In a just world, meta wouldn't exist like this. I fail to see any benefit in a company like this. I can't think of a single useful product or advancement they've made besides creating the page that makes grandma go insane and young people everywhere to hate themselves.

They're pointedly worse than most other social media. Even twitter doesn't really pretend they're anything but a place to say slurs now that "comedy is legal".

Meta feels so much more nefarious due to how 99% of their business is quiet deals with data brokers and ad buyers, and they just smile and nod as if they make anything positive at all. It feels like a company that makes most of it's money selling heroin, but they have a cute storefront so they get a pass.

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bdcravens an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> I can't think of a single useful product or advancement

> They're pointedly worse than most other social media.

I agree that there's a lot wrong, but both Marketplace and Groups are actually pretty valuable and useful. To say that Facebook is just a feed of memes and politics is reductive.

	▲	MSFT_Edging 18 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Marketplace is a far worse replacement for Craigslist in the North American market. It hides what you're searching for, ignores your distance filters, and fills your results with items that are essentially ebay cross-listings. The pictures are extremely compressed so you're unable to validate the item from pictures before reaching out. The only benefit is many people already have a facebook account, but now I'm unable to delete my facebook account because marketplace is the predominant classified sales channel in most areas. It was a EEE style effort to collect more data on people. The past few years there have been persistent spam campaigns against Craigslist in various areas of the for-sale classifieds. It wouldn't surprise me if meta was behind it. Groups are in a similar vein. They've put a log-in barrier on various communities, lowering the barrier to entry tech-wise, but forcing people into their ecosystem when forums have existed for years. These are bad services. They gain traction due to facebook's other malicious actions.
	▲	marricks 11 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Marketplace and Groups are actually pretty valuable and usefu Craigslist created a new way to sell things and built up to what it is (was?) on being usable, having enough trust, and not fucking it up. Literally anyone could replicate that and add a shiny UI to rival it if they had a giant social network to support it. Hyperbolic analogy: it's like pinning a medal to the guy who invented the roadside billboard and completely passing over the dude who actually invented the car. In the long run the only innovating Facebook is going to do over Craigslist is monetization, and that just sucks for users.

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cindyllm 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

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