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Meta (previously Facebook) is the ultimate social manipulator. Your site is losing popularity to a new social media app for phones? Buy that app. Make it basic
by dont__panic 5y ago
Meta (previously Facebook) is the ultimate social manipulator.
Your site is losing popularity to a new social media app for phones? Buy that app. Make it basically the same as your version of social media.
Your previously purchased app is losing popularity to an app devoted to ephemeral videos and pictures? Shamelessly copy that app's functionality in every app you own, and even make an exact duplicate app to commodify that feature. Run the competitor into the ground when they refuse to sell to you.
Your collection of almost-the-same-social-media-sites is threatened by a foreign competitor? Lobby for that foreign competitor to be banned from one of the largest single-country markets in the world. That doesn't work? Spread FUD about the foreign competitor's evil. That's doesn't work? Lobby for intense regulation in the social media space to prevent any competitor from ever showing up again.
A series of scandals, leaks, and general scummy profit-seeking behaviour sullies your name even among tech illiterate folks? Change your name so those people can't keep track of what's going on and launder your reputation.
I can't stand Meta. I think Zuckerburg might just be the antichrist (mostly kidding on this one). But I have to hand it to him: he is very savvy at this whole business thing.
- gotostatement 5y agoI agree but relax with the antichrist stuff, we don't want the justifiable hatred of him to turn into antisemitism like it already is in the conspiracy circles
- nowherebeen 5y agoI wouldn’t really call it savvy. Most people can think of these tactics but many people wouldn’t actually do it. The difference is he doesn’t care about unfairly screwing other people over for his own personal gain. I bet you he rationalizes it like it’s just competition. A multibillion dollar company that can hire 10,000 with a snap of a finger vs a million dollar startup. Yup, just competition.
- cercatrova 5y agoGenuinely curious, what part of the parent comment is "unfairly screwing other people over for his own personal gain"? Seems like ordinary business moves to me to buy up competitors. The competitors are paid pretty large sums for their sale so not sure who's being screwed over here.
- gurleen_s 5y agoThe consumer is, in nearly every instance.
- cercatrova 5y agoHow are consumers "unfairly screwed over?" They use FB products at their own discretion.
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoGoogle " radicalization by social media " Normal people can't quit social networks, they are part of iot life. If you can put them aside, you are not normalnby definiton. I had to reply because I can't downvote.
- oarabbus_ 5y agoMight as well say that cars, computers, television, and clothes are "screwing the consumer over" if your definition is they are part of life and "normal" society can't function without them.
- malloreon 5y agoSpare some disdain for the people who choose to work for him. They deserve it: they commit the evil for far smaller a payoff.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]