• Tja@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      It’s what happens when you own a controlling share of the company. You can freely run it into the ground.

    • matlag@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Tells you a lot about success and merit. He has absolutely no fucking clue what’s going to be successful and what won’t. He was just super lucky with Facebook.

      The reason he’s a billionaire is because the system is totally fucked up. He’s a bug, not a feature.

    • oh_@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Exactly. Zuck stole the original idea to Facebook. Then bought a ton of companies after that for innovation. He has no good ideas of his own, when he does think of stuff, they are wild big company pivots that fail.

      • rozodru@piefed.world
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        1 month ago

        Zuck has never had an original idea in his head, ever. His initial claim to fame, prior to FB, at least on college campus’ was making a “hot or not” clone utilizing photos from various Harvard facebooks. Every idea since then has been someone elses or he’s tried to take the Apple approach of “let someone else do it first, then we improve on it” except he has never been able to nail down the second part. The only reason FB became successful was the initial exclusivity and it filled the gap of a post 20-something myspace/ICQ/AOL IM world.

      • audaxdreik@pawb.social
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        1 month ago

        I absolutely agree with you but I think that take is a bit short-sighted and undercuts just how evil this stuff is.

        Tom Nicholas did a Youtube video on the metaverse a while back (oh my god it was 4 years ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM00M-dRMBk) and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. The pivot towards VR was an attempt to get even deeper ahold of our attention and what better way to do that than with goggles that are constantly in front of our eyes? The same with AI as it attempts to insert itself as a substrate layer of all technologies, and again with the smart glasses.

        It’s easy to dismiss these efforts as hilariously misguided but they’re not. They’re extremely calculated and he only needs it to pay off once to make everything worth it, and I think there are others that realize this as well. We just gotta keep praying that these efforts burn him out before they strike it big. I’m neither a praying nor gambling man, but praying is all we got right now to stand in his way and I wouldn’t put money on the certainty of Facebook’s failures …

        • protist@retrofed.com
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          1 month ago

          It’s easy to dismiss these efforts as hilariously misguided but they’re not. They’re extremely calculated and he only needs it to pay off once to make everything worth it

          Fortunately there seems to be a limit as far as what people are willing to tolerate. While I agree these moves are extremely calculated, they’re being calculated by people who are almost completely disconnected from reality and whose egos cloud their judgment at every turn

    • Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I have to admit, I did wonder what his vr would look like and then he showed off something that looked like an early alpha release of a cheap second life clone in a giant global presentation, hilariously funny.

    • cmbabul@slrpnk.net
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      1 month ago

      Which does piss me off, BUT the world would be better if we took Meta, Reddit, Twitter, and all the other social media giants and gave them the Ole Yeller treatment

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Outside of Facebook what has he been responsible for that didn’t blow up in his face? The only other things Meta has that aren’t thus far miserable failures are Instagram and Whatsapp, both of which they bought.

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    His is such a bad company but so poorly run by its dictator. He can’t be ousted as he holds majority shares. It’d be funny as hell if it wasn’t facilitating the progression of the end of our world. Dumping billions that could be used to feed and support people in need. Instead we got the metaverse and datacenters on every corner.

    • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Right? Imagine if all of the money spent “building out” the metaverse had been invested in improving infrastructure in real life…

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    1 month ago

    At least he didn’t have to spend all that money on higher salaries. How you boys liking the rocket game? I’m thinking about blowing a few dozen billion on that, just as a hobby. Not trying to make money off it.

  • dil@piefed.zip
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    1 month ago

    They are automatically putting ppls pictures in image to video ai without permission and advertising it back to them

  • late_pessimistic@slrpnk.net
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    1 month ago

    Becoming a billionaire really does seem to get to people’s heads, the younger the billionaire the worse.

    Zuck is being completely reckless, burning through hundreds of billions of dollars hopping on every futuristic idea, and doesn’t listen to anyone’s fair criticism anymore.

    He probably even thinks he is some great visionary and everyone else is holding him back, and that’s why they work for him, not the opposite.

    In a sane socioeconomic system we wouldn’t people get this rich and powerful for their own good, especially young people.

  • protist@retrofed.com
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    1 month ago

    This video on how much of the debt these companies hold is hidden from their balance sheets is chilling. According to this, Meta “officially” owes $151B, but in reality has debt obligations closer to $572B.

    That’s over 40% of Meta’s entire market capitalization, and they’re rapidly adding to that debt. Meta’s existing properties are losing users, and there’s just no fucking way they’ll be able to pay back this debt in the long term, because they have zero hope of deriving income from all this data center investment. At some point, BlackRock and the other private equity firms Meta owes money to are going to come looking for blood

    • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I guess they’re waiting for Peter Thiel to save them, again, when he turns the data centers into data lakes for palantir and we go full surveillance state. I do believe there is some end game these tech billionaires believe is on the horizon that we aren’t really privy to, it’s just a matter of them making it come to fruition before reality crashes down on their heads. Bankrupting them faster through boycotts is a good way the average person can help speed up reality and slow down their progress.

      • Aqivex@fedinsfw.app
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        1 month ago

        Ugh. I’m so sorry and angry every time I think on this…

        …Full surveillance state. I do believe there is some end game these tech…on the horizon…matter of them making it come to fruition before reality crashes down on their heads

        We should bankrupt them faster because it’s what they deserve, and the progress needs to be slowed at all costs.

        But the reasons why all this is unfolding? Very clear to see, and you even referenced them without really pausing to consider.

        Fascism isn’t stupider this time around (in so far as being beyond the already astronomical stupidity required to believe it’s a solution to fucking anything).

        It’s desperate. They didn’t pivot away from their little spaceship dreams and into AI because it’s more profitable. They don’t care to come ahead in an economically sound world.

        I’m sorry. Time has ran out on the climate and our biosphere, as far as them retaining the properties that allowed us the ‘Modern World’.

        There is no longer an avenue that averts widespread desolation, and they’ve known it all along because they don’t actually all ignore scientific consensus, they just pay for the masses to ignore it.

        It’s going to be a gnarly and awful time, but humans aren’t wired to just give up and die.

        Hence the total surveillance state. Hence the mass casual cruelty with mass deaths. Hence the persecution of anyone who might oppose or see through it.

        The world as we know it will be reduced to ashes, in our lifetimes, and we’ll have to scramble to do whatever our species will do just to barely persist in some form, as that is just what we do.

        They dream of a techno feudalist dreamscape where each little Dragon has their manageable fiefdom composed of a diminished and controllable populace to continue to carry out their self-aggrandizing whims. They can burn all of the economy now, because they’re trying to trade it for straight power.

        Joke’s on them, they’ll die by the masses too, and those that don’t, will die by the masses. It’s not that hard for thousands of angry and with nothing to lose people to go after them.

        Their dream of Autonomous Weapon guardians is as laughable as the rest of the stupidity they’ve attempted and failed at throughout the years: It will be as imperfect a solution to what they’re attempting as anything else they’ve ever done.

        But we collectively let them have control of the playground while it was fresh and clean, so now we gotta deal with their bullshit king of the hill fantasies and the results of their evil stupidity.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I do believe there is some end game these tech billionaires believe is on the horizon

        I think it’s just a variant of the standard republican “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”. They think financial wealth is something they can just create out of thin air using AI (the way that government creates wealth out of thin air by printing money, allegedly), so as long as they acquire the data centers to fuel it, by whatever means necessary, they’ll be all right in the end.

    • TeaWithDani@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      They are all going into debt over datacenters. Google issued new shares… how? why? They all make so much money and still they can’t cashflow this expansion.

      What blood will there be to take?

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It’s all saturated and nobody really needs anything new anymore. There’s nowhere to go. We should expect to see some of these firms suddenly collapse like Silicon Valley Bank did.

        • TeaWithDani@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Cynically though… they’ve been peddling nothing for two decades now. Big data, the cloud, SAAS, web 3.0, metaverse, nfts, llms, there’s always a new nothing born.

          • stoly@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I think they supports my point. There really is no need for a Web 3.0. Progress for the simple sake of progress is really just marketing a money grab.