looking at corporate motivations, it's easy to say they're going to pick the most evil choice if it's the profitable one, but business leaders aren't all stupid, and picking the evil choice is often stupid.