> The EU fines could stoke tensions with U.S President Donald Trump who has threatened to levy tariffs against countries that penalise U.S. companies.
Mark Zuckerberg, in his appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, specifically noted this as his goal for falling in behind Trump. That Trump would be the big-stick man that would protect Meta and other cos from foreign interference. Where "interference" is anything restricting that American exceptionalism "do anything we want, however we want".
Only then Trump started a trade war with quite literally the entire world -- aside from, predictably, Russia -- and now he holds, as he likes to say, no cards. The EU and anyone else can do whatever they want and Zuck and co can cry about the millions they wasted trying to buy a protection racket.
Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU. I wish they would withdraw from Canada. Their garbage misinformation platform is a massive net negative for humanity and has offered nothing but harm for the planet.
Someone here hazarded the hypothesis that Trump's tariffs are a stick aimed not towards other countries, but towards American corporations, who have to pledge fealty (and resources) to Trump in exchange for relief. I think it makes a lot of sense, if any of this is rational, which I'm not entirely sold on.
It's always funny when shit happens and everyone jumps over themselves to figure out what "5D chess" the people in charge are playing. There's never any chess. They are just incompetent.
Look at 47's truth social some time. In between the posts 'destroying' liberals and lionising the worst actors in his party, he posts up a disturbing amount of 'settlements' with Law Firms that previously displeased him.
They were basically forced at gunpoint to make deals to provide pro bono services to the Trump administration, in return for regulators dropping investigations into their diversity practices.
The firms - including Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft – are among the most prestigious and recognized firms in the US.
Cadwalader is the former firm of Todd Blanche, who resigned his partnership there to represent Trump in criminal cases when the firm would not take on Trump as a client. Blanche is now the deputy attorney general – the number two official at the Department of Justice.
Overall the MAGA cabinet has now secured more than $900m in pro bono pledges from law firms threatened with either executive orders or investigations from the equal opportunity commission. How this isn't seen as a straight up RICO case or old-fashioned criminal shakedown is beyond me.
> Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU.
I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
But yeah, the "you'd better be nice to us, EC, or Trump might be angry" tactic is kinda shot at this point.
> I mean, probably not without being sued by their shareholders. As a public company, you cannot simply abandon 40bn revenue/year because you feel aggrieved.
Fiduciary duty. It's a high bar, but "we abandoned 25% of our revenue in a fit of pique over our being required to follow the law on consent" probably gets you there.
That gets thrown around a lot but those folks are masters at corporate messaging. All you need to do is tie a bow and back the decision up with a long term strategy. I don't accept "fiduciary duty" being the pretext for any shitty behavior.
Most Canadian small businesses rely on Meta to get customers.
If you think these companies don't add value, you are totally oblivious to the millions of small businesses that rely on these platforms to reach customers and niche audiences around the world.
I've seen too much from the last few years (covid, mostly, but other things) to take much stock in what people are commonly referring to as misinformation
But yeah, I don't like what they do competition wise (Whatsapp seems like clear antitrust) and their products are badly designed (have more things shoved into your feed that you're not following!)
I've worked at most FAANG companies, including Google, Apple, and Meta in the past (not currently).
In my experience working at these companies and diving into the reported incidents/issues (e.g. Batterygate, Myanmar, Cambridge Analytica), I have found that comments like yours present an overly reductive worldview. You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles that grossly misrepresent the issues as opposed to a nuanced understanding of (1) the widely reported incidents, and (2) the services these companies provide and those that rely on them to make a living.
No, it would not be replaced "in an instant" with other options, and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today unless you make targeted ads illegal (which - again - would collapse millions of small businesses and centralize power for wealthy large businesses).
My experience using Facebook is that every third post is an advertisement, often for something I can't even buy (common one: a tax adviser specialising in US citizens living in the UK, when I'm British and live in Germany), or are not gender appropriate (they've shown me ads both for boob surgery and for dick pills).
Another third are "recommendations" for groups that are often not merely of zero interest, but geographically irrelevant — a page for a team I've never heard of in a sport I don't follow in a state I've never even visited, that kind of thing.
The remaining third are mostly from just one person, because everyone else I know seems to feel much the same way about the website and have mostly stopped posting content there.
My actual, literal, spam folder is less irrelevant than what Facebook shows me on the default feed.
> No, it would not be replaced "in an instant" with other options, and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today unless you make targeted ads illegal (which - again - would collapse millions of small businesses and centralize power for wealthy large businesses).
1) It's already centralised, that's the problem.
2) We managed OK before the internet enabled targeted ads. Back then, local newspapers were a thing (I still get them around here), and you could put an ad for your barber shop or dance hall in that. Local forums that you can find on a search engine are still able to serve local ads, without targeting or profiling users. Biggest problem with that is that spam was already a problem 20 years ago (personal experience trying to host a phpBB forum), and now we've got LLMs that make it increasingly difficult to even know if you're talking to a fellow human let alone a fellow resident of ${local area} or member of ${specific interest group}.
> We managed OK before the internet enabled targeted ads. Back then, local newspapers were a thing (I still get them around here), and you could put an ad for your barber shop or dance hall in that
To be fair, we are in a wholly different world today. The small business landscape has changed dramatically - most of them are online. I get instagram ads for my really niche hobbies, and I don't mind.
There is no chance of that business surviving based off of local newspaper ads alone - the likelihood of finding a viable customer base in your town is low. Generalized ads would be totally unaffordable to reach widely enough to cover your viable target customer base, which is sparse and global. Search based ads don't work because people don't even know this exists until they see it.
But good ad targeting enables instant global reach to the specific people that are likely to be interested in what you're selling. There may only be 1k-10k people globally interested in buying $500 titanium miniature puzzles, but if you can reach them, that's enough for your small business to survive.
Lots of small businesses rely on this. I'm not sure about "millions" but on the order of 100k seems likely, if you assume there's one interesting niche business for every 80k people.
I see what you mean - but I am not sure it would work for the "you don't know what you don't know" cases, or cases where the user isn't invested enough to follow the relevant forum.
I personally wasn't interested in miniature titanium puzzles until I saw the ad - I'm not interested in puzzles in general, so I wouldn't have found it via a puzzle forum.
The same pattern can be seen in my other hobbies (tritium collecting, mokume and titanium/zirconium Damascus items, unique independent watches, flashlight collecting, rocks).
I'm involved enough to buy something from an ad while scrolling through my friends' timelines or reels, but certainly not enough to frequent a forum on these topics. So I am not sure forums suffice.
How do you expect small businesses to acquire customers? Spending tens of millions of dollars competing in generalized ad space to reach the same audience they can reach today with $1000?
Most small businesses that exist today would become nonviable overnight, and that is a huge chunk of the economy. Sure, you can say "they shouldn't have the right to exist" because they use targeted ads, but I have yet to hear a solid argument for why such ads are an infringement on our fundamental rights such that the whole SMB segment of the economy is worth destroying.
Do you seriously think that ? My experience is so dissociated that I think it unbelievable. I don't remember ever seeing an ad for a small business on the web, even less discovered one through them.
I discovered most small businesses that I use through word of month, seeing them while traveling or active search through google or google maps. The ones that I may have discovered through ad where through local physical add such as any box fliers or fliers/posters in other local businesses.
in order for to see small business ads you really have to have your browser fully exposed in order to be targeted - small business are local and feeding ads for a massage parlour in sam diego to me 3,000 miles away is not a good allocation of marketing money. I am 50 and have never, not once discovered a small business through an online ad
A tech bro true believer comes to the rescue to set us all straight. Of course the world would fall apart if Thanos snapped his fingers and disappeared Meta.
Thinking about I might watch that movie, a Thanos redemption arc maybe...
>You are likely entirely informed by ragebait news articles
Sure. Do you think I haven't experienced every aspect of Meta properties? Instagram reels, for instance, is a racist hellhole full of the most vile content and snuff videos. It seems to have zero moderation, profiting off of the worst of humanity[1]. Facebook actively runs obvious scam ads for scam businesses and does absolutely nothing if you report it.
Meta at this point is basically a criminal operation.
And it's hilarious how much fear mongering there was about Tiktok (which is a positively benign platform compared to Meta's garbage platforms). I recently uninstalled Instagram after it fed me an endless stream of 51st state propaganda, despite the fact that I Not Interested/Blocked every single occurrence (this was around the time that Instagram turned up the "snuff" dial so millions were getting feeds full of violent deaths[2], which is a mechanism that immediately should subject Meta to government inquiries). Meta properties should be banned everywhere outside the US purely based upon the fact that they're enemy propaganda at this point.
>and any other options would quickly evolve into the same state as FB/IG today
No, they wouldn't. Like literally somehow loads of other sites manage to not be the cesspools of garbage that Meta properties are. This is by design. Here in Canada, engagement on Facebook has dropped to negligible levels outside of the 51st state/conspiratorial sorts. Reddit is an enlightened intellectual promised land compared to the shithole that Meta properties all are.
>which - again - would collapse your small businesses
This is such nonsense. The only businesses that are reliant upon Meta are largely scammy new-age bullshit. And your rhetoric is like saying that if McDonalds closed millions would go hungry because surely there is no way for people to eat otherwise.
And again you've tried to pull other companies in. Google offers enormous value to the world. They are largely a responsible company. Apple offers value. Netflix offers value. Microsoft offers value.
META...blinked out of existence and the world would be much better. Meta is the world's digital Purdue Pharma.
[1] And to be clear, I'm a free speech person. That fringe sites exist where people ply this content is fine. That a major corporation seems to build a business around it, however, monetizing nuts and mental illness and racism and conspiracies and violence, is absolutely disgusting, and I cannot comprehend how someone could work at Meta without feel shame every moment of every day.
Reddit can be astroturfed to hell, I don't trust it. Mods are shared across subreddits, they ban you for unjustified reasons, as does the site in general
It's a statement of fact. Meta profits off the worst of society. It is a heinous company.
If you find my comment so reprehensible, feel free to downvote, flag, etc. The crocodile-tear moralization comes across as concern trolling, and it's just a waste of bits.
>What is your end goal here?
You strangely keep editing this. I stated my thoughts. People are free to disagree. If it's so distressing to you I suggest you look inwards as to why that is.
What is ugly or uncivil about noting someone's biases? The "your small businesses would fail without Meta" line is from the official lobbyist arm of Meta, and it's usually a pretty good tell that someone is a Meta employee and is thus likely to have a very rose coloured, idealized version of the org.
Full disclosure: I worked at Facebook from 2013 to 2018, almost entirely on ads.
Like, you may not want to hear this, but lots of SMBs get value from targeted ads, and this has lead to lots and lots of successful businesses.
I encourage my wife to use these kinds of ads (mostly on TikTok and IG these days) for her business, and they work reasonably well.
That's not to say that Facebook hasn't had a bunch of bad impacts on the world (Myanmar and other poorer countries come to mind), but the OP's point is a good one, and lots of people who don't work at Meta believe this.
Ultimately, Facebook provide a service that it appears lots of people like (I do use Whatsapp but not really the rest of them) and it's not up to you to determine whether or not they've been good or bad for society.
As I keep bringing up in these discussions, should we ban radios for their role in the Rwandan genocide?
Changing forms of communication are always going to cause societal changes, and we're currently living through the biggest one since the invention of the printing press.
I'm not sure one can blame just one company for all of this, and honestly if you had to pick one I'd probably pick Google for making it profitable to write garbage and monetise through ads (but as I said, the Internet and computer mediated communication are a huge change and it's basically impossible to say what actually drove the changes).
What do you achieve with that? Isn't it better to argue against the points made rather than argue against the person making them? Anybody could have made the same points.
Mark Zuckerberg, in his appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast, specifically noted this as his goal for falling in behind Trump. That Trump would be the big-stick man that would protect Meta and other cos from foreign interference. Where "interference" is anything restricting that American exceptionalism "do anything we want, however we want".
Only then Trump started a trade war with quite literally the entire world -- aside from, predictably, Russia -- and now he holds, as he likes to say, no cards. The EU and anyone else can do whatever they want and Zuck and co can cry about the millions they wasted trying to buy a protection racket.
Of course Meta could just withdrawn from the EU. I wish they would withdraw from Canada. Their garbage misinformation platform is a massive net negative for humanity and has offered nothing but harm for the planet.