The problem with facebook is it does not produce any value unlike Microsoft and Apple.
Both Apple and Microsoft's product help people create stuff, get things done, entertain themselves. Facebook does a tiny bit of entertaining and socializing, it is no where near MSFT or AAPL in terms of having a tangible impact on people's lives.
While facebook is huge and everyone knows it, i still don't see facebook the same way i see companies like: Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, ...
Sure they have so much money that they do research, build open source tools etc. but how that company came by and what it is actually doing, is so different to all the others.
I think facebook understand human intra-actions. It understand community. But it lacks understanding complications in relationships. What is lacks is understanding of what is excess of usual social-ness. I dont really think they are helping anyone with their social gaming time-waste-con or their wall post advertisements or lot of means to do completely unproductive stuff.
For Microsoft its simple. They understand customers, and they understand that avg customer never needs over-excellence in product. So, they would never be creative like apple, or tech-savvy like google. Its sad, but the software giant will never be upto the mark when it comes to driving technology and innovations.
I see Facebook as the least ethical, and least useful from a civilization standpoint of all the big tech firms.
Google is driven by the same ad-clicking incentives, but the one-tricky pony has been developing other extremely societally useful tech, like self-driving cars and other moonshot projects.
Apple and Microsoft sell products, they do not make users the product (on the whole). Together they pioneered computing revolutions, and I'm confident history will judge them for making a positive contribution (on the whole).
Amazon is a leviathan whose societal value I find more difficult to classify, but I genuinely derive lots of value from their service personally. It's good for my lifestyle.
Facebook on the other hand, is a waste of my time, mental energy and a drain on society. As an academic, how can you turn your mind to furthering its goals?
Facebook have got the 'Microsoft problem'. Microsoft is 'hated' by many people, especially in the tech community, because of their historical actions, even if many of their actions today are positive.
Facebook suffers the same fate. Anyone who has left Facebook over privacy concerns is unlikely to trust Facebook again.
Once bitten twice shy. Leopard doesn't change it's spots, etc
TL;DR
The problem with Facebook is not, fundamentally, about what it does. The problem is what it is (including how big it is). Replace Zuckerberg with someone else, or replace FB with a different social media company just as big, and you would get essentially the same problem(s).
As an aside, FB's continued success, while having such a bad public image is astonishing.
They obviously have a moat, a very literal network effect. But, FB also has lots of competition (more than google, amzn, & msft anyway) and the type of product that should be substitutable.. with some combination of twitter-wechat-HN-or-whatnot. Social network, seems, at least to me, like something that lends to rising and waning popularity. They're not embedded in businesses or hard to turn off in any way.
It just seems that negative user opinion of FB should be a bigger deal than it would be for amazon of msft.
Facebook has money because it's Facebook. That doesn't mean how the company is run is good, efficient or worthy of emulating. Everyone I know who's worked there says it's not well run. There are constant articles like this proving it is not, and has not been, well run.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but in terms of 'successful' vs 'good', Facebook isn't good, it's awesome.
And GM's decision isn't a big deal. Facebook will definitely try to address problems in terms of ROI. Like I said in other comments, a lot of this has to do with my belief in the management team (the 'bergs).
Facebook—the product is possibly better than the other social networks at doing the basics.
Facebook—the company, is morally bankrupt. Arguably the worst of the bunch. The overly invasive data-collection, sharing of data in questionable ways, repeated lying about.. just about everything... etc.
For me, the product is not appealing enough to compensate for the failings of the companies. If it weren't for the fact that so many friends/ businesses/ family rely on it for communications I would quit it entirely.
Facebook has both good and bad parts; unfortunately, the good part of FB (which helps people connect/stay in touch with each other) doesn't make any money, on the other hand, the bad part that incites jealousy, consumerism and depression is very lucrative.
There is no better company to illustrate the problems of our current economic system than Facebook.
It's not just Facebook that has an unusually bad reputation among the technology crowd -- companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. are widely respected outside of the industry bubble. I remember hearing two ordinary guys talking about Wall Street bankers in Logan Airport, and contrasting their ill-gotten gains with Bill Gates and how he fairly earned his money by "building a better mousetrap."
(Also, your point about entertainment and its production is an interesting one -- the people who built and maintain Facebook can be, in this way, rightly compared to the Beatles, the Baroque composers, and Valmiki).
Do companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Google, etc prioritize their customers over their own interests? Other companies in tech or outside of tech?
I don't think Facebook is some well run charity doing philanthropy - I just don't think they are meaningfully worse than their peers. I do think there is a concerted media campaign to malign Facebook and I think this is where the differential in how people think of Facebook versus these other companies comes from.
It doesn't seem fair to compare Facebook to the other companies you listed, with respect to negative public sentiment. People rightly criticize FB for the numerous scandals, data leaks, and lack of ethics, and as Zuckerberg runs the company, he deserves that criticism.
It's one thing to buy the stock and be bullish, and another to turn a blind eye to the horrors this company has created.
Youtube has it's problems, Google Search is going down the drain, and a ton of other websites run off ad revenue, yes. Those services are not responsible for organizing genocides, providing political analytics companies access to unauthorized data, or running unethical experiments on users to test their impact on the users' mental health.
It's not what Facebook does that the others don't, in my opinion, it's that Facebook does not have services for businesses. They have scant little utility to businesses outside of advertising services to temper their outrages with, so they're given even less of a benefit of the doubt than other tech companies.
Many people find various apps on Facebook to be useful. That makes Facebook a better platform which makes Facebook more valuable. Of course there's the profit that comes with making their product better. Heavens forbid!
Both Apple and Microsoft's product help people create stuff, get things done, entertain themselves. Facebook does a tiny bit of entertaining and socializing, it is no where near MSFT or AAPL in terms of having a tangible impact on people's lives.
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