Four Theories of Meta ⇥ infinitescroll.us

Jeremiah Johnson, founder of the Center for New Liberalism, writing at his blog Infinite Scroll:

The third theory of Meta doesn’t describe the company as a laughable failure or a great success. This theory says that focusing on business results is beside the point when Meta’s creating something genuinely dark and sinister, something that perverts human nature and takes advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I’m no expert in moral philosophy and ethics. But I feel pretty comfortable using the word evil to describe a company that impersonates real people without their permission in order to build AI sex bots that engage in sexual fantasies with children and lure senior citizens to their deaths.

The fourth theory of Meta is somehow even darker than the third.

As you can probably see, the theories get more cynical and, frankly, a touch conspiratorial. I am a firm believer in a modified version of Johnson’s first theory, which is that Meta is uncool and cringeworthy. That is not wrong, but I think it goes much farther. It is a deeply unfocused and uninteresting company. It jumps from one idea to another but, because it is still so dependent on ad revenue, everything must feed that machine. And personalized advertising is a fundamentally dull and kind of dirty thing no matter how much Meta wants to gussy it up in its marketing materials. That is not enough for Mark Zuckerberg, who is not hosting hour-plus livestreams before cheering crowds to show off ads. That would be a boring time for everyone. He wants the glory of hardware and platforms, but neither one is a meaningful part of what Meta actually does.