I think Zuckerberg understands something that most people on this forum seem to not understand at all.

Facebook, Instagram, etc... these are all only valuable as network effect monopolies.

Investment into AI can torch billions of dollars and still be worthwhile so long as it's done in the service of protecting those monopolies, because LLMs are both intrinsically threatening to Meta's existence and intriniscally valuable for building better recommender systems when platform monopolists like Apple add privacy protections (cutting Meta off from the data spigot that powers its revenue streams).

Once AIs with no wallets outnumber humans on Facebook, Meta has an existential problem. There is no way to avoid the inevitable, the best one can do is embrace it, and 25 billion is nothing compared to losing your platform.

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diamond559 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

So, burn tens of billions to infest your own site w/ bots bc it is somehow "inevitable" anyway? Why not spend that to try and make the user experience better for users with wallets? The investors are clearly fed up w/ burning cash and racking up debt w/ no profits to show for it.

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retrochameleon an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Their financial stability all hinges on having lot's of user engagement. As we've seen, optimizing for engagement tends to be a pretty awful user experience. That doesn't matter to them if the numbers go up that they want to go up.

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LarsDu88 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Your idea of what would "make the user experience better" can be very different from what actually makes the experience more profitable to Meta.

As far as I can tell, the things that actually drives engagement are ragebait political videos, thirst traps, and fake AI generated videos of cats robbing liquor stores.

The investors have rewarded Meta with something like 5x stock increase since abandoning the Metaverse.

It's time to realize that "embrace the stupid" is indeed a viable business strategy and an accurate reflection of our society.

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scrubs 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Man, I hate to admit it but there's an element of truth here.

Sometimes I think there's a perspective from which suppliers (politicians, social media producers) are right thinking their customers as idiots and manipulatble even though customer-driven ought to be the goal.

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LarsDu88 2 days ago | parent [-]

I think Steve Jobs said something along these lines once. That when he was young he thought "the man" was spoonfeeding idiocy to the masses through television to keep them complacent, but as he grew older he realized that the masses wanted stupid content and that rich people simple indulged people's base desires.

	▲	scrubs 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Agree ... there is a heavy element of truth in Job's observation. I sometimes push back like this mentioning Marshal Tucker lyrics: I heard it in a love song. I heard it in a love song. I heard it in a love song. Can't be wrong. No, the whole point is it is wrong: you were told what you wanted to hear. They got their's now where are you? Stop believing the nonsense! Fleetwood Mac's players only love you when they're playin' is the same sentiment. Where oh where is our vaunted common sense? Atticus had it in to kill a mockingbird. Alas Job reminds Atticus is the exception. This more so applies to current American politics ... which has been on my mind of late.
	▲	rhetocj23 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is because put simply, at the core, humans are dumb. We are only intelligent to the extent we acquire knowledge and formalise it to understand the world and make rational decisions to ensure one is better off. GIven that the majority do not possess this trait, the outcome is nothing but inevitable. The mistake Jobs made was assuming that what he thought about the world should ring true for everyone.

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rhetocj23 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The evolution of Meta/FB is quite interesting.

It started off seemingly innocent - the mission of connecting folks. However, there was no money in that.

Where is the money? Content production. What content generates a continuous growing stream of earnings? Content that appeals to the senses of all kinds - including selling a get rich fast dream to girls promoting their OF pages.

What you have is an environemnt that preys and feeds off of consumers who have a lack of discipline with their money and are easy to manipulate - providing a nice ROAS. This is Meta in a nutshell.

Zuck enjoys roll playing a roman emperor - I have no doubt behind the scenes he laughs at his contribution toward the declining tastes, standards and self control of individuals.

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ares623 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Or, the guy who cheats at Catan just needs the constant ego boost to be able to say "yeah I'm kind of a big deal in Next Big Thing"

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xnx 4 days ago | parent [-]

Facebook Libra, Metaverse, etc.

Zuck is having a real hard time admitting to himself that Facebook was just luck.

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bdangubic 4 days ago | parent [-]

Bezos is also having a hard time admitting amazon was just luck and gates is having a hard time admitting windows was just luck and … :)

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LarsDu88 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft were a product of very good timing, but I think we should not undersell how high the barrier to entry for Amazon and Microsoft were in the 90s and 70s specifically.

Amazon basically started at the dawn of the internet, and I actually remember using it in 1997 as a fifth grader. It was incredibly well developed for that very early time period compared to just about everything else.

Microsoft's first product was a BASIC interpreter written on a PDP mini-computer in assembly, and was written so quickly, Paul Allen wrote an entire emulator in assembly for the actual chip they were trying to run their software on. The bootloader for the tape loaded program had to be entered in binary onto the machine they were trying to run the software on. There were about a dozen people in position to create this sort of software in the world at the time and only two who could do it in a 6 week timeframe.

Bill Gates and a lot of these other billionaires are in totally different leagues when it comes to origin story.

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nitwit005 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You see a lot of people start a successful business, and then fail at their next venture. That doesn't mean they're incompetent. Everyone swings and misses sometimes.

But, if there is eventually a patten of failure, either luck was a factor, or perhaps the person themselves has changed.

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LarsDu88 2 days ago | parent [-]

Bill Gates and Paul Allen were virtually the the only high school students in the entire USA programming on microcomputers when they were in high school. Bill Gates mom regularly sat on IBM boards and advised him regularly in Microsoft's early years. Finally, even though Paul Allen wrote a 12,000 line chip emulator in assembly that was essential to Microsoft's existance, Bill totally threw him under the bus when he had to take time off the work to deal with (checks notes) life threatening CANCER.

This is the type of unicorn ruthless capitalism that it takes to become the richest person on the entire planet. Quite honestly, Gates gets less hate nowadays because of his philanthropy and the fact that there are even shittier billionaires.

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nitwit005 2 days ago | parent [-]

I suspect you're responding to the wrong post, as none of the parent posts mention Bill Gates.

	▲	ZeroGravitas 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The post by bdangubic that you replied to mentioned Gates along with Bezos and Zuckerberg.