Indeed, Zuckerberg is the culture.
And compared to the real deal, the depiction of him in the Social Network was downright flattering.
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OnlyFans Bribed Meta to Put Thousands of Adult Entertainers on Terrorist Watch List, Lawsuits Allege
Three lawsuits claim that OnlyFans paid Meta to shadow-ban users who promoted its competitors.
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Far right content is their bread and butter, after all.
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(source: NYT; David Leonhardt)
Good morning. Facebook remains extremely powerful, but it also faces legitimate problems.
Facebookâs parent company, Meta, has seen its stock fall over the past year.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Where is the innovation?
In October of last year, my colleague Kevin Roose wrote a column titled, âFacebook Is Weaker Than We Knew.â His hook was a series of stories in The Wall Street Journal, based on internal company documents, which revealed the companyâs failure to stop content that damaged teen mental health, spread vaccine misinformation and more.
âIt would be easy enough to come away thinking that Facebook is terrifyingly powerful,â Kevin wrote. âBut thereâs another way to read the series, and itâs the interpretation that has reverberated louder inside my brain as each new installment has landed. Which is: Facebook is in trouble.â
The societal damage that the company was causing seemed to be a sign that its executives were struggling to attract more users and taking desperate measures to do so. Yet Kevin also included a major caveat: The companyâs stock had still been rising over the previous year, a sign that investors remained confident.
Thatâs no longer the case.
The stock has fallen more than 50 percent over the past year. In the most recent quarter, company revenue fell slightly and profits fell 36 percent. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, blamed a broad economic downturn that had reduced spending on digital ads, and it certainly played a role. But the specific problems facing Meta, as Facebookâs parent company is now called, seem to be the main cause.
Consider this chart, with compares Meta, Alphabet (Googleâs parent company) and the S&P 500:
Monthly data from Yahoo! Finance, except for August 2022, which is the most recent price.By The New York Times
I know that many readers probably still think of Facebook as a behemoth. And in many ways it still is. As Kevin has written: âIt can simultaneously be true that Facebook is in decline and that it is still one of the most influential companies in history, with the ability to shape politics and culture all over the globe.â
This morning, Iâll lay out the four biggest problems facing the company.
1. The age problem
If you have children, youâve probably noticed that they prefer other social media platforms. To many of them, Facebook is for older people â which is not exactly a recipe for growth. Helen Lewis of The Atlantic, among others, has described the platform as âBoomerbook.â
Yes, many teenagers and younger adults use Instagram, which Facebook bought a decade ago. But even Instagram has been struggling to keep up.
âTikTok is absolutely eating Instagramâs lunch right now, in terms of usage and cultural sway, and advertisers generally want to be where the young people are,â Kevin told me. âEven though Meta has tried to copy TikTokâs most successful features and shove them into Instagram Reels, theyâre limited in how much change users will accept without a fight.â
Last month, for example, Kylie Jenner complained to her 361 million followers, âMake Instagram Instagram again.â An anti-Instagram pile-on ensued, as The Timesâs Kalley Huang wrote.
2. The innovation problem
âThe company just doesnât appear to know how to invent successful new stuff,â Farhad Manjoo of Times Opinion has written. âMost of its biggest hits â not just two of its main products, Instagram and WhatsApp, but many of its most-used features, like Instagram Stories â were invented elsewhere. They made their way to Facebook either through acquisitions or, when that didnât work, outright copying.â
Thatâs a big change from Facebookâs first decade, when it transformed social media. Especially important was its News Feed, which meant users no longer had to spend time searching out other accounts to know what people were posting.
Since the company went public in 2012, it has been much less innovative.
3. The metaverse problem
Zuckerberg feels so strongly that the metaverse â based around world of virtual-reality, or VR â represents the future of the internet that he renamed the company after it.
âItâs been almost a year since Facebook rebranded itself Meta and announced its big push into the metaverse, and there arenât a lot of big, obvious wins to show for it,â Kevin said. âVR is still pretty niche, and itâs not clear how much usage apps like Horizon Worlds are getting. (Although, if any Meta employees are reading this, I would love to know!)â
When Zuckerberg unveiled parts of the companyâs platform last week, critics mocked it as looking dated. He responded by acknowledging it was âpretty basicâ and promised âmajor updatesâ soon.
One positive sign for the company: It has sold more than 10 million of its VR headsets, which may suggest the niche is growing. But it remains unclear whether VR has anywhere near the mass-market appeal that social media does.
Metaâs VR headset on display at a conference in Paris.Benoit Tessier/Reuters
4. The antitrust problem
Some Meta supporters argue that the companyâs recent struggles prove that it isnât the omnipotent force that its critics claim â and that the federal government should go easy on it. But I think that claim misses whatâs really going on.
The company has become less dominant partly because both the Trump and Biden administrations have taken a tougher stance toward mergers.
âIf Mark Zuckerberg could acquire his way out of this problem, as he did by buying Instagram back in 2012, he absolutely would,â Kevin said. âBut regulators, at least under this administration, arenât going to let him.â
One example: The Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan, who has called for tougher antimonopoly policies, is trying to block Metaâs acquisition of Within, a VR fitness start-up. Khan and her colleagues worry Meta may be trying prevent future competitors from forming by buying them first.
Depending on your point of view, itâs either ironic or fitting. As Kevin said, âFacebook became so dominant, in part by acting in anticompetitive ways for so many years, that Meta is losing its dominance as a result.â
The bottom line: Facebook remains among the worldâs most powerful companies, with the ability to influence elections, public health much more. It also continues to produce huge amounts of revenue, which will allow it many chances to create successful new products. But its struggles are real, and they donât show any sign of disappearing.
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Well⌠Good luck with that.
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Because rather than answering that question, theyâd like to know âHow can we best monetize badness?â
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Updates arenât going to fix the VR problem. Itâs one of those cases of a solution in search of a problem. VR and virtual worlds, despite my love for them, donât solve problems or scratch an itch for the majority of people. Therefore, thereâs little need of a new VR product. Thereâs been some smaller products made such as Rec Room which does a better job than Horizon Worlds by leagues from what Iâve seen. So, I canât see how Meta/Facebook is going to make bank by in-housing VR apps rather than building what amounts to an SDK for such things. They really shouldâve just focused on making Occulus an independent product line free of Zuckerbergâs orbit as much as possible. He shouldâve been a very silent partner on it rather than trying to be the promoter.
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I posted this in the pet photo topic but thought Iâd toss it in here.
My wife posted this photo with a funny comment about not being able to sew because of kitty. I posted a silly comment about the scissors solving the problem that maybe 5 people might see and within minutes Facebook banned me for 24 hours.
They said I could dispute the decision so I did, they said nope. Then they said I could appeal, so I did, they said nope. Then they said I could go to the independent board but I needed a valid Facebook account which I currently donât have because see above comment.
The whole amusing thing is this all took about 5 minutes and all their messages told me it was a real person making the decisions. I guess they consider a computer real people.
And the bigger point is all the violence, hate, and racism remains in all my local groups and comments on various news stories. There are manifestos and plans to overturn the government and groups inciting violence all out in the open on Facebook but my insignificant non public account gets noticed.
Go figure.
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Only needs to be bumped down another 1,000,000,000 spots before balance is restored to the universe.
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