Facebook hasn't been cool for a long time.
Not being cool is catching up to Facebook.
"Facebook continues to make profits for the time being, largely due to an increase in users aged 55 and over. However, multiple sources predict that the end is nigh."
There has been chatter about Facebook not being cool going back five years or more but the stock was going up and people were signing up. That made it cool, even though used by parents, grandparents, businesses, and politicians. Its ubiquity was its strength and weakness. It was a public relations utility, which is un-cool.
Question: Why is Facebook not cool anymore?Answer: Mom and dad started using it.
I tried to look at the Facebook pages of the generation Z people in my life. There is nothing there. Of course they aren't there. They don't want me looking at them. That should have been the hint to me that Facebook wasn't cool, but I have been slow to notice.
Facebook changed its name to Meta. I could have warned them had they asked me about the name change. In 9th grade, hoping to become cool, I tried going by Pete instead of Peter. The re-brand didn't make me cool and people still called me Peter.
Facebook/Meta stock price fell off a cliff last week. The company lost $250 billion in market capitalization in one day, a third of its value. As of now Facebook has underperformed the SP500 over the past five years. That means that not only is it not a "star;" it is below average. The buzz around social media companies is no longer about how rich it has made people. Employee stock options are under water. Employees who were waiting for their options to vest so they could get mega-rich and are now looking around for new employment at a startup, or Google, or Amazon.
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| From: The Social Network |
We know the story of fast success and hubris. Pride cometh before a fall. Icarus flew too close to the sun. People and ideas on the way up overshoot in their overconfidence. The hare napped. Citigroup's president said there would be disaster when the music stopped for junk mortgage origination, but that as long as the music played Citigroup would keep dancing. Chuck Prince told me and 500 other Financial Advisors not to worry, that management had it covered. They didn't.
There is satisfaction in watching the arrogant get their comeuppance.
The European Union told Facebook they needed to adopt privacy protection rules to keep operating in Europe. Facebook said no. Facebook thought they were bigger than Europe. They aren't.
I am among those people who have essentially dropped out of Facebook. I wrote Goodbye, Facebook back in October, five months ago. I decided Facebook was a toxic place, sort of like a McDonalds restaurant. The food is tasty but unhealthy. .
Facebook won't disappear. People my age will still show off photographs of food they cooked themselves. Young parents will show off their toddlers. Anti-vax people will share "research" about zinc and Hillary Clinton. I will glance from time to time to watch the toddlers of young parents. I clicked the do-not-track button, but I don't care very much if Facebook figures out a way to track me anyway. I am hardly ever there to see their ads.
20 comments:
I dropped out two years ago, my daughter 4 years ago. My daughter stopped posting on Facebook along with her peers so there was little for me to follow. It also served as a protest against all the political nonsense posting. Isn’t there research that shows the more you look at Facebook the more likely you are to be depressed? It’s unhealthy to be a Facebook follower. How’s that for incentive to quit?
Companies change their names for many reasons. One reason for the change is because Meta is much more than Facebook. Facebook is only one of its platforms. Instagram is also part of Meta. Also some other major social media platforms. Why continue to call the company by the name of one product? Not to mention that FB has received a lot of negative attention recently.
Meta also owns WhatsApp
Zuck’s motto was, “Move fast and break things.” FB/Meta is now too big to move fast, and it’s a prime target for younger, smaller, hungry companies looking for something to break.
Besides, anyone with high level coding skills and courage is going to want to work for a hot startup, not a huge bureaucratic institution. You get the same salary, no bureaucracy, and a chance to become a billionaire.
I still remember the day in 1982 when I had just left Xerox to join a hot startup. There were around 14 of us. I needed a machine called a logic analyzer. I walked into the CEOs office to tell him I needed one. I had some vague idea that he would tell me which form to fill out. Instead, he handed me a credit card and said, “Go buy one.“ It was like the heavens had opened and the sun was shining down on me. Birds were singing in my mind.
You can’t match trust and empowerment like that with fancy gourmet cafeterias and other deluxe “perks.”
Too many people are trapped in a bubble of “alternative facts” obtained over social media. Facebook has provided a platform for hate groups and conspiracy theorists spreading disinformation about everything from COVID-19 to racial injustice protests. For example, that’s how Critical Race Theory went from the dusty shelves of a Harvard Law School library to a source of manufactured outrage at schoolboard meetings.
In honor of Black History month, let us celebrate such endeavors as The 1619 Project, which provide a much-needed corrective to histories that wrongly suggest racism and slavery were not a central part of U.S. history. They also make white nationalist’s heads explode – and that’s a good thing.
Where do programs and platforms of bits and bytes go to die? In a sea of ones and zeros and computer codes and algorithms they drowned unsung and unused and unplugged they float in the Metaverse. Still this part of the Metaverse exists in eddies and backwaters becoming rancid, putrid, toxic, forgotten, unused and unuseful clogging cloud memories and data banks of terabytes. A portion may see "life" again as a piece of malware in the Dark Web. 404
Social Media.
Social..."needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities"
Media..."the main means of mass communication"
TMI..."Too Much Information"
The internet is very useful for two things: commerce and research. Those will endure because they offer actual value. Facebook does poorly in these two areas and will wither, and it would seem Instagram may be the social media platform with legs. Ebay and Amazon sell stuff. Another example is Etsy. And the grand old man, Craigslist. Facebook didn't foresee the growth of video and allowed YouTube, who pays users to take that market, and missed out on blogging altogether.
So what's left? I predict Tik Tok will be a fad whose users age out, and it may very well be that will be Facebook's fate as well.
Maybe books will make a comeback.
Anon @9:59–
You are a perfect and unwitting example of the politicized information-silo dynamic you seek to decry.
Do you really believe the the Founders fought the American Revolutionary War to preserve slavery?
The bachelor’s degree scholars behind The 1619 Project claim so, to “much needed corrective” by PhDs.
MSNBC and CNN pundits notwithstanding, you do grok that no one claims post-grad CRT is taught K-12?
Why would it be? Diluted, pop-CRT curricula—including the Project—inundate public K-12, however.
There are many flavors of koolaid. The most powerful flavor convinces the credulous they’re immune to it.
There is so much hype about Facebook, not all of it is true. You can go in and control your settings regarding notifications, adds, etc. Easy peasy.
I admit, as a 78 year old home-bound person, that I love facebook! I can instantly connect to my friends, join serious discussions, be involved in groups that involve my special interests, like botany and other natural history, politics, etc. And I post my photography in easy to set up albums. It is my lifeline to the world. I have fB friends from all over the world, but especially from young photographers from Pakistan, showing off the fantastic mountain scenery of the northern part of that country.
Some younger people keep a facebook presence, and may post more elsewhere, but I still see them there on FB.
Facebook does need to look into the problem people call getting into Facebook Jail. That happens for posts that an algorithm picks up and issues an automatic ban of a certain length. Rarely is there an appeal allowed. It is largely unfair, as other things slip by unstopped.
Anonymous,
CRT is not taught in K-12. But CRT-influenced curricula are spreading all over K-12. For instance, “affinity groups” that specifically exclude white kids. Or the 1619 Project, with its vicious lie that the American Revolution was “about” preserving slavery.
If liberals continue to support this infiltration of CRT perspectives into K-12, Glen Youngkin’s election in Virginia is going to look like nothing compared to what happens to the Democrats this November.
“Get woke, go broke,” as they say…
Low Dudgeon-
What I actually said is that endeavors such as the 1619 Project provide a corrective to histories that ignore the profound influence of racism and slavery on U.S. history. But I see your point: it’s an outrage for anyone to suggest the Founding Fathers of the land of the free would support slavery in any way, shape or form.
I do ‘grok’ that people who object to CRT being taught in K-12 do so because they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a grad school course. “Pop CRT” isn’t even a thing. What’s got white nationalist knickers in a twist is the effort to teach our actual history, which includes slavery, lynchings, segregation, oppression and voter suppression.
Anon @ 4:22–
What you said was that The 1619 Project was a “corrective”, and that school board meeting objections to CRT was “manufactured” outrage. Neither claim is true.
The Project is just part of what I call pop-CRT, which like pop-anything means a simplified, often simplistic version of the more complex subject at issue.
The ADL’s “No Place For Hate” curriculum has modules for elementary through high school, including in Oregon, teaching that whiteness equals oppression.
It’s laughable that youngish, uniformed leftists claim fatuously that the objection is to teaching lynchings, Jim Crow etc. That’s been central for decades now.
Google “Garry Wills”, the liberal Pulitzer Prize historian tasked with leading a group crafting new natural history standards for public K-12 curricula in the 1980s.
Back then the beef was that Harriet Tubman got more ink than Jefferson. Now it’s toxic race-identity determinism, including victimhood and guilt imputed to children.
Hate auto fill. Should read, “new NATIONAL history standards”, not “natural”. Believe it or not—obviously “Jim Crow” should be auto fill priority one, it read “lynchings, Jim Croce…” until I noticed that at least. I also resent that one of my favorite cultural terms, sacred cows, turns into “scared cows” unless I’m careful.
Low Dudgeon-
Your gross misrepresentation of the No Place for Hate program is a perfect and unwitting example of the politicized information-silo I was talking about earlier. Social justice and Black history are coming your way. Try not to let your head explode.
Anon @ 6::44–
More tendentious summarizing from you, without any specifics at issue. From the “No Place For Hate” Coordinator (teacher’s) Handbook glossary:
“Racism: The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed.racial hierarchy that privileges white people”.
A travesty that such toxic hogwash is taught to our schoolkids. But on the bright side, the Japanese are off the hook when it comes to the Koreans.
Ho Place for Hate opposes bias and bullying. I can see how white nationalists would find that offensive.
Q.E.D.
Dear white boys, you really have nothing to say about CRT.
KEEP YOUR PICTURES IN YOUR CAMERA. EVERY PICTURE YOU TAKE WITH YOUR CELL PHONE IS OWNED BY THE COMPANY STORE…..FOREVER.
Ralph--
As much as I pity flagellant white-guilt leftists deferring to the self-anointed leaders of black America as if they are free-range sacred cows, I guess it's okay so long as we maintain your, er, logic.
Pacifists should not be permitted a voice in military policy, nor the unemployed on tax priorities and expenditures. Black lit professors should be barred from teaching Jane Austen, and whites James Baldwin.
Dudgeon-
Q.E.D. implies that you presented an argument. I think what better captures your comments is Non Impediti Ratione Cogitationis.
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