
Will Facebook's Grownups Please Stand Up - petethomas
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/money/companies/will-facebooks-grownups-please-stand-up/ar-BBPYUGI
======
thisisit
Facebook and grownups in the same sentence? Given how long Zuckerberg and
Sandberg have been deflecting questions on Russian ads etc, it is not going to
happen. Not until Facebook share suffers significant damage.

While people have been dropping out of Facebook, IMO it has been more due to
rise of instagrame etc and less about Facebook's behavior. So, nothing is
gonna change. At least in the short term.

------
sandworm101
The _Wall Street_ journal is calling for adults within facebook to make a
stand? Talk to the shareholders. They have the only real power. Get them to
"stand up" by either demanding new leadership or dropping the stock.

~~~
i_am_nomad
Do Facebook shareholders actually have any power, though?

~~~
sandworm101
By dropping the stock, yes they have leverage against facebook. The stock
price matters to mr z more than anything.

------
scurvy
Meh. Just another bash Facebook rant. When are we going to ask the grownups at
Goldman Sachs to stand up? Chevron? Dow Chemical? Dupont?

And on and on. There are no morals in corporate America, only quarterly and
year end bonuses. Any talk otherwise is delusional hanging on to a mythical
era of corporate responsibility that has never actually existed.

~~~
ex3xu
> Any talk otherwise is delusional hanging on to a mythical era of corporate
> responsibility that has never actually existed.

While I think this is correct in the most general sense -- examples throughout
history of the old consolidative robber barons, GE destroying the streetcar
for its own benefit, etc -- one thing that has changed in the last 30-40 years
is the change in mentality and priorities of the average shareholder and the
average corporation. John Kay gives an example in his book, Other People's
Money, comparing the change in chemical company ICI's annual shareholder
reports:

1987: ICI aims to be the world's leading chemical company servicing customers
internationally through the innovative and responsible application of
chemistry and related science... Through achievement of our aim, we will
enhance the wealth and well-being of our shareholders, our employees, our
customers, and the communities which we serve and in which we operate.

1994: Our objective is to maximise value for our shareholders by focusing on
businesses where we have market leadership, a technological edge and world
competitive cost base.

Kay goes on to attribute the change in the rise of financialisation and
deregulation in the 80s and 90s, as well as the wide adoption of technically
rigorous but conceptually questionable financial economics innovations like
the efficient market hypothesis, Harry Markowitz model, Black/Scholes for
pricing derivatives, and Ramsey/Savage's subjective utility. He also cites the
rise of "I'll be gone, you'll be gone" trading culture on Wall Street,
explaining traders are incentivized only to pad their own bonuses with no
regard for the bigger financial picture.

It may be that there was no mythical corporate responsibility at the top
level, but I think it's important to understand that there are underlying
structural changes that have spread the poison of financialization to the
point where even good actors in corporate America are now incentivized to
behave in ways that don't support the public interest. And in my view, the
most appalling changed, is the modern inability for muckraking journalists to
create public outcry and political will to regulate the worst of the bad
actors.

