Comment by ismail | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ismail | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is going to get worse and so is Zuckerberg. I would short FB if I had a position.

The reasoning is, once you see a CEO installing loyal lieutenants. Who does not value conflicting, and opposing views. You know the company will loose the plot soon. With out any moderation from others I believe that FB will accelerate their disregard for their users while publicly communicating something else.

Fundamentally the Instagram founders and WhatsApp founders leaving is due to a values conflict with Zuckerberg and the culture at FB. My theory is there are the values they talk about and communicate externally, which is not congruent with what is practiced.

There was conflict due to these unspoken values and Zuckerberg took the easy way out. Install people loyal to him. This is a sign of weak leadership.

Edit:

It also seems like ego is getting the better of Z

“Severe cutbacks ordered by Mr. Zuckerberg in how much Instagram was promoted on the main Facebook platform”

Either that or instagram ads are not as profitable as FB?

Edit2: “That’s a shame, since that’s exactly what Facebook needs. Which is to say, people willing to challenge the groupthink that for too long included a stubborn resistance to admitting and addressing the company’s flaws.”

This is the biggest danger

"I would short FB if I had a position."

Just because your experience is getting worse doesn't mean in any way shape or form that the company is in trouble.

" WhatsApp founders leaving is due to a values"

This is really hard to handle.

Values? They no problem taking billions of dollars from Zuck. Moreover, they are not stupid people - they knew that the money has to come from somewhere, and that ads are basically the only way FB is going to work.

The bizarre the kind of naive pop-culture logic floating around out there the last little bit.

If WhatsApp founders didn't want ads, they why'd they sell to FB? Why not just stay independent? Surely their model was unsustainable on some level.

They knew exactly what they were getting into with FB to the point that it was even spelled out in the contract, which is why Zuck has lawyers present when speaking to WA founders.

Of course there are questions as to 'other means of monetization' and 'the degree of monetization' but we cannot be pale in this: there must be monetization just a surely gravity will pull you down to earth.

The only reasonable discussion is 'how' and possibly 'how much'.

The problem with shorting is that everything they’re doing is driving towards higher revenue. Any negative effects of their actions could be measured in years, not months or quarters.

The other issue is that more than anyone, Facebook very shrewdly mitigated their competition by M&A; where would users go?

Exactly.

Shorting leaves you vulnerable to an infinite amount of debt. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Outright short-selling has unbounded losses, but there are other ways of "being short" (i.e. betting on a price drop) where the loss is limited, such as buying put options, though these tend to be time-limited as well, to a couple years.

Yeah. Good point the effects will take several years to be demonstrated. So maybe a better comment would be, avoid FB for holding in the long term.

Would you think they are sacrificing the long term for the short?

I suspect we will get more scandals from FB.

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