Despite having almost nothing to show from his enormous spending on AI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down.
  • late_pessimistic@slrpnk.netEnglish
    13 hours

    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.

    • cmbabul@slrpnk.netEnglish
      15 hours

      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

  • bad1080@piefed.socialEnglish
    22 hours

    amazing how many missteps you can make as a ceo these days without consequences…

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      9 hours

      The current Economic structure is designed so that the thing that makes the most Money is having Money and tilted so that the more the Money the bigger the effect.

      This is why, for example, many if not most countries have higher taxes on income from work than on income from dividends.

      It’s not by chance that Social Mobility has collapsed to pretty much non-existence in most of the World, especially the US (were the saying “You can be anything” actually used to be true, but not anymore, not even close) - the Economy is so extremelly rigged for Money to make Money that the dumbest, laziest, most inept rich kid will keep on getting richer their whole lives no matter how much they fuck up.

    • matlag@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      18 hours

      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.

    • Tja@programming.devEnglish
      22 hours

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

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish
    16 hours

    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.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21 hours

    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.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      11 hours

      And Google built a search engine. Everything else they’ve tried to build has failed, other than maybe Gmail which was just a Yahoo Mail / Hotmail clone. Everything else that has been successful has been an acquisition: Maps (Keyhole), YouTube, Android, Google Photos (Picasa), Doubleclick…

      We really need robust antitrust. How many of these acquisitions would be thriving companies in their own right, competing with the big tech giants if the tech giants hadn’t been able to absorb them.

      Google+ is an example of what happens when companies have to compete instead of acquiring other companies. Google poured billions into it and it flopped completely.

  • OldChicoAle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20 hours

    Such a punchable face. He and his wife are evil people. Stains on humanity.

    • Maldaya@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1 day

      Probably only when he bought out Instagram and Whatsapp, that’s all I can think of

      • chaogomu@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1 day

        Those were already popular before he bought them, and then he made them worse.

        • Jax@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          23 hours

          I feel like Oculus improved under them, but yeah - an exception proves the rule.

          • Soggy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            20 hours

            I don’t know if “improved” is as accurate as “accelerated” in that case. Oculus was already doing cool stuff they just needed the resources to really get going, and now Meta is all up in it so the service kinda blows.

        • brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish
          11 hours

          He’s working hard on destroying that one, don’t worry. The quest experience has only gotten worse with every update.

    • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19 hours

      I thought he actually stole the source code, not just the idea.

  • Scrambled Eggs @lazysoci.alEnglish
    11 hours

    How much money did he make? Not if it failed, maybe that didn’t matter. How many got fired because of it

    • oh_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1 day

      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.worldEnglish
        1 day

        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.

        • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          19 hours

          At the time the idea was super innovative and it was fun to see your classmate’s photos.

      • audaxdreik@pawb.socialEnglish
        1 day

        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.comEnglish
          1 day

          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

          • Dookieman12@piefed.socialEnglish
            1 day

            Precisely. I make calculated decisions all the time. But I suck at math. Even “highly calculated” decisions can be very stupid. In fact, some levels of stupidity are only possible with some level of higher education.

        • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1 day

          They’re extremely calculated and he only needs it to pay off once to make everything worth it

          Yes, someone else who’s actually intelligent will do those things but zuckerberg himself is a talentless bastard who won’t be able to execute those ideas.

        • mjr@infosec.pubEnglish
          1 day

          Praying , and encouraging more refugees into the fediverse and threadiverse!

        • sepi@piefed.socialEnglish
          1 day

          The moves are very calculated. But boy, is suckerberg bad at math. This calculation lost them 80 billion.

    • Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15 hours

      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.

  • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
    19 hours

    It wont matter four shits to him, its all just playthings

  • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19 hours

    I keep asking myself why he’s still there. Even Bezos retired at this point.

    • jrs100000@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15 hours

      The only way to get him out of the CEO chair is for him to retire or die. He never gave up voting control during the IPO and controls more than 50% of the vote.