Mark Zuckerberg's vision for humanity is terrifying(sfgate.com)
sfgate.com
Mark Zuckerberg's vision for humanity is terrifying
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/mark-zuckerberg-never-more-dangerous-20819500.php
34 comments
It is addiction media, or dopamine hacking media.
Meta's recent earnings report was great partially because AI was used to boost engagement on ads by 5% to 10%, which was enough to get investors on board for the massive capex. ("Datacenters the size of Manhattan" as per Zuckerberg).
Datacenters the size of Manhattan and dedicated nuclear power plants, for an 8.5% boost in advertising engagement. The world is in a very sad state in some respects. The ideal end state of this optimization process is quite literally zombie consumers. I would think that heading off outcomes like this is partly why we create rules and guardrails as a society, but despite the occasional pushback, I do think that for now we are generally embracing this dystopia. I'm a positive person and think AI is incredible and will do many great things, but Meta's earnings report got to me.
Meta's recent earnings report was great partially because AI was used to boost engagement on ads by 5% to 10%, which was enough to get investors on board for the massive capex. ("Datacenters the size of Manhattan" as per Zuckerberg).
Datacenters the size of Manhattan and dedicated nuclear power plants, for an 8.5% boost in advertising engagement. The world is in a very sad state in some respects. The ideal end state of this optimization process is quite literally zombie consumers. I would think that heading off outcomes like this is partly why we create rules and guardrails as a society, but despite the occasional pushback, I do think that for now we are generally embracing this dystopia. I'm a positive person and think AI is incredible and will do many great things, but Meta's earnings report got to me.
I realize this is a dumb question, but: all of these advertising supported business must be downstream of the “real economy” (of products and goods) in some way. After all, for ad revenue to rise continuously it must be the case that product and service companies are continuously spending more on advertising. And yet in the stock market, nearly all growth comes from these ad-supported companies and earnings elsewhere don’t increase by as much. How sustainable is this?
A lot of growth comes from automatic contributions to 401k and other such structures. So if people are buying the index, reasonable, but nvda alone makes up 5% the index by weight these days, guess what stock gets an outsized amount of buying irrespective of actual performance.
Ad spending is definitely cyclical, and it's arguable there is complacency on that front.
That said, it wasn't that long ago where the space had a total washout (2022), and despite markets being relatively richly valued, the mega-cap ad companies have only gotten a strong bid more recently (institutional money has actually been under-exposed to the large tech names ex-NVIDIA based on historical look back). Google was actually near value territory until recently.
It's hard to predict how sustainable at all is though. One of the big factors is that these companies had a lot of intangible value that they could pull from. Ex: Meta could monetize Whatsapp, Google could actually ban YouTube ad-blockers (hey, they finally forced me to subscribe), and these companies also have some pricing power to harvest if needed. Then there is a layoff angle, which may not be great for their long-term success, but they have the power to lighten up and route massive buybacks if they ever want to focus on stock price (see META post 2022).
The other poster commenting about the sheer size of these companies is right too. The passive investing complex drives ever more money into ever bigger companies. Then you have trend following money (and most investors are trend following to some degree) reinforce those flows, and it creates a virtuous cycle ever upwards. On the sustainability question, it does look like quite a self perpetuating cycle but there's the caveat that these flows can reverse. If money were to flow out of US markets on net, such as the mega sell off earlier this year with 7% down days, then the piper is paid.
So to break it down, it's sustainable as long as American financial exceptionalism remains strong, and as long as these companies don't exhaust the levers that they can pull. Nonetheless, advertising is cyclical, and sometime in the future, you can guarantee that there will be another cycle of pessimism combined with weaker earnings (both of which combined to cause a major earnings contraction in a sector). When that happens, well that's not so easy to predict. In the meantime, these companies have pretty huge cash flows.
That said, it wasn't that long ago where the space had a total washout (2022), and despite markets being relatively richly valued, the mega-cap ad companies have only gotten a strong bid more recently (institutional money has actually been under-exposed to the large tech names ex-NVIDIA based on historical look back). Google was actually near value territory until recently.
It's hard to predict how sustainable at all is though. One of the big factors is that these companies had a lot of intangible value that they could pull from. Ex: Meta could monetize Whatsapp, Google could actually ban YouTube ad-blockers (hey, they finally forced me to subscribe), and these companies also have some pricing power to harvest if needed. Then there is a layoff angle, which may not be great for their long-term success, but they have the power to lighten up and route massive buybacks if they ever want to focus on stock price (see META post 2022).
The other poster commenting about the sheer size of these companies is right too. The passive investing complex drives ever more money into ever bigger companies. Then you have trend following money (and most investors are trend following to some degree) reinforce those flows, and it creates a virtuous cycle ever upwards. On the sustainability question, it does look like quite a self perpetuating cycle but there's the caveat that these flows can reverse. If money were to flow out of US markets on net, such as the mega sell off earlier this year with 7% down days, then the piper is paid.
So to break it down, it's sustainable as long as American financial exceptionalism remains strong, and as long as these companies don't exhaust the levers that they can pull. Nonetheless, advertising is cyclical, and sometime in the future, you can guarantee that there will be another cycle of pessimism combined with weaker earnings (both of which combined to cause a major earnings contraction in a sector). When that happens, well that's not so easy to predict. In the meantime, these companies have pretty huge cash flows.
Yes. I do genuinely think AI can be amazing and I quit my job to build something that I hope will be a positive use case of AI
But these stats are troubling
Not to mention a backlash is brewing amongst people who both don't want to use AI and don't want their world to change so quickly.
But these stats are troubling
Not to mention a backlash is brewing amongst people who both don't want to use AI and don't want their world to change so quickly.
Well I think, to be fair, only about 7% of the default Facebook feed is your friend's (or subscribed-groups') content. They've shoved a lot of other stuff in there. So its kind of weird that they turn around and say, "Nope, people aren't interested in their friends content anymore"
Indeed. I dont use social media, so grain of salt and all that, but social media feels more like endless amateur TV shared socially.
The irony is that Zuck is trying to solve problems created by his own apps.
Make a social isolation app and attention sink, sell virtual friends to fill the void.
The best advice is to delete your Meta accounts and meet people in real life.
Make a social isolation app and attention sink, sell virtual friends to fill the void.
The best advice is to delete your Meta accounts and meet people in real life.
Staying off of social media is the best idea ever, followed by not watching TV/movies, not reading the news, and staying off of... oh, I guess I’m on HN.
I got off instagram after the great capitulation and it’s done wonders for my mental health. The hardest part was accepting the fact that I’ll probably never interact with the couple hundred acquaintances I’ve met over the last 10 years or so ever again.
If the social media app is optimized for profit, and the owner measures and does not care about the harm to your health and the health of society if it even slightly impacts profit, do not use it.
deleting fb and instagram, essentially when I was a teenager (which I saw early on was contributing to my depression) was best decision I every made. I moved to a small town from the big city and learned to socialize with people. Coming back old friends comment of how outgoing and easy it is for me to connect with people.
I still don't understand how the general public trusts anything Mark says. Investors, I understand, they only care about money, and perhaps rightfully so. But the community, why?
Where does the general public trust him? The general public uses Facebook to keep in touch with people or look at cat videos - and Facebook of course does whatever Mark wants. But I don't see how any trust between him and his users is involved.
I still don't understand how the general public trusts anything the media says or what the general public says...
Critical thinking is not what most of the population is taught.
Meta being Meta is nothing surprising. Why do people even bother using Instagram and Facebook?
Critical thinking is not what most of the population is taught.
Meta being Meta is nothing surprising. Why do people even bother using Instagram and Facebook?
Zuckerberg doesn't think he should be trusted. He thinks Meta users are dumb fucks for trusting him:
https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/
Public opinion doesn’t matter anymore, thats why billionaires like him are building doomsday bunkers on remote islands.
Their plan is to watch the world burn.
Their plan is to watch the world burn.
He just doesn't seem particularly untrustworthy. I don't agree with his vision for humanity, but given the amount of money he's tossing at AI researchers, it seems clear that he genuinely believes it and is genuinely pursuing it.
I think the OP meant the general public trusting him with our data. Rather than some promises he made to some investors.
Mark Zuckerberg is terrifying.
This is the problem with increased wealth disparity. We're all subject to the whims and fleeting thoughts of the top 20 billionaires. If Mark Z has an idea about social media, well, he controls 80% or something of social media. Even if his idea is terrible, we have no alternatives to switch to, we just have to wait out the irrationality.
Mark became an expert at catering to investors' ears to pump the stock: buybacks, dividends, metaverse, AI...
Its the only job hes ever had.
Hes a professional sociopath whose entire existence revolves around building the most advanced social engineering platform that has ever existed.
World would be a better place if he drowned the next time he went surfing at his private beach.
Hes a professional sociopath whose entire existence revolves around building the most advanced social engineering platform that has ever existed.
World would be a better place if he drowned the next time he went surfing at his private beach.
Mark Zuckerberg -> Kingsman's Richmond Valentine
Jeff Bezos -> Austin Power's Dr. Evil
Elon Musk -> The 5th Element's Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg>Deny cookies
>Deny signups
>Notification blocked.
>Scroll down 2 screens consisting or 1.7 screens worth of ads.
>The ad-video I scrolled past becomes a sticky party of the header and consumes 30% of the screen real estate. Despite this a new static ad enters my screen before the last one is out of it.
Oh yeah it's totally Zucks vision that is the horror here.
>Deny signups
>Notification blocked.
>Scroll down 2 screens consisting or 1.7 screens worth of ads.
>The ad-video I scrolled past becomes a sticky party of the header and consumes 30% of the screen real estate. Despite this a new static ad enters my screen before the last one is out of it.
Oh yeah it's totally Zucks vision that is the horror here.
That's why I will never give up my adblocker. And I never make exceptions.. That page loaded cleanly for me.
Then stop listening to him?
I hope the implication here isn’t that if you ignore extremely powerful people, they can’t affect your life.
"Today, only a fraction of time spent on Meta’s services – 7% on Instagram, 17% on Facebook – involves consuming content from online “friends” (“friend sharing”). A majority of time spent on both apps is watching videos, increasingly short-form videos that are “unconnected” – i.e., not from a friend or followed account – and recommended by AI-powered algorithms Meta developed as a direct competitive response to TikTok’s rise, which stalled Meta’s growth"
"Social" media is just media now.