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Facebook is nearing a reputational point of no return

685 points by sidcool 5y ago

VladimirGolovin 5y ago
Heroin is already way past a reputational point of no return, but people are still using it.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Worth noting for the ones who aren't familiar with it: physical dependency is different than psychological dependence. Not saying one is easier to stop/better than the other, but Facebook and heroin have very different effect on people.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    > physical dependency is different than psychological dependence I do not disagree. But. Let's see the heavy facebook user at hours 18 and 36 of abstinence, and at week 1 and 2 ... The psychological rewards have physical side effects with physical actions, too. This is not the same as life threatening DT's, but its also real physical effects.
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  Facebook's MAU count dropping closer to heroin's would be a big improvement for everyone's well-being.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- baby 5y ago
  It's funny because most people here spend way too much time on HN, not FB. And yeah too much HN is detrimental to your mental health.
  - slingnow 5y ago
    Citation needed.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Imagine how much more popular it would be if it wasn't banned/feared/frowned upon.
  - mirker 5y ago
    Like prescription medications, which fuel the opioid crisis?
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > Heroin is already way past a reputational point of no return, but people are still using it. The key is only a fraction use it. Facebook's intake is way way more than Heroin's.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
This company will continue running roughshod upon society until governments do something about it. They are too big to fail. Competitors just get bought up. Unsurprising that boomer media can't comprehend this.
- Clubber 5y ago
  "boomer media can't comprehend this" Believing news is on the side of the citizenry is like believing HR is on the side of the employee.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    What, and the corporations don't exist first and foremost to benefit their customers? Have I been lied to my whole life?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Well over the decades the value proposition has changed. In the case of manufacturing, the proposition was you give us money, we give you a quality, well built product that will last a long time. Also, we would recirculate some of that money back to the economy in the form of wages paid to US workers. Now it's you give us money, we'll continue to figure out how to make it cheaper and it's ok if the quality slips because it's for our benefit of course, and we'll spend all our labor overseas.
- mypastself 5y ago
  I can see the adoption of AWS and related services potentially making Amazon so indispensable to the world's governments and banks that its failure might result in disaster, but I don't think any of Facebook's services qualifies. Unless you're referring to general financial consequences that the failure of any successful company might bring, but that doesn't really make it "too big to fail".
throwaway20875 5y ago
This whole circus is about as contrived as it gets, complete with the "think of the children" gimmick. The timing, the theatrics, the manufactured celebrity of a middle manager at Facebook who is doing the "right" kind of whistleblowing that the establishment likes. Facebook's predatory business model isn't unique or new. This is about raw power to censor.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  This isn't the first time we've seen this PR package. Some of the architects of the story are the same. I dunno whom one writes a check out to, to order this service, but I bet it needs a few more digits on it than I could muster.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  I mean, it's a stupid plan. A whistleblower to advocate for censorship? Do they think the people are that stupid? I guess like most things they don't need the majority of public on board, just a bit of plausible deniability. If anyone was really concerned about the algorithms, they'd make transparency requirements, not censorship requirements. If anyone was really concerned about the results of teenagers in the study, they'd go after TikTok, where teenagers are and where they rank them by looks. If anyone was really concerned about bad foreign actors on social media they'd go after the Taliban and the Ayatollah on Twitter.
  - rscoots 5y ago
    Actually this messaging has achieved significant impact in the past 3 years. They might not have the majority of the public on board, but they do have the majority of Dems: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americans-now-say-government-should-take-steps-to-restrict-false-information-online-than-in-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americ... Unfortunately for them it seems to be having the opposite affect on Republicans, but not to the same degree.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
andyxor 5y ago
Facebook is awesome, what are they talking about
rafale 5y ago
Microsoft used to have a worst reputation when they were on the top of the world, undisputed ans ruthless. Look at them. A darling.
- ferdowsi 5y ago
  Microsoft did have a bad reputation, but primarily as a bad corporate player. They didn't have a reputation as a company that values profit over tearing apart civil societies.
  - rafale 5y ago
    True. The problems with Microsoft never got politicized to this level. But that's perhaps a sign of the times.
newbamboo 5y ago
Facebook is smart enough not to bite the political hands that feed it. As long as they pay, they’ll continue to play. Their political pillars upon which they rest abhor the free market. They’re quite safe.
sidpatil 5y ago
Why is the article dated October 9?
- commoner 5y ago
  The Economist publishes its print edition on Saturdays, and the article is featured in the upcoming issue. https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/archive https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/archive
- MrRadar 5y ago
  That's probably the street date of the physical issue of the magazine that will contain this article.
- bryan_w 5y ago
  Planned outrage?
- neaden 5y ago
  That's when it will come out in print.
shoto_io 5y ago
No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Speak for yourself. I like Facebook and wish them continued success
- jklinger410 5y ago
  Facebook went down for 6 hours and they are back to using it the next day without a second of hesitation. Maybe WhatsApp was affected by some people who, so I've heard, rely on it heavily. They may have (smartly) switched to a more decentralized platform to handle their critical communications. So did they shed some edge-case users? Sure. Will it matter in the long run? Not at all.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    >Facebook went down for 6 hours and they are back to using it the next day without a second of hesitation. Why is that relevant at all? If I have a blackout for six hours, I'm gonna go back to using electricity once it's back.
    - vmception 5y ago
      YoUre aDDIcTeD to ElecTriCity
      - Hamuko 5y ago
        Guilty as charged.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- 5y ago
rapsey 5y ago
I mean it gets a lot of bad press and people love talking shit about them. Yet their user base is still huge and their revenues. How much is all this talk relevant to them?
mchanson 5y ago
https://archive.is/BbCGF https://archive.is/BbCGF
throwaway9191aa 5y ago
Is there a non-paywall link that everyone is looking at? Or maybe I'm the only one without a subscription to the Economist. Or is the headline the only reason this is upvoted to #1, and people are just assuming what the article says?
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Just turn off javascript for https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com
- Hamuko 5y ago
  https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... Highly recommend.
- celticninja 5y ago
  12ft.io
melony 5y ago
This is the difference between the nouveau riche and the old centers of power. Facebook needs to look towards oil and banking if they really want to entrench themselves. Maybe take a leaf from Amazon's book.
eunos 5y ago
Personally I dont see persistent public outrage that can effectively diminish Facebook. The "threat" at the moment is the congress passing bill to somewhat stymie Facebook.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Facebook has the money to hire lobbyists. Any bill passed through Congress with Facebook as its target will (amazingly, surprisingly) serve mostly to entrench and enrich it. Whatever limitations are included will be miraculously avoided by Facebook and will completely destroy any nascent competitors. No I don't know how they'll do it. Lobbyists must be craftier than the average citizen, because although their actions have the same results every time it's always seen as a surprise when e.g. a new Federal Communications Act eventually transfers billions of dollars to Ma Bell's two daughters. The only way such a bill could actually fulfill its stated aim would be if someone whose interests were diametrically opposed to Facebook's commercial success spent more money on lobbyists than Facebook could. That simply isn't going to happen.
  - eunos 5y ago
    One way the lobbyists avoid hammering Facebook is to argue that weakening Facebook means strengthening "Chinese" competitors, however true it is. I'm thinking that Chinese tech like TikTok/Bytedance is more used to policing content compared to their American counterpart. My observation is that TikTok is more prone to banning users rather than say FB.
whitepaint 5y ago
I don't really know much about US politics, but could this recent attack on Facebook be a political move and a power grab? Attack FB so they block certain groups / certain topics and promote what the regulators want? I listened to the whistle-blower's testimony and I didn't hear any reasonable solutions (in my opinion at least; I am a software developer myself). Also, it seems there might be some regulations imposed. Doesn't Facebook actually want that? More regulations = more difficult to implement a new competing service.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  Its US politics so it means nothing will be done and its just a chance for politicians to grandstand in front of an audience and pretend to be lecturing the big bad tech company. Its just theater.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Stratechery makes a pretty solid argument that the calls for regulating "fake news" in general and Facebook in particular is a Democratic reaction to getting outfoxed by Trump's use of social media in 2016: https://stratechery.com/2021/facebook-political-problems/ https://stratechery.com/2021/facebook-political-problems/
  - MadeThisToReply 5y ago
    Do you think the Democratic Party will ever admit that they lost in 2016 not because of "misinformation" or "fake news" or Russian interference or any of the other nefarious conspiracy theories they've promulgated, but because they put forward a terrible, unlikable candidate whom no-one was enthusiastic about and who offered nothing but sanctimony and a continuation of the failing status quo? Maybe it's not Facebook's fault?
    - dustintrex 5y ago
      That's basically what the Stratechery story above argues as well, but the key is that makes Facebook a convenient whipping boy that both sides can hate.
tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
I still have a FB account because my family is on there, and even then I check it maybe once a month, if that. It's just not in my life anymore. When I do go on there, I have a hard time imagining how anyone could get sucked into it. Sometimes I feel like FB is a kind of scapegoat for social critique. Maybe because it's the largest, but not sure. Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force. The amount of toxicity that arises out of that platform is overwhelming, and the addiction factor is much more affective. I'm not saying FB doesn't deserve criticism, but I wonder why these other platforms don't get the same attention.
- bhupy 5y ago
  > Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force Completely agreed, it's quite impressive that they've managed to remain unscathed in all of this. Every single criticism that one can level against Facebook applies to Twitter ten times over. At least with Facebook's properties, the core use case is still keeping in touch with friends and family. Twitter's only real use-case is providing a soap box to the most outrage-inducing opinions, accuracy or nuance be damned. It's just democratized punditry.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    My guess is that vested interests likes Twitter because they can use it as a tool to direct the mob. Not so much with FB since FB has their own agenda.
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      I think its simpler than that - journalists get a lot of positive reinforcement and attention from twitter, so they just like it more.
  - HappySweeney 5y ago
    I think 10x is a touch hyperbolic, but I agree otherwise. Much like FB, you can avoid the outrage porn by mercilessly unfollowing political accounts. Unlike FB, Twitter has an option to order things chronologically instead of by how outrageous they are.
iSnow 5y ago
As if FB stock holders or C-suite (or even regular employees, come to think about it) do care about reputational damage. As long as it is a money-printing machine, they will not care one bit if they have to heat the headquarters with seal pups.
erostrate 5y ago
The articles ends with a suggestion that Mark Zuckerberg should be fired from his CEO role, but he controls 58% of the voting shares, so I'm not sure who this appeal is directed at.
- dresdenfire 5y ago
  Ofcourse, the only right course of action would be for Mark to fire himself!
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
The biggest component missing from Silicon Valley's discussion of Facebook is its pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. (These just off the top of my head.) The culture is perceived to be dishonest from the top down. That is why they get bludgeoned more than Twitter, or even Tik Tok. That is what its surrogates miss when they say Zuckerberg is being scapegoated. There simply isn't another big tech CEO with such a clear, public and recalcitrant record of dishonesty. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_facebook_complaint_filed_7-24-19.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... [2] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-facebook-to-explain-its-controversial-rules-for-vips/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-...
- jszymborski 5y ago
  I'm on the outside looking in, (and this might be an unpopular opinion in this crowd) but that's the reputation of tech in Silicon Valley, no? The mentality is often "we'll be too small to prosecute until we're too big". That's how you end up with these seemingly superlegal entities like Uber, Google, hell even Crunchyroll. Theranos was the peak example of how tech companies are encouraged to misrepresent fact to both users and investors to ensure engagement and investment.
  - kaycebasques 5y ago
    What happened with Crunchyroll?
    - jonwachob91 5y ago
      It was founded as a platform for streaming pirated anime until it got big enough to acquire major VC investments and start buying streaming rights.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
danpalmer 5y ago
I think this is fine for Facebook. We've long passed the point where facebook.com was supposed to work for everyone, it's now got some clear demographics that use it, and plenty that don't. Instagram is the replacement for certain demographics, and is well liked by most in its target market. WhatsApp is another replacement. FB Messenger is another. Even Oculus is a bet on another group. Facebook-the-company is mostly irrelevant in this discussion as the separate brands are strong enough on their own. They can keep buying/building new brands to target specific demographics and shield them from the positioning (or bad press) of the other brands. I think the only real risk here is that Facebook becomes a place that its employees don't want to work at, but I'm not sure that'll happen, they can afford to pay enough that enough people won't care.
- baby 5y ago
  Also, a lot of engineers still consider FB as a good product. HN is a bubble.
cblackthornekc 5y ago
To those that care, it is well past that point. I'm not sure if the remaining people will care even if Facebook put a dollar amount on your profile to show you how much money they made off of you in the last 7 days.
wonderwonder 5y ago
The only threat to Facebook is a younger user base moving away from them and they have done an excellent job mitigating that via Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuck is a lot of things but shortsighted is not one of them.
frakkingcylons 5y ago
FB has been through so many scandals in the past four years and literally nothing seems to materially affect the company. At least not their stock. Bloomberg has a nice rundown of the past crises and how quickly it rebounded every time: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-06/facebook-stock-s-familiar-crisis-cycle-decline-rebound-repeat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-06/facebook-...
h2odragon 5y ago
They still have more fans than syphilis. If the postal service came up with an ICQ / message board; or hell even mastodon servers for Zip codes, they might kill the beast. I'm sure local postmasters would love to add a "online clerk" or two to their staff, to deal with the server level local dramas. The opportunity to pay for it with "bulk mail" analog advertising is obvious too. All guided by the loving hands of a questionably responsible quasi-governmental bureaucracy led by shady appointees.
aierou 5y ago
Why is this article dated October 9th? Did they release it early to counter a slow news day?
dolphinhats 5y ago
Good
BitwiseFool 5y ago
Coordinated media blitzes make me skeptical. It seems pretty obvious the newsmedia has an axe to grind with the organization that devastated their income and business model.
jonahbenton 5y ago
"Reputational point of no return" == is a bank. Good timing, actually, lets them launch Libra and take on Tether.
teddyh 5y ago
It bothers me when media reports on somebody’s (or a company’s) reputation, like it’s the weather or something. The media is entirely responsible for somebody’s reputation. Grassroots rumors or gossip can only have very limited spread, and nobody puts much stock in them if the media contradicts them. If the media has now decided that Facebook has a bad reputation, that’s how it is, since the media is the entity defining reputation.
quotemstr 5y ago
Absolutely not. Media likes to think it can control popular narratives like it can turn a dial, but it can't anymore -- due in large part to Facebook. Social media has been under attack from mainstream media for a decade, ostensibly due to concerns over social media ranking and interest-based advertising, but actually due to social media disintermediation information exchange and obviating the role of traditional media as gatekeepers. I can't bring myself to be upset by this development. The social problems arising from social media are concerning and demand discussion and maybe some kind of fix --- but it remains a good thing that reporters and editors can no longer unilaterally set the agenda for society. Power is only safe when it's divided and diffused.
dxbydt 5y ago
economist.com...well people running the actual economy don't seem to share the sentiment. fb pcr is trending low [1] & ~$400 is still the consensus trefis estimate. [1]https://www.optionistics.com/put-call-ratio/fb https://www.optionistics.com/put-call-ratio/fb
BallinBige 5y ago
The world would be a better place if that outage were permanent.
- goatlover 5y ago
  As long as Twitter and Reddit go down for good as well. But my guess is some other companies like Google would rush to fill the void and we'd end up with similar social media. All those people are just going to move to another platform.
jjk166 5y ago
If someone knew how to make not-shitty facebook, they'ed very quickly make tens of billions of dollars, achieve fame in the public sphere, respect in the technical sphere, and influence in the political sphere. Facebook would go the way of myspace and we would all rejoice. The fact that, despite the immense incentive and numerous attempts, no one has ever succeeded at making not-shitty facebook strongly suggests it is an incredibly difficult thing to do. All the criticism in the world means nothing if no one can do better.
- parafactual 5y ago
  network effect
  - jjk166 5y ago
    The network effect isn't an obstacle since you can be on multiple social networks. Tons of social networks have been successful since facebook. But all of them suffer from the same problems that facebook has.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Facebook is other people. People have killed each other by the millions, and now that violence is playing out in the non-physical space. We shouldn’t be surprised.
djanogo 5y ago
MSM rallying against FB in coordination. They want piece of that ad money. While tiktok seems to be main app which is ruining children.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  Yeah this is the biggest reason they're so interested in the "whistleblower" who essentially said nothing we already didn't know and had zero data to backup her claims. MSM wants their dwindling market share back. I don't like facebook and I don't use it. However, everyone should be wary of the reason there's such a big push by politicians to censor it more and why MSM backs this so much.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
latte 5y ago
Why is Facebook singled out vs. all social media? I feel worse after half an hour spent reading Twitter, Reddit or even Hacker News than after half an hour spent on Facebook or Instagram. The amount of hate I see on the first three platforms is much higher.
- fullshark 5y ago
  The answer is simple: because FB is seen as a conservative propaganda distribution network and the others are not. The subreddit that was seen as a conservative propaganda network: r/the_donald was successfully eliminated and liberals want to do the same to FB.
- brentm 5y ago
  They are an easy target. FB scandal stories garner a lot of public interest and so there is a financial incentive for news orgs to dedicate staff to the FB beat. Not enough people care about Reddit, HN, etc. Even Twitter comparatively. They also don't have the same level of influence. There are obviously issues that FB amplifies but the heart of the problem in my opinion is people. People like information that confirms what they already believe, other people are greedy and like to take advantage people for personal gain. It was easy when FB just had to worry about removing porn and gore. Now the line is much grayer. Half of the people think some piece of content must be removed ASAP and the other half call removing that exact same content censorship.
xyst 5y ago
Haven’t used FB as a social media platform in a long time. So I understand the decreasing usage by the younger audience. However, I think FB should pivot to strictly a marketplace. My experience of selling items on their marketplace has far exceeded my expectations. In comparison to CL, Reddit, or Nextdoor, FB Marketplace was a much better experience. Not sure if it is the elimination of “anonymity”, but dealt with 0 sketchy people and was able to sell items locally relatively fast (list them before going to bed then have 10+ responses wanting to buy it at listing price).
- neolefty 5y ago
  How much of that success depends on having such a large audience already using the platform?
- Loughla 5y ago
  I would second that. I do not have FB at all, but my spouse does. We maintain that account just for marketplace. I've sold many items online over the years. CL always ends in a haggle where the buyer wants to meet three hours away and pay half the list price, whereas Marketplace, I generally get what I asked for, under the terms that I've laid out.
azangru 5y ago
I used to say that at least Facebook gave us, developers, React. (And graphql, I would add.). Its product stinks; but at least its open-sourced tools have moved the web forward. Sure felt like a gust of fresh air circa 2014. But now I am not so sure it's a blessing anymore.
cletus 5y ago
I'll take wishful thinking for $1000, Alex. To be fair, there are generally two reasons for these kinds of predictions: 1. People in a bubble think something is way more important than it is. I hate to say it but user data privacy is in this category. Like 1% of people actually care about this. I'm not saying that's right but it's true; and 2. People who make a lot of noise about an issue to make people care or to bring about some desired outcome. Think Yelp complaining about Google "stealing" their content. The second can be really harmful too. A good example is articles posted about how [high X]% of people have suffered from "sexual harassment or assault". To be clear, both of those things are bad but they are different levels of bad. Cat-calling on a construction site shouldn't be treated equivalently as a violent assault. But people do it to make things seem more alarming than they actually are and I think it has the negative effect. These bad faith arguments actually turn people off. It also leads to situations like a 19 year old having sex with a 16 year old is on the same sexual offender list as a child molestor. I digress. The only thing you see here is that the Economist doesn't like Facebook. That's it. I mean there's some bad PR for FB recently but companies have survived much, much worse for much, much longer. And FB will continue to attract talent as long as they pay them.
thebiggerpic 5y ago
A few things: 0. Whistleblowing is a real shitty strategy for enacting change. How about actually fighting for it from the inside first? 1. "Think of the children", really? Maybe the answer is children shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised but that's hardly Facebook's problem. 2. I hate misinformation as much as the next guy, but whether people like to believe in stupid shit like the magnetizing effect of vaccines is up to them. The fact that they believe in this shit is a failure of the educational system and our society in general. For better or worse, free speech is the cornerstone of American society, and again it's hardly Facebook's problem. 3. If people resort to Facebook for their daily "news" consumption, that speaks more of the abject failure of traditional media than it does of Facebook's nefarious motives. Maybe fix the tragic decline of journalism in this country before trying to single out one Tech organization as the scapegoat du jour. (Throwaway because it's hard to have an opinion these days without being judged. I'm a vaccinated immigrant who hates being an Independent because that mostly means the two alternatives are shitty)
system16 5y ago
> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s all-powerful founder, made a reasoned statement after this week’s wave of anger. "Reasoned statement" is not how I would describe his post at all. It was nothing more than gaslighting and being deliberately obtuse.
Croftengea 5y ago
Yes, most people just don't care. Facebook will be Facebook no matter what until there is something new that adds some new dimensions to social networking and attracts more investor money. People just wanted calls and used Nokias, wanted search and used Altavista, wanted messages and used ICQ.
sz4kerto 5y ago
[2014] Microsoft is doomed as it has lost mobile and desktop is not relevant any more.
Tarucho 5y ago
Everything passes. After some time users will forget this scandal and will continue using Facebook as before.
hereforphone 5y ago
No it's not. As long as Facebook provides the increasingly obese population of the West an outlet for memes, child photos, and uniformed political opinions, Facebook will rake in money.
LightG 5y ago
LOL .... "nearing".
tediousdemise 5y ago
Facebook's reputation doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things when they have enormous power and influence to do whatever they want completely unregulated. See also: Monsanto, Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, George Soros.
leroy_masochist 5y ago
> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s all-powerful founder, made a reasoned statement after this week’s wave of anger. He was ignored or ridiculed and increasingly looks like a liability. The article ends with this statement, and I think it's really the lede. At this point, Zuck is basically the whipping boy of multiple different power factions in the US on both the left and right. If Facebook were actually run by its board, it would probably be an easy decision to move him into a President or Chairman role and get a Dara-type person into the CEO seat. But he holds all the cards, so who knows what will happen. It does seem like Facebook's long-term driver of value is as a marketplace platform in developing countries. Shipping Libra and announcing a strategy pivot to empowering small business owners in LDCs would be a bold move, but it seems like Zuck has never wanted to antagonize the US Gov the way that, e.g., Travis has. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
It's really not anywhere near a reputational point of no return. The editors of these media outlets with an axe to grind are trying really hard to create that illusion, though.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Five years after Zuckerberg was jogging around Beijing, he went hoverboard surfing carrying the American flag. As long the competition is Chinese TikTok or Russian Telegram then Facebook (and its associated businesses) will be allowed, even subsidized to grow in their dominance. Yes. There may be regulation that constraints Facebook but you can be sure that its competition will be hit harder. This is the calculation they are making and it is probably correct.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  I agree with your geopolitical assessment but I doubt you can consistently rely on US legislature to protect the country's long term interests. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it does but it hasn't demonstrated much ability or interest in countering China's industrial influence.
rdxm 5y ago
LOL....nearing!?!?!??!!? seriously???? That boundary was crossed a long, long time ago.
helloworld11 5y ago
As others have mentioned here in greater detail, Nope. Even in the U.S, the vast majority of Facebook's users don't give a flying shit about the dirty details. They just want to use the messaging and "social" stuff that Insta/FB provide, so long as they work for their daily needs. As for much of the rest of the world, FB properties are sadly the end all and be all of communications and organizing events. Even less reason to care about a major scandal or two or dozen.
revel 5y ago
Not sure if any of you folks have tried asking your friends which companies they wouldn't work for, irrespective of the pay, but it's interesting. Facebook and Palantir are the 2 recurring names whenever I've asked around. That was before the latest 3 or 4 rounds of scandal. FB has been in this area for years.
- biztos 5y ago
  And yet, the one person I know who actually works there is the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck. Sample size of one, but I often wonder if I should just imagine what half a million bucks a year looks like and extrapolate from there. Probably lots of people “wouldn’t” work for FB except that they already do.
  - oska 5y ago
    > the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck This would just indicate to me that he's a fraud and all his political posturing is just cheap words compared to the real action of being a part of such a toxic entity. (And no, there's no fighting for reform from within in a place like FB.)
    - dumbfoundded 5y ago
      Your statement uses pretty charged language and I don't think you're considering all of the potential scenarios. The first is that giant companies like Facebook are so vastly giant and you have no idea what he does for them. If he was on the React team at Facebook, would that be acceptable to you? Just like governments, giant companies have good and bad parts. The second is that you don't know anyone's situation. This employee could really need the money. Sometimes people get caught in situations where they have to support their parents or siblings or cousins. Voting still matters as well as encouraging others to vote. Who gets to decide what the real action is? Most people in any case don't view themselves as responsible for what decisions are made at the C-level. It would be more helpful to encourage employees to do what they can and blow the whistle if necessary than to demonize them. Most people invested in the stock market are holding some Facebook, probably as part of some index fund. Maybe we should encourage people to invest in privacy rights focused ETFs.
tonyfader 5y ago
nearing??? long since past time to shut them down.
chicob 5y ago
I can't go past the general tone of this article. The article acknowledges that Facebook made mistakes, and that its internal reports prove the company knows the harm it can do to vulnerable teenagers. Then these issues are discarded. Apparently, Facebook even had some growth after all... But lying to advertisers? This is deemed as unacceptable, and flagged as a possible beginning of the end. I know this is the Economist, but when it comes to reputational points of no return, I think that vulgar remark regarding early users' trust did the job.
gwenbell 5y ago
<b>BACKPFEIFENGESICHT</b> http://gwenbell.com/#05wHCn9ruFpXo0aYg/7WP648ANcDtjPy9SBASYektQs= http://gwenbell.com/#05wHCn9ruFpXo0aYg/7WP648ANcDtjPy9SBASYe...
yawaworht1978 5y ago
I don't remember nor didn't use myspace, but how did that come to and end? We're there early tell tales like this one? The collapse for Facebook would probably be very fast once a trigger point is reached, they're kind of all or nothing, they need large data amounts to have any quality to serve ads, if they have less advertisers and data, they won't be able to charge the same prides, it's would be a cascade or spiral moving pretty fast. Of course, once it happens, fb might be replaced by something even worse, the cynic in me thinks.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Regardless of what one may think of Tai Lopez, he did do an interview with Myspace Tom where he talks about how Myspace got killed by FB: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZA4vPc5SqJ8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZA4vPc5SqJ8
- brentm 5y ago
  No, people just moved on for a better product (FB, etc).
dgs_sgd 5y ago
I have > 5 friends (young, mostly liberal) who work at Facebook as engineers and I've yet to see them leave or even make mention of the company's negative reputation. I don't think they would consider leaving while their comp remains so competitive. I think it would take a public disaster so damaging that the stock tanks and doesn't recover for months/years for them to consider leaving.
wolverine876 5y ago
> The most damaging claim this week gained the least attention. Ms Haugen alleges that Facebook has concealed a decline in its young American users. She revealed internal projections that a drop in teenagers’ engagement could lead to an overall decline in American users of 45% within the next two years. Investors have long faced a lack of open disclosure. Misleading advertisers would undermine the source of nearly all the firm’s sales, and potentially break the law. (The firm denies it.) The Economist doesn't think damaging society and individuals, including spreading and legitimizing massive misinformation, is especially significant, but misleading advertisers - now that's serious.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oceliker 5y ago
  To be fair to them, they say it's the "most damaging" claim, not the most significant. Misleading advertisers is more damaging to Facebook than misleading users, unfortunately.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Facebook has marketshare and utility. Until someone can come along and do a better job without all the warts of dealing with human beings and their human shortcomings, it will remain the leader in the space.
spinchange 5y ago
Has this firm or its leader ever been popularly known or regarded for high ethical standards?
Bluestein 5y ago
Someday, some, will look back to today from a far and distant, and, we'd hope, still extant, future ... ... and find this to have been an age of digital savagery.-
akudha 5y ago
lol, who thought Facebook had a lot of reputation, in the recent years? It is like smoking or doing drugs - every smoker knows it is bad, but they will still smoke and somehow rationalize it too. FB users are just addicted to it, and they know they are.
amyjess 5y ago
The best way to make Facebook clean up its act is to revoke Section 230 with no exceptions. If someone's relative dies to covid because people on Facebook convinced them to refuse the vaccine, the whole family should be able to sue Facebook for wrongful death. Same if someone dies as a result of alternative "medicine" suggested to them by someone on Facebook. If someone gets assaulted after people on Facebook stir up a harassment campaign against them, Facebook should be criminally charged with conspiracy. If people on Facebook organize a violent insurrection, Facebook should be criminally charged. Make Facebook 100% legally responsible for every single piece of content on the platform, and then we'll see some real changes made.
- stingrae 5y ago
  I think this would force Facebook to shut down. They are operating at such a scale that no amount of hiring will give them the human moderation required to actually operate.
  - amyjess 5y ago
    I'm okay with that.
gundmc 5y ago
A fair and well-reasoned article. Fair or not, Facebook's reputation means their actions are perceived as negative and sinister even when there is good reason for them. At this point I really think Zuckerberg needs to step away from the company and allow them space to try to reclaim public perception and goodwill. I don't see another way forward.
rmason 5y ago
What's more significant is that both the right and the left (for different reasons) are angry at Facebook. In these ultra partisan times could we see a rare bipartisan agreement to punish Facebook?
gwenbell 5y ago
Was I <a href="http://gwenbell.com/#Xuv6iZzUc+WjDEQFSL7/o6vYH4lhTbEpkJ0jkHr+fzI=">10 http://gwenbell.com/#Xuv6iZzUc+WjDEQFSL7/o6vYH4lhTbEpkJ0jkHr... years too early to the party?</a>
bob229 5y ago
Delete your social media now
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jlokier 5y ago
Forget the negative reputation for a moment. I just logged into Facebook after a few months not doing so, because someone told me via third party to contact them, and Facebook was the only method available of the ones we both have. About half the entries on my Facebook feed are ads of one kind or another! There are some posts from people I know, but because the ads are more prominent, larger, in some ways more interesting, posts from people I know are somehow harder to see while scrolling through the feed. Why would I want to log in, just to view an endless scroll of ads? What's Facebook's business model these days? Surely people will have had enough of watching an ad stream at some point, and then stop using it? I keep my account to remain able to communicate with people I know from my past lives, and I do like seeing what people want to share occasionally. These are "weak bonds" but I enjoy them anyway. There's also a couple of memorial pages for people I love who passed away some years ago, that are not anywhere else. But that means I login about once every few months, or when I find out that I should for a specific reason. The feed page just isn't interesting, so I don't see myself logging in again for another few months. I remember the Facebook feed as being more people focused, more about personal relationships, years ago. Far fewer ads.
wackget 5y ago
"Opprobrium"? "Tendentious"? The author of this piece really broke out the thesaurus, didn't they?
- oska 5y ago
  I don't want to sound like I'm boasting of having a large vocabulary but those words don't strike me as out of the ordinary for the reading level that The Economist targets (generally university/college educated).
asdfman123 5y ago
> If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Isn't this already happening? I'd still work for FB if it were my only good option, but I'd take a slight pay cut to work somewhere else.
partiallypro 5y ago
I honestly don't see how Facebook is any worse than Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc. Google can destroy a business by changing its algorithm or censoring a result and collects just as much information as Facebook, often vastly more personal. Amazon owns the entire logistics space. Twitter often makes partisan decisions when it comes to censorship and gives voice to propaganda outlets from the likes of the CCP, Taliban, etc. I think a lot of people want Facebook to fail simply because it seems more expendable. I would like to see news traffic numbers when Facebook went down for 7 hours, I bet there were some painful hits on traffic.
- TheBlight 5y ago
  The deplorables gather and share information on Facebook.
varelse 5y ago
Well if they have to pay more to attract talent then their profits will go down. Wall Street hates that. And if the share price falls, the talent they have will flee for better opportunity. So they're going to go through some things, no? But I agree that so far they have managed to acquire the services most likely to destroy them.
jude- 5y ago
Maybe a pithy way to render this article's point is, if you are a young, competent 20-something fresh on the job market and imminently hireable at Facebook (but nowhere else, let's say for the sake of argument), do you: * Take a job at Facebook (or one of it's properties)? * Strike it out alone in a startup you found? If you're more likely to do the latter, despite the higher risk, then Facebook has a big problem. If the best and brightest no longer want to work there, then their time has passed.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
nearing???? lol... long past...
FugeDaws 5y ago
If facebook was to vanish another similar site will just take its place lets not kid ourselves. Were stuck with this monster even though ive not been on facebook in 8 years or had an account that long i still see it mentioned constantly everywhere
ffggvv 5y ago
never heard a cogent criticism of facebook other than “they won’t censor my political enemies as often as i’d like”
kazinator 5y ago
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.)

685 points by sidcool 5y ago

VladimirGolovin 5y ago

Heroin is already way past a reputational point of no return, but people are still using it.

capableweb 5y ago
Worth noting for the ones who aren't familiar with it: physical dependency is different than psychological dependence. Not saying one is easier to stop/better than the other, but Facebook and heroin have very different effect on people.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  > physical dependency is different than psychological dependence I do not disagree. But. Let's see the heavy facebook user at hours 18 and 36 of abstinence, and at week 1 and 2 ... The psychological rewards have physical side effects with physical actions, too. This is not the same as life threatening DT's, but its also real physical effects.
addingnumbers 5y ago
Facebook's MAU count dropping closer to heroin's would be a big improvement for everyone's well-being.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
baby 5y ago
It's funny because most people here spend way too much time on HN, not FB. And yeah too much HN is detrimental to your mental health.
- slingnow 5y ago
  Citation needed.
jonny_eh 5y ago
Imagine how much more popular it would be if it wasn't banned/feared/frowned upon.
- mirker 5y ago
  Like prescription medications, which fuel the opioid crisis?
ignoramous 5y ago
> Heroin is already way past a reputational point of no return, but people are still using it. The key is only a fraction use it. Facebook's intake is way way more than Heroin's.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

This company will continue running roughshod upon society until governments do something about it. They are too big to fail. Competitors just get bought up. Unsurprising that boomer media can't comprehend this.

Clubber 5y ago
"boomer media can't comprehend this" Believing news is on the side of the citizenry is like believing HR is on the side of the employee.
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  What, and the corporations don't exist first and foremost to benefit their customers? Have I been lied to my whole life?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Well over the decades the value proposition has changed. In the case of manufacturing, the proposition was you give us money, we give you a quality, well built product that will last a long time. Also, we would recirculate some of that money back to the economy in the form of wages paid to US workers. Now it's you give us money, we'll continue to figure out how to make it cheaper and it's ok if the quality slips because it's for our benefit of course, and we'll spend all our labor overseas.
mypastself 5y ago
I can see the adoption of AWS and related services potentially making Amazon so indispensable to the world's governments and banks that its failure might result in disaster, but I don't think any of Facebook's services qualifies. Unless you're referring to general financial consequences that the failure of any successful company might bring, but that doesn't really make it "too big to fail".

throwaway20875 5y ago

This whole circus is about as contrived as it gets, complete with the "think of the children" gimmick. The timing, the theatrics, the manufactured celebrity of a middle manager at Facebook who is doing the "right" kind of whistleblowing that the establishment likes. Facebook's predatory business model isn't unique or new. This is about raw power to censor.

h2odragon 5y ago
This isn't the first time we've seen this PR package. Some of the architects of the story are the same. I dunno whom one writes a check out to, to order this service, but I bet it needs a few more digits on it than I could muster.
hunterb123 5y ago
I mean, it's a stupid plan. A whistleblower to advocate for censorship? Do they think the people are that stupid? I guess like most things they don't need the majority of public on board, just a bit of plausible deniability. If anyone was really concerned about the algorithms, they'd make transparency requirements, not censorship requirements. If anyone was really concerned about the results of teenagers in the study, they'd go after TikTok, where teenagers are and where they rank them by looks. If anyone was really concerned about bad foreign actors on social media they'd go after the Taliban and the Ayatollah on Twitter.
- rscoots 5y ago
  Actually this messaging has achieved significant impact in the past 3 years. They might not have the majority of the public on board, but they do have the majority of Dems: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americans-now-say-government-should-take-steps-to-restrict-false-information-online-than-in-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americ... Unfortunately for them it seems to be having the opposite affect on Republicans, but not to the same degree.
  - hunterb123 5y ago

andyxor 5y ago

Facebook is awesome, what are they talking about

rafale 5y ago

Microsoft used to have a worst reputation when they were on the top of the world, undisputed ans ruthless. Look at them. A darling.

ferdowsi 5y ago
Microsoft did have a bad reputation, but primarily as a bad corporate player. They didn't have a reputation as a company that values profit over tearing apart civil societies.
- rafale 5y ago
  True. The problems with Microsoft never got politicized to this level. But that's perhaps a sign of the times.

newbamboo 5y ago

Facebook is smart enough not to bite the political hands that feed it. As long as they pay, they’ll continue to play. Their political pillars upon which they rest abhor the free market. They’re quite safe.

sidpatil 5y ago

Why is the article dated October 9?

commoner 5y ago
The Economist publishes its print edition on Saturdays, and the article is featured in the upcoming issue. https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/archive https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/archive
MrRadar 5y ago
That's probably the street date of the physical issue of the magazine that will contain this article.
bryan_w 5y ago
Planned outrage?
neaden 5y ago
That's when it will come out in print.

shoto_io 5y ago

No. That’s what people like us and all the main stream media hope for. But: most people I know don’t have the slightest clue that Insta and WhatsApp belong to the FB group. And even worse: most of them don’t give a shit about the reputation of FB. They just want to send messages and share pictures through those apps.

wly_cdgr 5y ago
Speak for yourself. I like Facebook and wish them continued success
jklinger410 5y ago
Facebook went down for 6 hours and they are back to using it the next day without a second of hesitation. Maybe WhatsApp was affected by some people who, so I've heard, rely on it heavily. They may have (smartly) switched to a more decentralized platform to handle their critical communications. So did they shed some edge-case users? Sure. Will it matter in the long run? Not at all.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  >Facebook went down for 6 hours and they are back to using it the next day without a second of hesitation. Why is that relevant at all? If I have a blackout for six hours, I'm gonna go back to using electricity once it's back.
  - vmception 5y ago
    YoUre aDDIcTeD to ElecTriCity
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      Guilty as charged.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
5y ago

rapsey 5y ago

I mean it gets a lot of bad press and people love talking shit about them. Yet their user base is still huge and their revenues. How much is all this talk relevant to them?

mchanson 5y ago

https://archive.is/BbCGF https://archive.is/BbCGF

throwaway9191aa 5y ago

Is there a non-paywall link that everyone is looking at? Or maybe I'm the only one without a subscription to the Economist. Or is the headline the only reason this is upvoted to #1, and people are just assuming what the article says?

jessaustin 5y ago
Just turn off javascript for https://www.economist.com https://www.economist.com
Hamuko 5y ago
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea... Highly recommend.
celticninja 5y ago
12ft.io

melony 5y ago

This is the difference between the nouveau riche and the old centers of power. Facebook needs to look towards oil and banking if they really want to entrench themselves. Maybe take a leaf from Amazon's book.

eunos 5y ago

Personally I dont see persistent public outrage that can effectively diminish Facebook. The "threat" at the moment is the congress passing bill to somewhat stymie Facebook.

jessaustin 5y ago
Facebook has the money to hire lobbyists. Any bill passed through Congress with Facebook as its target will (amazingly, surprisingly) serve mostly to entrench and enrich it. Whatever limitations are included will be miraculously avoided by Facebook and will completely destroy any nascent competitors. No I don't know how they'll do it. Lobbyists must be craftier than the average citizen, because although their actions have the same results every time it's always seen as a surprise when e.g. a new Federal Communications Act eventually transfers billions of dollars to Ma Bell's two daughters. The only way such a bill could actually fulfill its stated aim would be if someone whose interests were diametrically opposed to Facebook's commercial success spent more money on lobbyists than Facebook could. That simply isn't going to happen.
- eunos 5y ago
  One way the lobbyists avoid hammering Facebook is to argue that weakening Facebook means strengthening "Chinese" competitors, however true it is. I'm thinking that Chinese tech like TikTok/Bytedance is more used to policing content compared to their American counterpart. My observation is that TikTok is more prone to banning users rather than say FB.

whitepaint 5y ago

I don't really know much about US politics, but could this recent attack on Facebook be a political move and a power grab? Attack FB so they block certain groups / certain topics and promote what the regulators want? I listened to the whistle-blower's testimony and I didn't hear any reasonable solutions (in my opinion at least; I am a software developer myself). Also, it seems there might be some regulations imposed. Doesn't Facebook actually want that? More regulations = more difficult to implement a new competing service.

wonderwonder 5y ago
Its US politics so it means nothing will be done and its just a chance for politicians to grandstand in front of an audience and pretend to be lecturing the big bad tech company. Its just theater.
dustintrex 5y ago
Stratechery makes a pretty solid argument that the calls for regulating "fake news" in general and Facebook in particular is a Democratic reaction to getting outfoxed by Trump's use of social media in 2016: https://stratechery.com/2021/facebook-political-problems/ https://stratechery.com/2021/facebook-political-problems/
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago
  Do you think the Democratic Party will ever admit that they lost in 2016 not because of "misinformation" or "fake news" or Russian interference or any of the other nefarious conspiracy theories they've promulgated, but because they put forward a terrible, unlikable candidate whom no-one was enthusiastic about and who offered nothing but sanctimony and a continuation of the failing status quo? Maybe it's not Facebook's fault?
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    That's basically what the Stratechery story above argues as well, but the key is that makes Facebook a convenient whipping boy that both sides can hate.

tenaciousDaniel 5y ago

I still have a FB account because my family is on there, and even then I check it maybe once a month, if that. It's just not in my life anymore. When I do go on there, I have a hard time imagining how anyone could get sucked into it. Sometimes I feel like FB is a kind of scapegoat for social critique. Maybe because it's the largest, but not sure. Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force. The amount of toxicity that arises out of that platform is overwhelming, and the addiction factor is much more affective. I'm not saying FB doesn't deserve criticism, but I wonder why these other platforms don't get the same attention.

bhupy 5y ago
> Personally, it seems like Twitter is a much more malevolent cultural force Completely agreed, it's quite impressive that they've managed to remain unscathed in all of this. Every single criticism that one can level against Facebook applies to Twitter ten times over. At least with Facebook's properties, the core use case is still keeping in touch with friends and family. Twitter's only real use-case is providing a soap box to the most outrage-inducing opinions, accuracy or nuance be damned. It's just democratized punditry.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  My guess is that vested interests likes Twitter because they can use it as a tool to direct the mob. Not so much with FB since FB has their own agenda.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I think its simpler than that - journalists get a lot of positive reinforcement and attention from twitter, so they just like it more.
- HappySweeney 5y ago
  I think 10x is a touch hyperbolic, but I agree otherwise. Much like FB, you can avoid the outrage porn by mercilessly unfollowing political accounts. Unlike FB, Twitter has an option to order things chronologically instead of by how outrageous they are.

iSnow 5y ago

As if FB stock holders or C-suite (or even regular employees, come to think about it) do care about reputational damage. As long as it is a money-printing machine, they will not care one bit if they have to heat the headquarters with seal pups.

erostrate 5y ago

The articles ends with a suggestion that Mark Zuckerberg should be fired from his CEO role, but he controls 58% of the voting shares, so I'm not sure who this appeal is directed at.

dresdenfire 5y ago
Ofcourse, the only right course of action would be for Mark to fire himself!

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

The biggest component missing from Silicon Valley's discussion of Facebook is its pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. (These just off the top of my head.) The culture is perceived to be dishonest from the top down. That is why they get bludgeoned more than Twitter, or even Tik Tok. That is what its surrogates miss when they say Zuckerberg is being scapegoated. There simply isn't another big tech CEO with such a clear, public and recalcitrant record of dishonesty. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_facebook_complaint_filed_7-24-19.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... [2] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-facebook-to-explain-its-controversial-rules-for-vips/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-...

jszymborski 5y ago
I'm on the outside looking in, (and this might be an unpopular opinion in this crowd) but that's the reputation of tech in Silicon Valley, no? The mentality is often "we'll be too small to prosecute until we're too big". That's how you end up with these seemingly superlegal entities like Uber, Google, hell even Crunchyroll. Theranos was the peak example of how tech companies are encouraged to misrepresent fact to both users and investors to ensure engagement and investment.
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  What happened with Crunchyroll?
  - jonwachob91 5y ago
    It was founded as a platform for streaming pirated anime until it got big enough to acquire major VC investments and start buying streaming rights.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

danpalmer 5y ago

I think this is fine for Facebook. We've long passed the point where facebook.com was supposed to work for everyone, it's now got some clear demographics that use it, and plenty that don't. Instagram is the replacement for certain demographics, and is well liked by most in its target market. WhatsApp is another replacement. FB Messenger is another. Even Oculus is a bet on another group. Facebook-the-company is mostly irrelevant in this discussion as the separate brands are strong enough on their own. They can keep buying/building new brands to target specific demographics and shield them from the positioning (or bad press) of the other brands. I think the only real risk here is that Facebook becomes a place that its employees don't want to work at, but I'm not sure that'll happen, they can afford to pay enough that enough people won't care.

baby 5y ago
Also, a lot of engineers still consider FB as a good product. HN is a bubble.

cblackthornekc 5y ago

To those that care, it is well past that point. I'm not sure if the remaining people will care even if Facebook put a dollar amount on your profile to show you how much money they made off of you in the last 7 days.

wonderwonder 5y ago

The only threat to Facebook is a younger user base moving away from them and they have done an excellent job mitigating that via Instagram and WhatsApp. Zuck is a lot of things but shortsighted is not one of them.

frakkingcylons 5y ago

FB has been through so many scandals in the past four years and literally nothing seems to materially affect the company. At least not their stock. Bloomberg has a nice rundown of the past crises and how quickly it rebounded every time: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-06/facebook-stock-s-familiar-crisis-cycle-decline-rebound-repeat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-06/facebook-...

h2odragon 5y ago

They still have more fans than syphilis. If the postal service came up with an ICQ / message board; or hell even mastodon servers for Zip codes, they might kill the beast. I'm sure local postmasters would love to add a "online clerk" or two to their staff, to deal with the server level local dramas. The opportunity to pay for it with "bulk mail" analog advertising is obvious too. All guided by the loving hands of a questionably responsible quasi-governmental bureaucracy led by shady appointees.

aierou 5y ago

Why is this article dated October 9th? Did they release it early to counter a slow news day?

dolphinhats 5y ago

Good

BitwiseFool 5y ago

Coordinated media blitzes make me skeptical. It seems pretty obvious the newsmedia has an axe to grind with the organization that devastated their income and business model.

jonahbenton 5y ago

"Reputational point of no return" == is a bank. Good timing, actually, lets them launch Libra and take on Tether.

teddyh 5y ago

It bothers me when media reports on somebody’s (or a company’s) reputation, like it’s the weather or something. The media is entirely responsible for somebody’s reputation. Grassroots rumors or gossip can only have very limited spread, and nobody puts much stock in them if the media contradicts them. If the media has now decided that Facebook has a bad reputation, that’s how it is, since the media is the entity defining reputation.

quotemstr 5y ago

Absolutely not. Media likes to think it can control popular narratives like it can turn a dial, but it can't anymore -- due in large part to Facebook. Social media has been under attack from mainstream media for a decade, ostensibly due to concerns over social media ranking and interest-based advertising, but actually due to social media disintermediation information exchange and obviating the role of traditional media as gatekeepers. I can't bring myself to be upset by this development. The social problems arising from social media are concerning and demand discussion and maybe some kind of fix --- but it remains a good thing that reporters and editors can no longer unilaterally set the agenda for society. Power is only safe when it's divided and diffused.

dxbydt 5y ago

economist.com...well people running the actual economy don't seem to share the sentiment. fb pcr is trending low [1] & ~$400 is still the consensus trefis estimate. [1]https://www.optionistics.com/put-call-ratio/fb https://www.optionistics.com/put-call-ratio/fb

BallinBige 5y ago

The world would be a better place if that outage were permanent.

goatlover 5y ago
As long as Twitter and Reddit go down for good as well. But my guess is some other companies like Google would rush to fill the void and we'd end up with similar social media. All those people are just going to move to another platform.

jjk166 5y ago

If someone knew how to make not-shitty facebook, they'ed very quickly make tens of billions of dollars, achieve fame in the public sphere, respect in the technical sphere, and influence in the political sphere. Facebook would go the way of myspace and we would all rejoice. The fact that, despite the immense incentive and numerous attempts, no one has ever succeeded at making not-shitty facebook strongly suggests it is an incredibly difficult thing to do. All the criticism in the world means nothing if no one can do better.

parafactual 5y ago
network effect
- jjk166 5y ago
  The network effect isn't an obstacle since you can be on multiple social networks. Tons of social networks have been successful since facebook. But all of them suffer from the same problems that facebook has.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Facebook is other people. People have killed each other by the millions, and now that violence is playing out in the non-physical space. We shouldn’t be surprised.

djanogo 5y ago

MSM rallying against FB in coordination. They want piece of that ad money. While tiktok seems to be main app which is ruining children.

CountDrewku 5y ago
Yeah this is the biggest reason they're so interested in the "whistleblower" who essentially said nothing we already didn't know and had zero data to backup her claims. MSM wants their dwindling market share back. I don't like facebook and I don't use it. However, everyone should be wary of the reason there's such a big push by politicians to censor it more and why MSM backs this so much.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

latte 5y ago

Why is Facebook singled out vs. all social media? I feel worse after half an hour spent reading Twitter, Reddit or even Hacker News than after half an hour spent on Facebook or Instagram. The amount of hate I see on the first three platforms is much higher.

fullshark 5y ago
The answer is simple: because FB is seen as a conservative propaganda distribution network and the others are not. The subreddit that was seen as a conservative propaganda network: r/the_donald was successfully eliminated and liberals want to do the same to FB.
brentm 5y ago
They are an easy target. FB scandal stories garner a lot of public interest and so there is a financial incentive for news orgs to dedicate staff to the FB beat. Not enough people care about Reddit, HN, etc. Even Twitter comparatively. They also don't have the same level of influence. There are obviously issues that FB amplifies but the heart of the problem in my opinion is people. People like information that confirms what they already believe, other people are greedy and like to take advantage people for personal gain. It was easy when FB just had to worry about removing porn and gore. Now the line is much grayer. Half of the people think some piece of content must be removed ASAP and the other half call removing that exact same content censorship.

xyst 5y ago

Haven’t used FB as a social media platform in a long time. So I understand the decreasing usage by the younger audience. However, I think FB should pivot to strictly a marketplace. My experience of selling items on their marketplace has far exceeded my expectations. In comparison to CL, Reddit, or Nextdoor, FB Marketplace was a much better experience. Not sure if it is the elimination of “anonymity”, but dealt with 0 sketchy people and was able to sell items locally relatively fast (list them before going to bed then have 10+ responses wanting to buy it at listing price).

neolefty 5y ago
How much of that success depends on having such a large audience already using the platform?
Loughla 5y ago
I would second that. I do not have FB at all, but my spouse does. We maintain that account just for marketplace. I've sold many items online over the years. CL always ends in a haggle where the buyer wants to meet three hours away and pay half the list price, whereas Marketplace, I generally get what I asked for, under the terms that I've laid out.

azangru 5y ago

I used to say that at least Facebook gave us, developers, React. (And graphql, I would add.). Its product stinks; but at least its open-sourced tools have moved the web forward. Sure felt like a gust of fresh air circa 2014. But now I am not so sure it's a blessing anymore.

cletus 5y ago

I'll take wishful thinking for $1000, Alex. To be fair, there are generally two reasons for these kinds of predictions: 1. People in a bubble think something is way more important than it is. I hate to say it but user data privacy is in this category. Like 1% of people actually care about this. I'm not saying that's right but it's true; and 2. People who make a lot of noise about an issue to make people care or to bring about some desired outcome. Think Yelp complaining about Google "stealing" their content. The second can be really harmful too. A good example is articles posted about how [high X]% of people have suffered from "sexual harassment or assault". To be clear, both of those things are bad but they are different levels of bad. Cat-calling on a construction site shouldn't be treated equivalently as a violent assault. But people do it to make things seem more alarming than they actually are and I think it has the negative effect. These bad faith arguments actually turn people off. It also leads to situations like a 19 year old having sex with a 16 year old is on the same sexual offender list as a child molestor. I digress. The only thing you see here is that the Economist doesn't like Facebook. That's it. I mean there's some bad PR for FB recently but companies have survived much, much worse for much, much longer. And FB will continue to attract talent as long as they pay them.

thebiggerpic 5y ago

A few things: 0. Whistleblowing is a real shitty strategy for enacting change. How about actually fighting for it from the inside first? 1. "Think of the children", really? Maybe the answer is children shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised but that's hardly Facebook's problem. 2. I hate misinformation as much as the next guy, but whether people like to believe in stupid shit like the magnetizing effect of vaccines is up to them. The fact that they believe in this shit is a failure of the educational system and our society in general. For better or worse, free speech is the cornerstone of American society, and again it's hardly Facebook's problem. 3. If people resort to Facebook for their daily "news" consumption, that speaks more of the abject failure of traditional media than it does of Facebook's nefarious motives. Maybe fix the tragic decline of journalism in this country before trying to single out one Tech organization as the scapegoat du jour. (Throwaway because it's hard to have an opinion these days without being judged. I'm a vaccinated immigrant who hates being an Independent because that mostly means the two alternatives are shitty)

system16 5y ago

> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s all-powerful founder, made a reasoned statement after this week’s wave of anger. "Reasoned statement" is not how I would describe his post at all. It was nothing more than gaslighting and being deliberately obtuse.

Croftengea 5y ago

Yes, most people just don't care. Facebook will be Facebook no matter what until there is something new that adds some new dimensions to social networking and attracts more investor money. People just wanted calls and used Nokias, wanted search and used Altavista, wanted messages and used ICQ.

sz4kerto 5y ago

[2014] Microsoft is doomed as it has lost mobile and desktop is not relevant any more.

Tarucho 5y ago

Everything passes. After some time users will forget this scandal and will continue using Facebook as before.

hereforphone 5y ago

No it's not. As long as Facebook provides the increasingly obese population of the West an outlet for memes, child photos, and uniformed political opinions, Facebook will rake in money.

LightG 5y ago

LOL .... "nearing".

tediousdemise 5y ago

Facebook's reputation doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things when they have enormous power and influence to do whatever they want completely unregulated. See also: Monsanto, Koch Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, George Soros.

leroy_masochist 5y ago

> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s all-powerful founder, made a reasoned statement after this week’s wave of anger. He was ignored or ridiculed and increasingly looks like a liability. The article ends with this statement, and I think it's really the lede. At this point, Zuck is basically the whipping boy of multiple different power factions in the US on both the left and right. If Facebook were actually run by its board, it would probably be an easy decision to move him into a President or Chairman role and get a Dara-type person into the CEO seat. But he holds all the cards, so who knows what will happen. It does seem like Facebook's long-term driver of value is as a marketplace platform in developing countries. Shipping Libra and announcing a strategy pivot to empowering small business owners in LDCs would be a bold move, but it seems like Zuck has never wanted to antagonize the US Gov the way that, e.g., Travis has. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

It's really not anywhere near a reputational point of no return. The editors of these media outlets with an axe to grind are trying really hard to create that illusion, though.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Five years after Zuckerberg was jogging around Beijing, he went hoverboard surfing carrying the American flag. As long the competition is Chinese TikTok or Russian Telegram then Facebook (and its associated businesses) will be allowed, even subsidized to grow in their dominance. Yes. There may be regulation that constraints Facebook but you can be sure that its competition will be hit harder. This is the calculation they are making and it is probably correct.

themacguffinman 5y ago
I agree with your geopolitical assessment but I doubt you can consistently rely on US legislature to protect the country's long term interests. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it does but it hasn't demonstrated much ability or interest in countering China's industrial influence.

rdxm 5y ago

LOL....nearing!?!?!??!!? seriously???? That boundary was crossed a long, long time ago.

helloworld11 5y ago

As others have mentioned here in greater detail, Nope. Even in the U.S, the vast majority of Facebook's users don't give a flying shit about the dirty details. They just want to use the messaging and "social" stuff that Insta/FB provide, so long as they work for their daily needs. As for much of the rest of the world, FB properties are sadly the end all and be all of communications and organizing events. Even less reason to care about a major scandal or two or dozen.

revel 5y ago

Not sure if any of you folks have tried asking your friends which companies they wouldn't work for, irrespective of the pay, but it's interesting. Facebook and Palantir are the 2 recurring names whenever I've asked around. That was before the latest 3 or 4 rounds of scandal. FB has been in this area for years.

biztos 5y ago
And yet, the one person I know who actually works there is the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck. Sample size of one, but I often wonder if I should just imagine what half a million bucks a year looks like and extrapolate from there. Probably lots of people “wouldn’t” work for FB except that they already do.
- oska 5y ago
  > the most liberal, Bernie Democrat, socially progressive, perfect-family moral beacon of all my San Francisco peeps. Except for the part about working for Zuck This would just indicate to me that he's a fraud and all his political posturing is just cheap words compared to the real action of being a part of such a toxic entity. (And no, there's no fighting for reform from within in a place like FB.)
  - dumbfoundded 5y ago
    Your statement uses pretty charged language and I don't think you're considering all of the potential scenarios. The first is that giant companies like Facebook are so vastly giant and you have no idea what he does for them. If he was on the React team at Facebook, would that be acceptable to you? Just like governments, giant companies have good and bad parts. The second is that you don't know anyone's situation. This employee could really need the money. Sometimes people get caught in situations where they have to support their parents or siblings or cousins. Voting still matters as well as encouraging others to vote. Who gets to decide what the real action is? Most people in any case don't view themselves as responsible for what decisions are made at the C-level. It would be more helpful to encourage employees to do what they can and blow the whistle if necessary than to demonize them. Most people invested in the stock market are holding some Facebook, probably as part of some index fund. Maybe we should encourage people to invest in privacy rights focused ETFs.

tonyfader 5y ago

nearing??? long since past time to shut them down.

chicob 5y ago

I can't go past the general tone of this article. The article acknowledges that Facebook made mistakes, and that its internal reports prove the company knows the harm it can do to vulnerable teenagers. Then these issues are discarded. Apparently, Facebook even had some growth after all... But lying to advertisers? This is deemed as unacceptable, and flagged as a possible beginning of the end. I know this is the Economist, but when it comes to reputational points of no return, I think that vulgar remark regarding early users' trust did the job.

gwenbell 5y ago

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yawaworht1978 5y ago

I don't remember nor didn't use myspace, but how did that come to and end? We're there early tell tales like this one? The collapse for Facebook would probably be very fast once a trigger point is reached, they're kind of all or nothing, they need large data amounts to have any quality to serve ads, if they have less advertisers and data, they won't be able to charge the same prides, it's would be a cascade or spiral moving pretty fast. Of course, once it happens, fb might be replaced by something even worse, the cynic in me thinks.

busymom0 5y ago
Regardless of what one may think of Tai Lopez, he did do an interview with Myspace Tom where he talks about how Myspace got killed by FB: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZA4vPc5SqJ8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZA4vPc5SqJ8
brentm 5y ago
No, people just moved on for a better product (FB, etc).

dgs_sgd 5y ago

I have > 5 friends (young, mostly liberal) who work at Facebook as engineers and I've yet to see them leave or even make mention of the company's negative reputation. I don't think they would consider leaving while their comp remains so competitive. I think it would take a public disaster so damaging that the stock tanks and doesn't recover for months/years for them to consider leaving.

wolverine876 5y ago

> The most damaging claim this week gained the least attention. Ms Haugen alleges that Facebook has concealed a decline in its young American users. She revealed internal projections that a drop in teenagers’ engagement could lead to an overall decline in American users of 45% within the next two years. Investors have long faced a lack of open disclosure. Misleading advertisers would undermine the source of nearly all the firm’s sales, and potentially break the law. (The firm denies it.) The Economist doesn't think damaging society and individuals, including spreading and legitimizing massive misinformation, is especially significant, but misleading advertisers - now that's serious.

deleted 5y ago
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oceliker 5y ago
To be fair to them, they say it's the "most damaging" claim, not the most significant. Misleading advertisers is more damaging to Facebook than misleading users, unfortunately.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

Facebook has marketshare and utility. Until someone can come along and do a better job without all the warts of dealing with human beings and their human shortcomings, it will remain the leader in the space.

spinchange 5y ago

Has this firm or its leader ever been popularly known or regarded for high ethical standards?

Bluestein 5y ago

Someday, some, will look back to today from a far and distant, and, we'd hope, still extant, future ... ... and find this to have been an age of digital savagery.-

akudha 5y ago

lol, who thought Facebook had a lot of reputation, in the recent years? It is like smoking or doing drugs - every smoker knows it is bad, but they will still smoke and somehow rationalize it too. FB users are just addicted to it, and they know they are.

amyjess 5y ago

The best way to make Facebook clean up its act is to revoke Section 230 with no exceptions. If someone's relative dies to covid because people on Facebook convinced them to refuse the vaccine, the whole family should be able to sue Facebook for wrongful death. Same if someone dies as a result of alternative "medicine" suggested to them by someone on Facebook. If someone gets assaulted after people on Facebook stir up a harassment campaign against them, Facebook should be criminally charged with conspiracy. If people on Facebook organize a violent insurrection, Facebook should be criminally charged. Make Facebook 100% legally responsible for every single piece of content on the platform, and then we'll see some real changes made.

stingrae 5y ago
I think this would force Facebook to shut down. They are operating at such a scale that no amount of hiring will give them the human moderation required to actually operate.
- amyjess 5y ago
  I'm okay with that.

gundmc 5y ago

A fair and well-reasoned article. Fair or not, Facebook's reputation means their actions are perceived as negative and sinister even when there is good reason for them. At this point I really think Zuckerberg needs to step away from the company and allow them space to try to reclaim public perception and goodwill. I don't see another way forward.

rmason 5y ago

What's more significant is that both the right and the left (for different reasons) are angry at Facebook. In these ultra partisan times could we see a rare bipartisan agreement to punish Facebook?

gwenbell 5y ago

Was I <a href="http://gwenbell.com/#Xuv6iZzUc+WjDEQFSL7/o6vYH4lhTbEpkJ0jkHr+fzI=">10 http://gwenbell.com/#Xuv6iZzUc+WjDEQFSL7/o6vYH4lhTbEpkJ0jkHr... years too early to the party?</a>

bob229 5y ago

Delete your social media now

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jlokier 5y ago

Forget the negative reputation for a moment. I just logged into Facebook after a few months not doing so, because someone told me via third party to contact them, and Facebook was the only method available of the ones we both have. About half the entries on my Facebook feed are ads of one kind or another! There are some posts from people I know, but because the ads are more prominent, larger, in some ways more interesting, posts from people I know are somehow harder to see while scrolling through the feed. Why would I want to log in, just to view an endless scroll of ads? What's Facebook's business model these days? Surely people will have had enough of watching an ad stream at some point, and then stop using it? I keep my account to remain able to communicate with people I know from my past lives, and I do like seeing what people want to share occasionally. These are "weak bonds" but I enjoy them anyway. There's also a couple of memorial pages for people I love who passed away some years ago, that are not anywhere else. But that means I login about once every few months, or when I find out that I should for a specific reason. The feed page just isn't interesting, so I don't see myself logging in again for another few months. I remember the Facebook feed as being more people focused, more about personal relationships, years ago. Far fewer ads.

wackget 5y ago

"Opprobrium"? "Tendentious"? The author of this piece really broke out the thesaurus, didn't they?

oska 5y ago
I don't want to sound like I'm boasting of having a large vocabulary but those words don't strike me as out of the ordinary for the reading level that The Economist targets (generally university/college educated).

asdfman123 5y ago

> If that idea takes hold, Facebook risks losing its young, liberal staff. Isn't this already happening? I'd still work for FB if it were my only good option, but I'd take a slight pay cut to work somewhere else.

partiallypro 5y ago

I honestly don't see how Facebook is any worse than Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc. Google can destroy a business by changing its algorithm or censoring a result and collects just as much information as Facebook, often vastly more personal. Amazon owns the entire logistics space. Twitter often makes partisan decisions when it comes to censorship and gives voice to propaganda outlets from the likes of the CCP, Taliban, etc. I think a lot of people want Facebook to fail simply because it seems more expendable. I would like to see news traffic numbers when Facebook went down for 7 hours, I bet there were some painful hits on traffic.

TheBlight 5y ago
The deplorables gather and share information on Facebook.

varelse 5y ago

Well if they have to pay more to attract talent then their profits will go down. Wall Street hates that. And if the share price falls, the talent they have will flee for better opportunity. So they're going to go through some things, no? But I agree that so far they have managed to acquire the services most likely to destroy them.

jude- 5y ago

Maybe a pithy way to render this article's point is, if you are a young, competent 20-something fresh on the job market and imminently hireable at Facebook (but nowhere else, let's say for the sake of argument), do you: * Take a job at Facebook (or one of it's properties)? * Strike it out alone in a startup you found? If you're more likely to do the latter, despite the higher risk, then Facebook has a big problem. If the best and brightest no longer want to work there, then their time has passed.

deleted 5y ago

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throwawaymanbot 5y ago

nearing???? lol... long past...

FugeDaws 5y ago

If facebook was to vanish another similar site will just take its place lets not kid ourselves. Were stuck with this monster even though ive not been on facebook in 8 years or had an account that long i still see it mentioned constantly everywhere

ffggvv 5y ago

never heard a cogent criticism of facebook other than “they won’t censor my political enemies as often as i’d like”

kazinator 5y ago

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.)