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Speaker 1: All Zone Media. Hello, welcome to Better Offline. I'm your

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Speaker 1: host ed ze Trunk. Last episode, I walked you through

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Speaker 1: how Mark Zuckerberg and his top people intentionally ruined Facebook

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Speaker 1: and have been doing the same thing with Instagram. Which

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Speaker 1: you're probably wondering is what the net effects of that are,

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Speaker 1: and they're not great. In the first quarter of twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty four, Meta made thirty six point four y five

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Speaker 1: billion dollars, of which twelve point three seven billion dollars

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Speaker 1: was pure profit. Though the company no longer reports daily

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Speaker 1: active users, it now uses another metric, family daily active people.

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Speaker 1: This number, which could also be the name of a gym,

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Speaker 1: refers to registered and logged in users of one or

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Speaker 1: more of Facebook's family products who visited at least one

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Speaker 1: of these products on a particular day. This, again seemingly

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Speaker 1: innocent change to how Facebook reports growth, is quite significant

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Speaker 1: in that Facebook will no longer have to report its

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Speaker 1: daily or monthly active users, meaning that the only source

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Speaker 1: of truth in Meta's growth story is an extremely vague

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Speaker 1: growth metric that could be manipulated to mean just about anything,

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Speaker 1: Though Meta doesn't really explain this number anywhere. Three billion

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Speaker 1: daily active people across Meta's family could combine WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: Facebook Messager, Facebook portal, Oculus, threads, and maybe some other

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Speaker 1: dead Facebook product that they've forgot to kill off of

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Speaker 1: the app store. I'm not really sure, and it's not

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Speaker 1: like they tell us. What's confusing is that in their

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Speaker 1: fourth quarter twenty twenty three earnings, Meta reported that it

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Speaker 1: had two point one one billion daily active users across

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Speaker 1: its properties, a number that is somehow distinct from the

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Speaker 1: three point one to nine billion family daily active of

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Speaker 1: people that they reported in the same quarter. Daily active

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Speaker 1: users is a fairly simple metric. It's how many people

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Speaker 1: engage with a product in a given day on average,

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Speaker 1: across the month or the quarter, I guess. But daily

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Speaker 1: family active people is a number that's somehow so distinct

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Speaker 1: that it's a billion users higher. It smells. It smells

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Speaker 1: like doodoo to me. I'll digress. When a company starts

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Speaker 1: playing these weird games with how they report user activity,

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Speaker 1: something's going very, very wrong. In general, when a company

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Speaker 1: tries to obfuscate the true numbers about their revenue, growth

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Speaker 1: or profit, it's one of the worst science and Enron

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Speaker 1: is probably the best example of it, with the company's

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Speaker 1: notorious use of esoteric metrics in their quarterly financial statements,

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Speaker 1: being used to disguise the fact that they were overleveraged, dysfunctional,

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Speaker 1: hemorrhaging money. While I don't really want to draw the

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Speaker 1: comparisons between Meta and Enron, there's an undeniable truth in

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Speaker 1: the adage that if you have nothing to hide, you

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Speaker 1: have nothing to fear. Healthy, stable, functional companies. They don't

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Speaker 1: feel the need to move the goalposts or create new

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Speaker 1: weird metrics. They just don't. It's a very very bad sign.

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Speaker 1: Between the first quarter of twenty twenty one and the

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Speaker 1: fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, which was the last

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Speaker 1: one where reported metrics actually came from Meta, the company

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Speaker 1: would increase its daily active users by two hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirty million and its monthly active users by two hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty million. That's a growth ray of just under

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Speaker 1: eleven percent in daily actives and just over a seven

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Speaker 1: percent increase in monthly actives in three years. In that

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Speaker 1: time period, Meta launched its Horizon Metaverse and its Twitter

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Speaker 1: competitor Threads, which it claimed in its Q four earnings

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three had hit one hundred and thirty

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Speaker 1: million monthly active users, which was an increase of thirty

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Speaker 1: percent over the third quarter. Yet between the third and

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Speaker 1: fourth quarters, Metas overall monthly active users across their platforms

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Speaker 1: only increased by around twenty million, and this heavily suggests

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Speaker 1: that despite adding over one hundred million new monthly active

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Speaker 1: users on the property, it's shedding tens of millions of

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Speaker 1: them everywhere. Meta's entire product strategy revolves around growth of

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Speaker 1: these arbitrary metrics time spent on app engagement, meaningful time

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Speaker 1: spent all numbers that have dictated their strategy across a

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Speaker 1: multitude of properties like Facebook and Instagram for years. And

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Speaker 1: thanks to these really nasty growth tactics and a sheer

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Speaker 1: force of capital and monopolies, Meta has grown a pretty

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Speaker 1: much unstoppable position in social networking, controlling two of the

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Speaker 1: major platforms Instagram and Facebook, and two prevalent messaging services

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Speaker 1: in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Yet Meta has become a

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Speaker 1: company that just shows contempt for users, and they turn

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Speaker 1: their products Facebook and Instagram in particular, into these horrible

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Speaker 1: algorithmic nightmares that undermine their core purpose. They don't connect people,

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Speaker 1: They intentionally allow malignant actors like anti vaxxers and spammers

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Speaker 1: to thrive on there, and they make it harder to

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Speaker 1: see the things that you want to see. To send

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Speaker 1: these arbitrary mentricks upwards, Mark Zuckerberg, he lied. He lied

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Speaker 1: to investors when he told them that his company doesn't

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Speaker 1: build services to make money, but makes money to build

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Speaker 1: better services, because for over a decade, metter has allowed

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Speaker 1: its services to decay while actively monetizing the frustration, paying

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Speaker 1: and confusion created by the horror show that is Meta.

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Speaker 1: When you look at Instagram or Facebook, I want you

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Speaker 1: to look a them a little different For me, just

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Speaker 1: for a moment. I want to view them not a

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Speaker 1: social networks, but as a kind of anthropological experimentation. Every

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Speaker 1: single thing you see on either of these platforms is

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Speaker 1: built or selected to make you spend more time on

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Speaker 1: the app and see more things that Meta wants you

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Speaker 1: to see, like ads or sponsored contents or suggested groups

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Speaker 1: that you can interact with, and in doing so, you're

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Speaker 1: increasing your time spent on the app and increasing the

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Speaker 1: amount of meaningful interactions you have with the content. Now,

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Speaker 1: what's important there is You'll notice I'm not saying anything

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Speaker 1: about you enjoying it or liking it or being able

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Speaker 1: to get to stuff or anything about a service. That's

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Speaker 1: because that isn't why it's there. Indeed, I want you

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Speaker 1: to realize that anything bad or frustrating you see on

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Speaker 1: the platform is a direct symptom of Mark Zuckerbug's unwillingness

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Speaker 1: to rate, limit, or really moderate the platform. Logically speaking,

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Speaker 1: one would think the meta would want you to have

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Speaker 1: a high quality Facebook experience, and they'd want to prove

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Speaker 1: in content that I don't know, I might be in

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Speaker 1: cindiary spammy, scammy, unhelpful or at the very least from

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Speaker 1: someone you know and want to hear from. But when

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Speaker 1: you only concern is growth, content moderation is more of

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Speaker 1: an emergency measure or just something you talk about in

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Speaker 1: earnings or in front of Congress. And to be clear,

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Speaker 1: this is all part of metas cultural DNA. In an

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Speaker 1: interview with journalist Jeff Horwitz in his book Broken Code,

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Speaker 1: Facebook's VP of Ads and Partnerships Brian Bowland, said that

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Speaker 1: building things is way more fun than making things secure

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Speaker 1: and safe, and until there's a regulatory or press fire,

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Speaker 1: you don't deal with them. Horwitz also cites that metas

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Speaker 1: engineer's greatest frustration was that the company perpetually needed something

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Speaker 1: to fail, often fucking spectacularly, and that is a quote

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Speaker 1: to drive interest in fixing it. Horwitz's Brooke describes Meta's

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Speaker 1: approach to moderation as having a light touch, considering it

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Speaker 1: a moral virtue, and that the company wasn't failing to

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Speaker 1: supervise what users did. It was neutral. As I briefly explained,

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Speaker 1: the logic here is that the more stuff there is

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Speaker 1: on Facebook or Instagram, the more likely you are to

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Speaker 1: run into something you'll interact with, even if said interaction

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Speaker 1: is genuinely bad. Horwitz notes that in April twenty sixteen,

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Speaker 1: Meta analyzed Facebook's most successful political groups, finding that a

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Speaker 1: third of them routinely featured content that was racist and

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Speaker 1: conspiracy minded, with their growth heavily driven by Facebook's group

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Speaker 1: you should Join and discover features algorithmic tools that face

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Speaker 1: used to recommend content. The researcher in question added that

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Speaker 1: sixty four percent of all extremist group joins are due

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Speaker 1: to Facebook's recommendation tools. Now here's something that will really

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Speaker 1: annoy you. At least they annoyed me. When the researcher

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Speaker 1: in question took their concerns to Facebook's Protect and Care team,

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Speaker 1: and that is their name. They were told that there

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Speaker 1: was nothing the team could do as and I quote,

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Speaker 1: the accounts creating the content were real people, and Facebook

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Speaker 1: intentionally had no rules mandating truth, balance or good faith. Cool.

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Speaker 1: That's the thing. Every time I read one of these things,

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Speaker 1: I just want to scream, because this is how this

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Speaker 1: company runs. There are many evil companies out there, but

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Speaker 1: it's so rare you read text that it's just like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so if we do this, it will be good for people,

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Speaker 1: and someone just says, nah, mate, you don't want to

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Speaker 1: do that. Bring the numbers down. It's so strange and

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Speaker 1: it's so craven, and it's so often as well. And

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Speaker 1: this is only a tiny subset of the I imagine

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Speaker 1: tens of millions of emails at Meta. There's probably so

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Speaker 1: much worse that's going to come out one day. That

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Speaker 1: drives me insane. Ah. But I get back to the point,

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Speaker 1: which is that Meta at its core is a rot

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Speaker 1: economy empire, and it's entirely engineered to grow metrics and

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Speaker 1: revenue at pretty much the expense of anything else. In practice,

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Speaker 1: this means allowing almost any activity that might grow the

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Speaker 1: platform even if it means the groups balloon by tens

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Speaker 1: or hundreds of thousands of people a day, or allowing

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Speaker 1: people to friend fifty or more people in a single day,

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Speaker 1: even if it's obvious spam. It means allowing almost any

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Speaker 1: content other than that which it's legally required to police,

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Speaker 1: like mutilation or child pornography, which thank god they get

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Speaker 1: rid of. Fucked. I'm actually surprised that they take the

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Speaker 1: action there, and it's just it's very depressing, and even

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Speaker 1: in the worst cases, they're extremely hesitant to intervene. This

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Speaker 1: is why, by the way, when you log onto Facebook,

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Speaker 1: you can find multiple groups with the most bizarre names.

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Speaker 1: But I picked a particularly weird one search for Facebook complaints.

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Speaker 1: When you look, you'll find thousands of members in I

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Speaker 1: think like twenty different groups, all people that believe they're

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Speaker 1: talking to Facebook customer support, but what they're really doing

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Speaker 1: is engaging with the most obvious scammers in the world

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Speaker 1: asking to go private on Facebook Messenger. These groups are

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Speaker 1: a great example about Meta's total lack of any quality control,

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Speaker 1: and it's just utter contempt for their users. Typing Facebook

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Speaker 1: complaint into a search bar on the Facebook app should

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Speaker 1: if Meta gave a shit direct you I don't know

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Speaker 1: to Facebook's customer service department, and that would be if

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Speaker 1: one really existed, which it does not, which we will

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Speaker 1: get to later. Instead, it introduces you to multiple and

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Speaker 1: I've seen one. There's one group that had seventeen thousand,

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Speaker 1: one had five thousands. There's multiple groups with at least

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Speaker 1: a thousand people, and they're honey traps. They're obvious honeytraps

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Speaker 1: for scam artists, and Meta doesn't get rid of them,

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Speaker 1: I imagine because these groups have relatively high activity, boosting

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Speaker 1: Facebook's meaningful interactions, even if said interactions are a seventy

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Speaker 1: five year old being conned into sharing their username and

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Speaker 1: password via Facebook Messenger, or an irate Australian claiming that

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Speaker 1: hackers have changed his Facebook to Chinese, or another person

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Speaker 1: that I saw that was genuinely saying I ordered Lobster.

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Speaker 1: Where is it? I don't know on that one, mate,

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Speaker 1: I just don't know. Like most social networks, and you'll

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Speaker 1: see this with Twitter and Google in particular, even though

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Speaker 1: Google are realized not social network. In this case, these companies,

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Speaker 1: they have a kind of a black box approach to

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Speaker 1: customer service, meaning that when you submit or a complaint

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Speaker 1: or a problem or a query. Through these regular channels,

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Speaker 1: you're rarely going to get a substantive response or any

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Speaker 1: help of any kind. What makes Meta unique is that

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Speaker 1: they actively monetize the problem. In March twenty twenty three,

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Speaker 1: Meta launched paid verification, charging users fifteen dollars a month

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Speaker 1: to get a verified badge on their account, exclusive stickers

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Speaker 1: as well, and I quote as direct access to customer support,

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Speaker 1: which really has You've got to wonder, Hey, what does

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Speaker 1: Facebook think they're providing Otherwise is it not Facebook doing

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Speaker 1: their support? I'm just guessing, man, because it's not like

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Speaker 1: it's O the bloody website. It's just very annoying. It's

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Speaker 1: very annoying, and it's very It turns my stomach, it

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Speaker 1: really does. It's because customer support should be just a given,

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Speaker 1: especially when you're a company that makes tens of well

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Speaker 1: over ten billion dollars of profit a quarter. It's really frustrating,

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Speaker 1: and as shameless as it is, it's also just profoundly unimaginative.

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Speaker 1: As I've argued in the past, both on this podcast

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Speaker 1: and in my newsletter. By the way, Mark Zuckerberg is

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Speaker 1: a man bereft of ideas, Meta is a company bereft

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Speaker 1: of ideas. They stole Twitter's pivot, they stole Elon Musk's

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Speaker 1: paid verification idea, which in its first few moments allowed

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Speaker 1: pranksters to impersonate multi billion dollar pharmaceutical multinationals and white

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Speaker 1: billions from their stock valuation. And it just kind of

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Speaker 1: shows Meta's willingness to scrape from the bottom of the barrel,

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Speaker 1: even if it's just an horrible idea and also just

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Speaker 1: a very noxious one, like, yeah, we'll help you, mate,

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Speaker 1: if you pay fifteen dollars a month for our website

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Speaker 1: that we heavily monetize to such an extent that you

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Speaker 1: can barely get anything done on it. Good lord. But

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Speaker 1: as I've kind of suggested for Meta, any group is

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Speaker 1: an opportunity for engagement, and any content is an opportunity

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Speaker 1: for engagement, and any action taken on the platform is

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Speaker 1: a meaningful one. Anything that keeps a person engaged with

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Speaker 1: Instagram or Facebook, even if it's bad for the user,

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Speaker 1: is a good thing, and that mentality pervades the entirety

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Speaker 1: of this asshole company. To quote Facebook VP Andrew bos

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Speaker 1: Bosworth in a memo from twenty sixteen, and boz is

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Speaker 1: now the CTO of Meta. By the way, anything that

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Speaker 1: allows this company to connect more people more often is

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Speaker 1: de facto good, and all the work that this company

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Speaker 1: does in growth is justified, including questionable will contact, importing practices,

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Speaker 1: and subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends

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Speaker 1: by which he meant terms and condition changes. While Mark

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Speaker 1: Zuckerberg might have claimed that Meta never believe the ends

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Speaker 1: justify the means when this memo came out, and when

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Speaker 1: BuzzFeed asked him and stop him from making Bosworth metas

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Speaker 1: CTO in twenty twenty two, or for that matter, from

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Speaker 1: doing anything else nakedly evil Meta's growth at all cost.

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Speaker 1: Mindset means that both Facebook and Instagram incentivize the creation

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Speaker 1: of more stuff far more than they incentivize any kind

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Speaker 1: of meaningful interaction of any kind. And as I've mentioned previously,

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Speaker 1: both of them have algorithms that aggressively force sponsored and

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Speaker 1: suggested content onto users based on this unknowable leviathan of

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Speaker 1: data points. One particularly noxious engagement trick Facebook uses is

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Speaker 1: to show a our cell of reels short vertical videos,

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Speaker 1: but instead of playing the entire thing, you're shown a

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Speaker 1: two or three second loop of the content In the

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Speaker 1: hopes that you'll be intrigued enough to click. This kind

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Speaker 1: of design decision is entirely built to create more engagement.

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Speaker 1: Meta could just play the videos in their entirety and

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Speaker 1: let you view them and maybe click through and hear

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Speaker 1: the sound if you are interested. But Facebook is built

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Speaker 1: to please Mark zuckerbergen his nasty, dirty little numbers game.

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Speaker 1: It's gross. Yet by incentivizing as much content and as

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Speaker 1: many interactions as possible, rather than curating the experience in

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Speaker 1: any way, Facebook is being killed. It's being destroyed in

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Speaker 1: real time. A study out of Stamford and Georgetown University

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Speaker 1: found that AI generated images have begun to dominate Facebook,

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Speaker 1: garnering hundreds of millions of interactions thanks to Meta's recommendation algorithms,

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Speaker 1: with one AI generated image becoming one of the twenty

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Speaker 1: most viewed pieces of content in the third quarter of

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. These pages, according to the study, regularly

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Speaker 1: and I quote used clickbake tactics and attempted to direct

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Speaker 1: users to off platform content farms and low quality debates

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Speaker 1: and scam pages that attempted to sell products that do

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Speaker 1: not exist or to get users to divulge personal details.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember in the previous episode,

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Speaker 1: but I mentioned that Facebook has made changes like this before,

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Speaker 1: promoting clickbait content that doesn't tell you what it is

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Speaker 1: really until you click it. In essence, Mayre's algorithm is

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Speaker 1: actively monetizing, sending users to questionable groups that, according to

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Speaker 1: the study, used known deceptive practices such as as count,

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Speaker 1: theft or takeover to spread these horrible images, and that

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Speaker 1: these accounts exhibited suspicious follower growth showing them ads through

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Speaker 1: the entire experience. Four h four Media's Jason Koebler also

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Speaker 1: analyzed the phenomena and found that groups were using AI

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Speaker 1: altered pictures of Simon Cowell to direct people toward a

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Speaker 1: page called Thoughts, which routinely encourage people to click through

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Speaker 1: to a spamming website called Planet tree Panetee, which was

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Speaker 1: in turn full of horrible, invasive ads. Cobler also found

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Speaker 1: that Planet and Thoughts dramatic growth began when they started

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Speaker 1: using these AI generated images, and that many other groups

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Speaker 1: were doing the same thing, and they were generating these

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Speaker 1: bizarre images like a picture of Jesus made of shrimp

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Speaker 1: or an AI generated picture of a one hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: one year old woman celebrating her birthday and this image,

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Speaker 1: by the way, her eyes are like smudges. It does

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Speaker 1: not look real. But these AI generated image they're running

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Speaker 1: absolutely rampant on the platform. All bookers. Meta has absolutely

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Speaker 1: no duty towards their users or even the platform itself.

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Speaker 1: Four o four Media also reported recently that Facebook's recommendation

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Speaker 1: algorithm is now promoting anime pornography, combining a mixture of

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Speaker 1: AI generated cartoon porn and plagiarized artwork to garner tens

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Speaker 1: of thousands of likes and reports to Jason Koebler mentioned

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Speaker 1: that a user complained that they'd been shown nude pictures

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Speaker 1: of Disney princesses and Misty from Pokemon. This is particularly

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Speaker 1: grotesque when you realize how many children use Facebook. Although

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Speaker 1: Facebook's relevance has kind of waned with gen z and younger,

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Speaker 1: it's still a major social network property in this demographic.

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Speaker 1: A report from twenty twenty one found that forty five

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Speaker 1: percent of kids under the age of thirteen used Facebook daily,

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Speaker 1: and speaks to a larger trend of recklessness within this company.

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Speaker 1: Going back to when an engineer was fired after raising

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Speaker 1: concerns that Facebook's people you may know feature allowed and

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Speaker 1: I quote millions of pedophiles to target tens of millions

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Speaker 1: of children. I guess Meta just doesn't really give a

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Speaker 1: shit as long as the number goes up. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: matter that Facebook's algorithm is actively recommending AI generated images

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Speaker 1: of mutilated children, garning hundreds of thousands, if not millions,

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Speaker 1: of engagements. It's also that Facebook can serve your ads

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Speaker 1: next to them. It doesn't matter that Facebook is saturated

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Speaker 1: with engagement bait, much of it created with generative AI,

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Speaker 1: because Meta is able to express it has three billion

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Speaker 1: or more family daily active people, whatever the hell that

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Speaker 1: means on the platform, even if it means that these

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Speaker 1: three billion daily active people, and I really question whether

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Speaker 1: it's actually three billion people, even if they're watching this

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Speaker 1: thing fall apart in real time. Yeah. Arguably the most

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Speaker 1: confusing addition to the platform in any recency is Meta AI,

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Speaker 1: a free and impossible to disable, by the way, artificial

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Speaker 1: intelligence assistant that uses generative AI to answer user questions

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Speaker 1: and generate images from virtually any Facebook property. Meta also

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Speaker 1: allows users to add metas AI to their groups, letting

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Speaker 1: commenters ask it questions. But they also did something really

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Speaker 1: weird they've allowed you to add it to the group

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Speaker 1: and respond to comments that aren't getting enough engagement, which

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Speaker 1: led metas Ai to respond to a comment in a

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Speaker 1: parenting group that it referring to metas ai had a

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Speaker 1: gifted child and recommended a specific school for help with

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Speaker 1: their child's needs. And when I say there, I'm referring

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Speaker 1: to a generative AI on the Facebook platform. It's so strange.

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Speaker 1: It's all so strange, And you know what, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: make any sense until you consider that every single decision

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Speaker 1: that Mark Zuckerberg makes is to keep users on metas platforms.

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Speaker 1: By adding a generative AI assistant, Meta gives users more

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Speaker 1: things to play with, more reasons to interact with the platform,

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Speaker 1: and more ways to generate content to put onto the platform,

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Speaker 1: which in turn creates more reasons for others to interact

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Speaker 1: with it. It doesn't matter that the things being created

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Speaker 1: are useless or harmful, or profoundly inane or intrusive or annoying,

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Speaker 1: or that by giving people the ability to lasily generate

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Speaker 1: posts which all kind of sound the same, because all

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Speaker 1: generative AI is trained on basically the same data sets,

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Speaker 1: except by the way Chacebooks is trained on Facebook data.

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Speaker 1: You're just going to normalize everything on there. Every Thing

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Speaker 1: already kind of sucks on Facebook, but now generative AI

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Speaker 1: will allow it to suck in greater numbers. This is

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Speaker 1: the future everyone now, this nonsensical act of pushing AI

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Speaker 1: onto Facebook and Instagram. Whats happened all these things? It's

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Speaker 1: just another silly, senseless way that Mark Zuckerberg is burning money,

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Speaker 1: and Meta is raising its spending forec US in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty four to thirty five billion to forty five billion dollars,

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Speaker 1: which is up from thirty to thirty seven billion. Zuckerberg's

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Speaker 1: blown over forty billion dollars on the metaverse so far

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Speaker 1: and seems to be intent on doing the same thing

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Speaker 1: with AI. And he's going to sink billions more into

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Speaker 1: graphics processing units and other assorted hardware to spin up

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Speaker 1: features that nobody wants, that nobody asks for that Every

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Speaker 1: time I've seen someone discuss, they are saying something along

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Speaker 1: the lines of why is this here? Or why do

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Speaker 1: I need this? And I don't want this. I have

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Speaker 1: never seen such an unpopular product other than the meta us.

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Speaker 1: I think genuinely, had the metaverse been easier to access,

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Speaker 1: it would have been even more unpopular than this, but

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Speaker 1: let's be honest, it's already pretty unpopular already. Not to

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Speaker 1: sound too dramatic, but I believe that Meta is a

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Speaker 1: deeply evil company and it's run by people that treat

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Speaker 1: human beings as pawns. Pawns to increase engagement metrics and

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Speaker 1: make money on advertising. And what makes the company so

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Speaker 1: unique is that the services it provides are just unquestionably awful.

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Speaker 1: Using both Facebook and Instagram is a battle with an

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Speaker 1: algorithm to see the people that you choose to follow,

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Speaker 1: and Meta as a company seems incapable of developing anything new, intivative,

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Speaker 1: or even useful. Yet it made over thirty six billion

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Speaker 1: dollars in revenue in Q one twenty twenty four, and

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Speaker 1: it did so by abusing and manipulating its users while

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Speaker 1: also failing to maintain any integrity or utility within two

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Speaker 1: of the most important platforms on the Internet. And I believe,

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Speaker 1: as crazy as it sounds, that this strategy will lead

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Speaker 1: to the contraction and eventual death of face Book at

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Speaker 1: the very least, and possibly Instagram. And I anticipate that

390
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Speaker 1: as things get more difficult for the company, it's going

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Speaker 1: to hit Instagram so much worse. According to data provided

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Speaker 1: to me by Similar Web, in the last three years,

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Speaker 1: Facebook's US website audience has declined by thirteen point seven percent,

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Speaker 1: and in the year of a year period from April

395
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Speaker 1: twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four, monthly active users

396
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Speaker 1: on Facebook's app have declined by two point two percent,

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Speaker 1: while Instagram's web aardy inscrewed by twenty three percent over

398
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Speaker 1: the last few years. In the last twelve months, its

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Speaker 1: growth has slowed to six point eight percent, and between

400
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Speaker 1: March and April twenty twenty four, Instagram's app monthly active

401
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:42,719
Speaker 1: users in America declined by zero point eight percent. Instagram's

402
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Speaker 1: the cash cow. This is the thing to be worried about. Mark.

403
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:50,800
Speaker 1: Facebook's monthly active users have been aggressively declining every month, though,

404
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: tumbling from a high of two hundred and eight million

405
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:55,560
Speaker 1: monthly active users in May twenty twenty one to one

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one million monthly active users in April

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Just to be clear, talking about the

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Speaker 1: website there, and that's the second lowest the number has

409
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Speaker 1: been in the entire period, beaten only by February twenty

410
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Speaker 1: twenty four, when it had one hundred and fifty eight

411
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Speaker 1: point eight million active users. On top of that year

412
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Speaker 1: of a year, Facebook's apps are a decline of two

413
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Speaker 1: point two percent in monthly active users. To put it simply,

414
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Speaker 1: Facebook's decaying, and they've lost nearly fifty million monthly active

415
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Speaker 1: users in the last three year in the US to

416
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Speaker 1: their website. Globally, things are a lot worse. Facebook has

417
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Speaker 1: lost twenty five point two percent of its monthly unique

418
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Speaker 1: website visitors since twenty twenty one, crashing from a high

419
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Speaker 1: of one point four five six billion in May twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one to a low of one point oh four

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Speaker 1: billion in February twenty twenty four, slightly increasing to one

422
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Speaker 1: point five billion in April twenty twenty four, a loss

423
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Speaker 1: of three hundred and ninety seven million unique monthly visitors.

424
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Speaker 1: One has to wonder if these numbers might have been

425
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Speaker 1: what pushed Zuckerberg to try and turn the metaverse into

426
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Speaker 1: and I quote, the next generation of the Internet. Maybe

427
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Speaker 1: he knew, Maybe he knew that his disgraceful, lazy, half

428
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Speaker 1: baked abus of shitty, morally reprehensible approach to building social

429
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: networks was one that had a sell by date. Everything

430
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: you see on Facebook and Instagram today is a monument

431
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 1: to the works of a man that sees users as

432
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 1: rats in a digital maze built to make numbers go

433
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: up and investors happy. And I don't even think he

434
00:25:26,119 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 1: cares that much about investors. After all, he can't be fired.

435
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,640
Speaker 1: I've seemed very angry in these episodes. I'm not telling

436
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:46,480
Speaker 1: you how to feel. I'm just telling you how I feel.

437
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:49,360
Speaker 1: And a lot of this comes down to a deep

438
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 1: frustration with Facebook and Instagram and Meta as a company,

439
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: because when you see a company with so much talent,

440
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: with so much influence, with so much responsibility, and you

441
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 1: see how little responsibility they feel to the people that

442
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 1: use their websites, it's just disgusting, especially when even the

443
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: slightest changes could make these websites so much better. Maybe

444
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: a little less profitable, but after all, this company makes

445
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,399
Speaker 1: over ten billion dollars in profit a quarter, kind of

446
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 1: like Google. Hey, I should do an episode on those people.

447
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: Maybe I will in the future, But in all seriousness,

448
00:26:26,960 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: what Meta stands for right now is rot and what

449
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg stands for is evil. You know, it's just

450
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:36,879
Speaker 1: society's mechanisms. They're far too slow and they lack the

451
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: precision to deal with a man like Mark Zuckerberg. And

452
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: he's a man that acts with just this shocking lack

453
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: of morality and I find it putrid. And this complex

454
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 1: machine he's used to torture humans for profit and power,

455
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:53,240
Speaker 1: it's gone completely unchecked. A lot of government handwaving, but

456
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: no real changes. The best hope we have is the EU.

457
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:00,680
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned before, Mark Zuckerberg he can never

458
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: be fired. We are stuck with him, and he can

459
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: and he will run this company into the goddamn ground

460
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: and he will hurt people on the way to doing it. Well,

461
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:18,400
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, And just to be clear, he is a greedy, churlish, nasty, freakish, disgusting,

462
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: shameful man, Mark Zuckerberg is just something entirely different. He's

463
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: not stupid, he really isn't. And unlike Musk, he hasn't

464
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: seemed to have any compulsion for anyone to like him.

465
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: They occasionally put him in a chain or a normal

466
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: person outfit, or have him do barbecue to try and

467
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 1: pretend he's human. Eh. He seems kind of half hearted

468
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: in it. I can understand that, because that's not what

469
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 1: turns Mark Zuckerberg on I'm not making any suggestions about

470
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: sexual proclivities. Please do not sue me. What I'm saying

471
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: is Mark Zuckerberg craves numerical dominance, and he craves it

472
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 1: at any cost. He must force human beings to use Facebook,

473
00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 1: and once they're there, he must make them move in

474
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: a way that he wishes and do the things he wishes.

475
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,240
Speaker 1: Also that he can see the number go up. Mark

476
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg will do whatever he wants because he built a

477
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: system so that he could never be fired, giving him

478
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: unilateral power over a monopoly he designed to chew through

479
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 1: people's lives, turning them into fuel for Meta's money machine,

480
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 1: and so he could get his rocks off looking at

481
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: and the numbers go up. Make no mistake, what Mark

482
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,560
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg has done is monstrous, both in its damage to

483
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:31,920
Speaker 1: society and its financial opulence. Facebook has made so many

484
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: people so rich in so many ways, and offered a

485
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: genuine societal service, and then it found every foreseeable way

486
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: to monetize every corner of our goddamn lives. Facebook's culture

487
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,800
Speaker 1: is one of imprisonment and abuse, and it traps users

488
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: in engagement loops that tangibly harm them, something that Facebook

489
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: is both well aware of and intentionally not seeking to remedy.

490
00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: And ultimately the software itself, the software behind Facebook, which

491
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: does have value in it in how it connects so

492
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: many people in so many ways. That software is a

493
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 1: prisoner of Mark Zuckerberg, who may or may not have

494
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: stolen the idea in the first place, making it just

495
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: another piece of data he's extracted through deeply shitty means.

496
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: At one point, Facebook was a social good, something that

497
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:23,080
Speaker 1: contributed to meaningful connections between human beings separated by time

498
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: and geography. During the Arab Spring, protesters in Cairo held

499
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: up banners that read, in a mixture of English and Arabic,

500
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: thank you Facebook. Similar sentiments a daubed on to the

501
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 1: wall of the headquarters of Tunisia's Ministery of the Interior,

502
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:41,240
Speaker 1: reflecting its role as a facilitator and a neutral communications network. Facebook,

503
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: even as leaked emails obtained by The Daily Beast revealed,

504
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:48,040
Speaker 1: placed protests pages under special protection with a team providing

505
00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven monitoring that, by the way, was

506
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: in the past. At least in this regard, Facebook seemed

507
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: to understand its role in the world and was prepared

508
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: to kind of step up and own it. It refused

509
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: to bend the knee to Hosney Mubbarak and its horrible regime,

510
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: and on January twenty fifth, twenty eleven, was banned by

511
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,920
Speaker 1: the Egyptian government two days before it shut down the

512
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: entire Internet. People used VPNs to get back on it,

513
00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: but still Facebook used to mean something. Today, Facebook is

514
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 1: an example of everything wrong with the Internet and howgorithmic

515
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: iron maiden that nakedly cons users every minute, a parasite

516
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 1: that deprives creators of their audiences and users of their industry.

517
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 1: Facebook has no principles or backbone, and it's no longer

518
00:30:32,080 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 1: a reliable tool for connecting people as it once was

519
00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: during the pro democracy protests I previously mentioned. Whereas once

520
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: you could have made a plausible case that even underneath

521
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: its flaws, Facebook had an ember of morality, a smidgeon

522
00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: of a care, It gave a tiny bit of a fuck.

523
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:56,920
Speaker 1: It's just no longer a coherent position. In a just world, Facebook, Instagram,

524
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 1: all metaproperties would be public utilities instead of becoming this

525
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: weird algorithmic fixation of a very strange multi billionaire weirdo. Sorry,

526
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have called Mark Zuckerberger weirdo. You're right, that

527
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: just isn't harsh enough. Mark Zuckerberg is a goddamn monster.

528
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is the opposite of what the tech industry

529
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 1: should stand for. He's a monopolist that deliberately makes and

530
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: proliferates bad software, and he makes the world worse for it.

531
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram are insults to every single software engineer

532
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 1: in the world. Built to trick and swindle UNHRM rather

533
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: than provide any service. What Facebook and Instagram have become

534
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: is an insult to Silicon Valley. I may come off

535
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 1: as a pessimist sometime, but I'm actually a broken hearted romantic.

536
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: There was a time that Facebook had a measurable, meaningful,

537
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: and good effect on my life and billions of other

538
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:55,840
Speaker 1: people's lives. There was a time this company had something

539
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: behind it. And even then, when I say this, I

540
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:00,680
Speaker 1: realized two thousand and eights, when people you may know

541
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:02,840
Speaker 1: went in, maybe it was always this bad, maybe they

542
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: were better at hiding it. But I'm not pessimistic about

543
00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: this company because I want to be. I'm not even

544
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: a pessimist. I'm a fucking cynic. I'm a cynic because

545
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 1: I've read these documents. I've seen the way that this

546
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: company talks about the users. I've seen the way that

547
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:20,280
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg has deliberately hurt them. I've seen them make

548
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: changes or choose not to make changes in the case

549
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: of Project Daisy, because they wanted to keep things growing,

550
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: and they've done so in a way that's made so

551
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: many horrible assholes so rich, and so many millions and

552
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: billions of people miserable. And Mark Zuckerberg is the reason.

553
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 1: He is the person that puts out some of the

554
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 1: most popular and poorly made software in existence, and he

555
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: does so in a way that will continue to hurt

556
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 1: people until this company dies or until he's somehow removed, which,

557
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 1: as I've mentioned, is not possible. People in the tech industry,

558
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:01,160
Speaker 1: people in society as well, should exile Zuckerberg. He should

559
00:33:01,160 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: not be welcomed in the circles of Silicon Valley. He

560
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: shouldn't be welcomed anywhere. This man owns a large chunk

561
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: of Hawaii. Make him piss off there and live alone,

562
00:33:10,800 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: or what you can live with this family obviously. Nevertheless,

563
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: this man, he may not be a criminal, but he

564
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: is a scumbag. He is a person that has deliberately

565
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: made things worse so that he can be richer, so

566
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 1: that he can see a number go up. He is

567
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: the rot Emperor, and he deserves no good, he deserves

568
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: no happiness, and he deserves to have this platform taken

569
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: away from him. But it's never gonna happen. We don't

570
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: have the government mechanisms to have someone like Mark Zuckerberg

571
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:47,800
Speaker 1: remove from power. And because Sean Parker so desperately protected

572
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,719
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg's right to control everything, this is what you get.

573
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:56,719
Speaker 1: This is actually what a true horrifying monopoly does. It

574
00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: hurts people, It manipulates people. It makes the worst people rich,

575
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: and regular people poorer and sadder and more confused and

576
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: more lost and more disconnected and more unaware of the

577
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: world around them. It spreads conspiracies, It spread's lunacy, It

578
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:17,080
Speaker 1: makes people unhappy, and it does so that so that

579
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg can add another fucking zero to another fucking

580
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: bank account. And it turns my goddamn stomach. And I'm sorry,

581
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,959
Speaker 1: I realized across these episodes, I have been on one.

582
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:32,320
Speaker 1: I have been quite angry, I have been full of fury.

583
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if that isn't the right way to approach this,

584
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 1: And I've really done my best to come at this

585
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: from a researched and thoughtful perspective as well. But reading

586
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:48,239
Speaker 1: this stuff has just so deeply angered me. It's so

587
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:53,360
Speaker 1: deeply offended me. I did not know that tech companies

588
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: could be this craven. Or maybe I did, but I

589
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: was kind of in denial. I don't know. But in

590
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:04,479
Speaker 1: reporting this, I have just been disgusted. And I've said

591
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 1: stomach churning at your turning or whatever it is a

592
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: few times, and it's true, though it is disgusting, I

593
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: actually love tech. I love this stuff. I find it

594
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 1: intellectually interesting. Take was how I got this job and

595
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: many jobs before it. Tech was something that meant something.

596
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:25,680
Speaker 1: It was something about building great software and great hardware,

597
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: ways to connect people, make people able to do more things.

598
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: What Mark Zuckerberg stands for is a deep nihilism in tech,

599
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: where it isn't about building better things or connecting more people,

600
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:42,399
Speaker 1: where it isn't about making the world better or more

601
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 1: aware or more educated, or giving them more access to

602
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: more things. No, it's about decay. It's about rot. It's

603
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:55,560
Speaker 1: about growing nothing from nothing, again and again, and now

604
00:35:55,600 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram are poisoned with generative AI bullshit thanks

605
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,839
Speaker 1: to Mark Zuckerberg, a man with no creativity other than

606
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,920
Speaker 1: that which makes people dance for him to increase numbers.

607
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,800
Speaker 1: This man is a goddamn disgrace and his company is

608
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: a disgrace too. The world deserves better than Mark Zuckerberg.

609
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:26,759
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.

610
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song

611
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 1: is Matttersowski. You can check out more of his music

612
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m A T

613
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 1: T O. S O w Ski dot com. You can

614
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: email me at easy at Better Offline dot com or

615
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links

616
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 1: and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you

617
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 1: go to chat dot Where's Youreed dot at to visit

618
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,319
Speaker 1: the discord, and go to our slash Better off Line

619
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 1: to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

620
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For

621
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com,

622
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

623
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:08,759
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts