I think that when you put yourself in the mindset of writing something with the intent of facilitating discussion you're at times drawn toward making inferior content to satisfy an imaginary person (or group of people). Some people are good at it! I don't really get into it, as everything I write is personally-driven.
I'd say the latter. Though I do try and keep it polite when talking to people about my work. I think that more people should be more willing to talk about the powers that be and the way they're acting toward their users.
Indeed - well, thank you for the piece. Just like the Google Search one it’s clear that plenty of work has gone into digging through corporate docs and giving them some much needed daylight!
I think that we have some of the best investigative reporters in the world working in tech right now, but insufficient context behind things. I am obviously an opinion writer, and thus a little biased, but I think there is something very useful about saying "here's what I found and why I'm upset about it" with research backing it up.
Placing so much blame on individuals like Zuck and Sandberg is already a stretch. Though leaders have a huge influence, and should bear the responsibility, this piece tries to make it seem like it is those individuals that caused the perceived problems. It even implies that they had "bad" motivations, which is really reaching. Describing the stock classes, the article implies an enormous amount of detailed control on company behavior via stock ownership, which is generally not the case at any large company. Corporate boards don't generally get into features and implementations and stick to strategy. The argument is further undermined by what seems like some sort of personal vendetta from the author.
You are trying to suggest that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t have a detailed knowledge and control over core Meta features, nor knowledge of the societal damage they can do?
CEO sets the culture of a company, the how to get to the generic make money target. They are not the best engineer, sales or accountant.
They have a massive influence on how those are done on across dimensions like ethics, risk, legal
The author seems to have deep dislike for Facebook, and specific executives, like Zuck and Sanberg. This historical interpretation would be stronger without all that emotion. Edit: I'm guessing you are the author?
I get it! But at the same time, this is opinion work - and also, what would this look like without the emotion? A bone-dry analysis of the text? Would it say "this is bad"? Not arguing at all, there're all kinds of valid analyses to be made, I just don't know how else I'd pull this off.
I like the recent work you've been doing Ed, but I think stylistically you can improve by seeing the truth in some of these criticisms. Your analysis can use a stronger systemic account of both the external cultural and market forces at work and even more so of the internal dynamics within large firms. It can also be more cutting by being concise --- avoid repeating yourself and non-substantive elaboration, especially in an emotional tone, which can be fatiguing. This will help you keep me as an audience member.
> This historical interpretation would be stronger without all that emotion.
I'm not sure I agree. If you believe something is destroying civil society, you're going to have a strong emotional reaction. That should come through when you write about it. Otherwise readers won't get the full impact of what you're trying to say.
Honestly, I found it super interesting and the tone worked for me. It’s a comprehensive summary of the poison that is engagement and metrics above all else development.
But I will say the tone makes me stop short of sending this to my parents, who actually need to be swayed (whereas I don’t).
So if your goal is to be interesting and informative to people who are already on your side, you did well. That’s a worthy enough goal imo.
I am directly citing emails revealed in discovery as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust suit against Google. They're all linked in there too! And you can even see who was CC'd. It's a little confusing because some of them are part of one big, fat thread that you have to read from the bottom up.
ed i love you but i hate those popup ads on your blog. i already subscribe and just can't be bothered to go through a three step process involving an email to log in each time
hi! I'm the author of the newsletter. I have run ads for this newsletter on one place (Garbage Day, a tech newsletter). In the last week Facebook has sent me 261 visitors. What're you talking about?
