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Sell ads plastered over your friends gossip: $86B Extend the life of millions of people: $18B Level of wrongness of priorities: Infinite

Hamuko 5y ago
Facebook is at a ridiculous scale though, since they're reporting to have 2.85 billion active users. That's what, like a third of the world population and a bit?
- _fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
  pfizer/biontech are going to produce something like 3 billion vaccines this year. I think this only underscores OP's point.
  - beambot 5y ago
    Cue the annual Flu & COVID "vaccine as a service" business model, and BioTechs can join the dystopia too!
    - cblconfederate 5y ago
      I'm afraid this company is already cashflow positive and (gasp) profitable, therefore it has been cursed to not enter the unicorn valhalla
8ytecoder 5y ago
Not disagreeing but do keep in mind that "sell ads" include various industries and businesses that contribute to the economy. Even with word of mouth and SEO traffic, 40+% of our total visitors were from ads. It's a legitimate way of reaching your target audience who wouldn't otherwise hear about you. This could make or break some businesses.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  It's legitimate to the extent in which the big tech ads positively increase awareness of your product. It's illegitimate to the extent where big tech acts like a gatekeeper effectively preventing all other ways for random people to discover your product. You can no longer just put your product in a rack in a store or in a lemon stand and expect people to see it, in online world it has to go through their paid channels. The lock-in effect is real. E.g. in the tourist sector, restaurants no longer can rely on tourists randomly passing by, here in europe tripadvisor makes or breaks their business. Only exceptional products can create word of mouth, and customer attention is limited. I think the profitability of these companies relies more on the gatekeeping effect We have to ask ourselves if that makes sense. Are the products that are being marketed heavily so much better than their competitors? Is a world of dropshipping generic rebranded products progress? In the end will any competition survive, or just monopolies?
88840-8855 5y ago
There is a hypothesis in the room why the Chinese consumer tech crackdown is happening - for exactly that reason. Big consumer tech with negative net value is not only bombarding users with ads, making them addictive to kill time with useless swiping, liking and forwarding and is also binding the most talented resources to make this happen instead of building semiconductors, rocket engines and biotech stuff. If Chinese is not doing the crackdown (only) for interal power struggle reasons but is playing that 6D chess, then kudos. Big consumer tech might become less attractive, people will stopp swiping in weibo, tiktok and weixin; bright talent might start to design stuff that actually benefits the society.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  Regimes like the CCP are known to justify power grabs as being for the good of their society. This is almost universally true.

Hamuko 5y ago

Facebook is at a ridiculous scale though, since they're reporting to have 2.85 billion active users. That's what, like a third of the world population and a bit?

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
pfizer/biontech are going to produce something like 3 billion vaccines this year. I think this only underscores OP's point.
- beambot 5y ago
  Cue the annual Flu & COVID "vaccine as a service" business model, and BioTechs can join the dystopia too!
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    I'm afraid this company is already cashflow positive and (gasp) profitable, therefore it has been cursed to not enter the unicorn valhalla

8ytecoder 5y ago

Not disagreeing but do keep in mind that "sell ads" include various industries and businesses that contribute to the economy. Even with word of mouth and SEO traffic, 40+% of our total visitors were from ads. It's a legitimate way of reaching your target audience who wouldn't otherwise hear about you. This could make or break some businesses.

cblconfederate 5y ago
It's legitimate to the extent in which the big tech ads positively increase awareness of your product. It's illegitimate to the extent where big tech acts like a gatekeeper effectively preventing all other ways for random people to discover your product. You can no longer just put your product in a rack in a store or in a lemon stand and expect people to see it, in online world it has to go through their paid channels. The lock-in effect is real. E.g. in the tourist sector, restaurants no longer can rely on tourists randomly passing by, here in europe tripadvisor makes or breaks their business. Only exceptional products can create word of mouth, and customer attention is limited. I think the profitability of these companies relies more on the gatekeeping effect We have to ask ourselves if that makes sense. Are the products that are being marketed heavily so much better than their competitors? Is a world of dropshipping generic rebranded products progress? In the end will any competition survive, or just monopolies?

88840-8855 5y ago

There is a hypothesis in the room why the Chinese consumer tech crackdown is happening - for exactly that reason. Big consumer tech with negative net value is not only bombarding users with ads, making them addictive to kill time with useless swiping, liking and forwarding and is also binding the most talented resources to make this happen instead of building semiconductors, rocket engines and biotech stuff. If Chinese is not doing the crackdown (only) for interal power struggle reasons but is playing that 6D chess, then kudos. Big consumer tech might become less attractive, people will stopp swiping in weibo, tiktok and weixin; bright talent might start to design stuff that actually benefits the society.

cscurmudgeon 5y ago
Regimes like the CCP are known to justify power grabs as being for the good of their society. This is almost universally true.