
Facebook failing, Zuckerberg and Sandberg absent: commentary - Jerry2
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/18/facebook-failing-zuckerberg-and-sandberg-absent-commentary.html
======
wand3r
Facebook is facing hurdles in a lot of arenas but this article is a hit piece
that is pretty fluff and misses the big picture.

I really dislike facebook for what its worth, but even with the current issues
I dont expect it to be more than a speedbump. The author says that it was a
misstep to help with the Trump advert campaign. That is just letting politics
blind you, helping Trump and being "friendly" to that administration is likely
good for business.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Building a reputation of helping both sides of major political campaigns and
capturing a slice of their crazy spending seems completely sensible.

One thing that could become a mis-step though is if their staff supporting the
Trump campaign knew enough from seeing their advertising submissions to
realise the sort of data they must hold on their users.

We know from the Guardian report that Facebook have security protocols that
trigger when you eg. download 50m user profiles as an app, and the response
given was that it was academic. So Facebook should have been suspicious, if
the campaign were running adverts in a way that showed a possession of that
sort of data and nobody could explain where it came from. Of course, maybe
Facebook's staff embedded in the campaign were kept in the dark and Cambridge
Analytica managed those targeted ads themselves.

If they knew, and let it slide, and let senior Facebook leadership tell
politicians that CA had no data though, that could be a huge mis-step.

According to the women who ran project Alamo, Cambridge Analytica were in
house - and the Facebook etc. Representatives were too.
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-
digital-g...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-digital-guru-
who-helped-donald-trump-to-the-presidency)

------
GreeniFi
This: “There's no outside attacker bringing Facebook down. It's a circular
firing squad that stems from the company's fundamental business model of
collecting data from users, and using that data to sell targeted ads.”

It always was the corporate equivalent of Harvey Weinstein, and now seeing its
#metoo moment. The world will be a better place without Facebook.

------
hux_
The amount of global bullshit they have enabled in so many spheres of social
life is going to take generations to repair.

Can't wait for heads to roll at Facebook/Twitter/YouTube. And they will. It's
high time.

~~~
aylmao
It doesn't cease to amaze me how a few years ago social media was the beacon
of democracy, back when they were part a wave of political revolution in the
Arab world.

But now the US has another bad election (IMO not as bad as the one that landed
Bush as far as elections go, though which president is worse is up for
debate), and social media is trash that have just enabled "global bullshit".

USA, if your population is largely gullible consumers taught to rely on their
"feelings" and be egotistic, proud patriots instead of critical thinkers,
that's your own fault. Social media, if anything, has been a net positive as
far as politics go in my country.

~~~
thousandautumns
> It doesn't cease to amaze me how a few years ago social media was the beacon
> of democracy, back when they were part a wave of political revolution in the
> Arab world

Almost all of those revolutions failed or dissipated. Similar "social media
driven" revolutions in the US, like Occupy Wall Street also died with a
whimper. The enabling power of social media has always been greatly overrated.
The effect of social media, and in particular Facebook, has largely been a net
negative.

~~~
jpster
I find it surprising how much people underestimate the long-term impact of
Occupy. Now when people say “the 1%”, everyone knows what they are talking
about. The most popular Democrats, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would
not be where they are if OWS had not lain some groundwork ahead of time by
introducing wealth and income inequality as mainstream conversation topics.
And maybe they will have a successful presidential run in the future.

------
ankushnarula
I used to share a lot on Facebook - with intricate control over privacy of my
posts using Friend Lists. Over time my usage decreased until I finally cleared
out my profile, likes, activity, apps, friends, and devices. Now I only use it
in a separate desktop browser once every few weeks as a means to check the
profiles of family and close friends.

I harbor no resentment towards Facebook because they've been largely
transparent via their terms of service, privacy policy, and developer API.
Nobody forced me to use it. In the end, I am responsible for sharing my own
information, not Facebook.

------
sytelus
I can’t help but notice that some entity with deep pockets is leading this
entire media war against Facebook. Articles like this don’t write themselves.
These are classic zero information articles that keeps popping up
systematically as if someone is running media puppet. There were couple of
guys going out on limb in to conferences and media strongly making a case for
“regulations”. Guys like those don’t do it for free to travel all over and
keep making same points over and over while getting expensive media minutes.

Question is who is pulling all these strings and why?

~~~
ipsum2
I don't know if there's a larger conspiracy, but media companies are probably
retaliating against news feed changes. After Facebook rolled out their news
feed change, news media have gotten fewer clicks and less money.

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/28/how-publishers-will-
surviv...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/28/how-publishers-will-survive-
facebooks-newsfeed-change/)

[https://digiday.com/media/facebook-news-feed-changes-will-
im...](https://digiday.com/media/facebook-news-feed-changes-will-impact-
publishers-branded-content-revenue/)

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Letter-to-Mark-
Zuck...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Letter-to-Mark-Zuckerberg-
Facebook-News-Feed-12495018.php)

------
btown
> Facebook users are slowly learning that almost anybody can use Facebook to
> collect detailed information about them, and that — at least some of the
> time — Facebook cannot control where this information flows, or how it is
> used. Using Facebook is like writing your life story down on a piece of
> paper, then taping it to a lamppost.

> For the time being, advertisers are grumbling about Facebook and warning
> their clients to stay away from certain ad products, but they're still
> putting their money there — with an audience over 2 billion and some of the
> most accurate ad targeting available, Facebook is still impossible to
> ignore. But if usage continues to decline, advertisers will start eventually
> follow.

Unless the definition of "failing" has changed drastically, this is clickbait.

There is no evidence of a lack of on-the-ground leadership; the argument seems
primarily based on divestment by executives. And one of the two anecdotes used
to justify the "trend" that Facebook's executives are selling stocks faster
than normal for technology leaders was Dorsey's purchase of a mere $9.5
million of stock last year (a lot of money, but two orders of magnitude less
than the ones in the article and hardly a comp).

There may be reasons to be worried about Facebook's long-term viability, but
this article makes a poor case for someone to be worried.

~~~
fancyfacebook
I think it's more of the long term pattern of the leadership of facebook:
anytime things get difficult they just sort of teflon their way through it and
ignore everyone. Remember the Facebook Beacon fiasco? That was the first
scandal in dozens, all following a pretty similar narrative.

In that sense, yes I would say leadership has been absent or maybe
unaccountable is a better word.

------
luminati
My general impressions are that Mark Zuckerberg has just gotten really bored
of running the company.

Bit of a clickbait title, but considering how much bad press they've been
getting since the last elections, I would expect the CEO to be front and
center of it.

Facebook may not be failing but it's glory days are way past (and have not
really expanded beyond the social networking sphere - with probably Oculus
their only expansion beyond their core focus - unlike say Google/Alphabet).

But one thing that truly baffles me is Comrade Mark's incessant courting
(bordering on being a puppy dog) of Emperor for Life, Xi. (HN user
seanmcdirmid in a previous thread said that he could potentially be a bit of a
closeted sinophile)

1\. He asks Xi to name his child

[https://mashable.com/2017/09/18/zuckerberg-chinese-
president...](https://mashable.com/2017/09/18/zuckerberg-chinese-president-
baby-names/)

2\. He then plugs Xi's book

[https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-
Languag...](https://www.amazon.com/Xi-Jinping-Governance-English-
Language/dp/1602204098/) Absolutely no idea how the media has not caught this,
ever since Xi declared himself President for life.

~~~
jboles
After the whole FB Basics thing (free access to “Facebook-approved” internet)
that India rightly told him to go shove, China is his shot at a consolation
prize.

------
mkagenius
> Facebook has been deflecting stories about how its platform was used during
> the 2016 presidential election.

Serious question: on what grounds can a Facebook page be banned? Just because
it was “cute cats” page a while ago Andreas suddenly it became a pro-trump or
pro-Hillary page?

------
throwaway84742
Such an obvious hatchet job. You can tell the news media companies are on
their last legs when they can’t even be bothered to hire quality people who
can FUD the market with a modicum of nuance.

------
ArmandGrillet
> He addresses some of these issues on personal Facebook posts, but seldom
> talks to the press about them. Last year, he spent most of the year doing
> photo ops with people around America, but did not show up when Congress
> asked questions about how the Russians used Facebook to influence the 2016
> election.

So he is not absent and communicating directly to users.

> This year, he announced his annual personal challenge would be fixing
> Facebook — in other words, doing his job as the CEO of a publicly traded
> company worth more than $500 billion. In past years, he's taught himself
> Mandarin and hunted his own food.

The job of a CEO is to keep the shareholders happy (which has always been the
case since IPO AFAIK), not to fix it. I stopped reading at this paragraph,
Zuck is not perfect but his personal challenges are impressives and dismissing
them like that is not what I consider journalism.

His statement earlier this year regarding what he'll do to fix FB in 2018 is
gonna be interesting, his last posts have shown a work in progress and we can
expect a post-mortem in December that wil be more important than this
clickbait article.

