In fairness, though, the CEO of Facebook hasn't built a better product in almost two decades. Instead, his company's growth has been based on brilliant (and occasionally very shady) acquisitions.
I've been buying and selling stuff on Craigslist for years, never had a problem. If you're really paranoid about getting ripped off, do the transaction in the parking lot of your local police station.
Maybe to you, not to others?
You can easily buy Facebook account which have been old but might not have been active for a long time. To me being on Facebook since 2009 is not really a great indicator for trust.
BTW: I am sure we will see the end of facebook (and it's subsidies) in this decade. The power concentration is just too insane. If it does not implode itself, then even a weak government like the US will take action.
Oh, good grief. Just say "Facebook didn't stop Trump from being elected!!!!1!!!1!". It would be fewer words.
While WhatsApp has not really changed all that much since the acquisition, there is very little that is the same between Instagram pre Facebook and now.
Were they worth the 1B and 19B price tag? yes totally, however both could have been done cheaper and earlier. There was lots of discussions with snap before whatsApp. The way occulus($3B) due diligence was handled also does not show give a lot of confidence. Facebook just got their way with sheer amount of money they could spend.
Facebook paid a lot more than 12 billion:
>...When Facebook announced its plans to acquire WhatsApp in February 2014, WhatsApp's founders attached a purchase price of $16 billion: $4 billion in cash and $12 billion remaining in Facebook shares. This price tag is dwarfed by the actual price Facebook paid: $21.8 billion, or $55 per user.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032515/whats...
It didn't seem surprising at all at the time that Facebook bought both services, many people I knew were using them as much or more for social media than Facebook. Now, the values of course were a bit gawking but I'm sure experts crawled over a lot of their own internal figures and what they would expect out of both services. If any organization had enough social media data to evaluate these services marketability, it was FB.
Facebook's actual product is its targeted advertising algorithms that advertisers pay handsomely to exploit. Facebook's advertising product has improved massively over the past two decades.
Indeed, Facebook's advertising algorithms are so good that Facebook should be regarded not as an advertising platform but rather as a rootkit and firmware upload tool for the human mind. Facebook's algorithms are quite capable of making a critical mass of the population believe utterly anything and, if if prompted, to act on those beliefs even in ways that go against their own interests.
What Facebook sells is the ability to control the course of society. That is their business, and they're doing very well with it.
You were more on target when you praised the efficacy of FB's advertising products, bleepblorp. Unfortunately, FB doesn't offer any way to control the course of society except to hasten its decline by overwhelming users with crap.
Neil Postman anticipated this in 1985, when he explained that America had not succumbed to Orwell's dystopian 1984 vision, but rather, had become something more akin to Huxley's Brave New World:
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism.
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with indulgences, trifles, and vanities."
Can it turn religious people secular, Democrats into Republicans? Citation needed.
Which is what everybody wants, right? Large demand - big business.