148
We're Watching Facebook Die (www.wheresyoured.at)
submitted 3 months ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

In the first quarter of 2024, Meta made $36.45 billion dollars - $12.37 billion dollars of which was pure profit. Though the company no longer reports daily active users, it now uses another metric: “family daily active people.” This number refers to “registered and logged-in users of one or more of Facebook’s Family products who visited at least one of these products on a particular day.”

This quiet, seemingly innocent change to how Meta reports growth is significant insofar as it will no longer have to report its Daily Active or Monthly active users, meaning that the only source of truth in Meta’s growth story is a vague growth metric that could be manipulated to mean just about anything. Three billion “daily active people” across Meta’s “family” combines WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger (which I’m confident it counts separately), Oculus, and Threads.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago

Don’t be dissuaded by the weak opening argument - finish the article. At least:

When you look at Instagram or Facebook, I want you to try and think of them less as social networks, and more as a form of anthropological experiment. Every single thing you see on either platform is built or selected to make you spend more time on the app and see more things that Meta wants you to see, be they ads, sponsored content, or suggested groups that you can interact with, thus increasing the amount of your “time spent” on the app, and increasing the amount of “meaningful interactions” you have with content. …

… the logic here is that the more stuff there is on Facebook or Instagram, the more likely you are to run into something you’ll interact with, even if said interaction is genuinely bad. Horwitz notes that in April 2016, Meta analyzed Facebook’s most successful political groups, finding that a third of them “routinely featured content that was racist and conspiracy-minded,” with their growth heavily-driven by Facebook’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” features, algorithmic tools that Facebook used to recommend content. The researcher in question added that “sixty-four percent of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools.

When the researcher took their concerns to Facebook’s “Protect and Care” team, they were told that there was nothing the team could do as “the accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance or good faith.” …

Society’s mechanisms are far too slow and lack the precision to deal with Mark Zuckerberg — a man that acts with a lack of morality that I find putrid — and the complex machine he's used to torture humans for profit and power. And as I’ve mentioned before, Mark Zuckerberg can never be fired. We’re stuck with him forever. He can — and will — run this company into the ground.

While Elon musk is a greedy and churlish executive, and a disgusting, shameful man, Mark Zuckerberg is something entirely different. He is far from stupid, and unlike Musk seemingly feels no compulsion for anyone to like him. He craves numerical dominance, at any cost. He must force human beings to use Facebook, and once they are there, he must make them move in the way wishes and do the things he wishes all so that he can see the number go up.

rekt

this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
148 points (94.0% liked)

Technology

34437 readers
183 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS