Unmasking Meta's Bad News Strategy | Hacker News Reader

Unmasking Meta's Bad News Strategy

memo.co

73 pointsmarban17 comments

Former PR & Ad agency owner here. Better to release on Thursday if you care about external impact. Better to release on Friday if you are concerned with internal impact.

Something many in business don't understand is Friday is the start of the weekend news cycle. If whatever bed news happens is released on Friday, and it is juicy, it will end up kicking around on weekend news shows, Sunday talk shows, Sunday print newspapers (which still matter in some large markets), and as a bonus, will cycle into the next week's news via follow ups. The reason to release on Friday is simple: you have the weekend to communicate with your key managers and do internal damage control (even if that is just keeping the team productive). For some CEOs, you turn off the phone, and go hit the Yacht for the weekend and hide. If you release bad news on Thursday, you'll potentially have less coverage, but have to be very adroit with your internal communication with employees. For CEOs that can't handle bad news, Thursday releases are really bad...

The article assumes that Meta's bad news strategy is intended to reduce readers of bad news. I'm not so sure about that. The strategy to release bad news on a Friday is intended to prevent that bad news from becoming the media narrative of the week. Likely that approach doesn't work for a company of Meta's size and importance.

When they release their bad news in the midst of another strong prevailing narrative, all eyes are on the other story, not on meta. There's a fixed capacity for headline news, oped columns and blogs, and hot takes / outrage on social media. If all eyes are focused on FTX or the Queen or the US elections, they might notice Meta's news but they're not going to start the flywheel spinning on it. So even if the same-day readership for their bad news is high, memory of it is low because interest isn't sustained.

Agreed. The article is measuring the wrong thing: a company doesn't care about high readership of the initial bad news; it wants to get bad news out of the way as quickly as possible and have the conversation switch to something else. They are counting on short attention spans. That's why it's common to release bad news late on Friday or just before some event that the media will all be talking about. This article doesn't seem to get that and is measuring the wrong thing.

The examples given in this article are extremely weak, e.g.:

* "Meta announced plans to make staffing cuts on September 21st, just days after Queen Elizabeth’s funeral service broadcast across the globe and the associated news cycle."

* "Meta then also announced layoffs on November 9th, in the middle of the U.S. midterm election cycle."

Yeah, shit happens around the world, but saying Meta is somehow trying to hide bad news because they announced some layoffs "days after Queen Elizabeth’s funeral service" is a pretty ridiculous stretch. It's like those jokes about adding up random numbers and then saying "ILLUMINATI" when you've become convinced of your own made up conspiracy theory.

I wouldn’t call it ridiculous. It is a viable strategy. Difficult to say if we’re seeing a coincidence or said strategy.

This article seems to make the assumption that the dates for 'bad news' (e.g. layoffs) is set predominantly because of the best date from a PR perspective. This PR-centric view seems conveniently simple considering they appear to be a PR platform.

Wouldn't an alternative explanation just be that 'bad things' are done on Thursdays, and news happens the same time the bad things happen?

e.g. if I had to announce a layoff, I might pick a Thursday as it would allow me 3 days to ensure I could get all my team members in one place (e.g. you might want to do it in person if possible), and then I could potentially give affected employees the Friday off to adjust to the news. I would also still have HR in the day after it all happened to help manage any employee queries, and it probably disturbs as little of the week as possible (returning on Monday will feel 'different' but acceptance would kick in).

The top web search results for "best day for layoffs" say Tuesday, then Wednesday, Thursday.

But 1 result from "Jobmonkey" says "Friday is the least conspicuous day to fire someone. It also allows the weekend for things to settle down and provides a few days so that everyone can gain some perspective. If you worry about an angry employee who might cause problems, this might be ideal."

> "best day for layoffs"

Best day from the employer and employee perspectives are different.

This is news about bad things, not low-quality news or a bad strategy regarding news.

All but one of the stories referenced were from leaks. To figure out Meta's bad news strategy you should only look at stories where Meta picked the date on when to release the information.

I love the process of thinking behind this article. Even though it didn't tell us much, it gives strong clues.

It's how I'd like to analyze marketing data when a strict control vs live is not possible.

Zuck's prime strategy is to steal oxygen from everyone/thing else. He views the universe as a mirror to reflect his (in his mind) boundless awesomeness.

This reminds me of a dialogue in the movie "The Social Network" where Mark Zuckerberg decides to reduce Eduardo Saverin's Facebook equity from 30% to 0.3% using some loophole. Mark Zuckerberg tells the lawyer who is tasked with pulling this off "Make it less painful". If that actually happened, then this strategy of making bad news "less painful" could be a possibility too.

'Make it less painful [for me].'

> * News that Sheryl Sandberg was stepping down was announced on June 1st, the same date of the much anticipated Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial verdict was scheduled.

> * Zuckerberg told employees they’ll be turning up the heat on performance reviews and slowing hiring on July 1st, right before the 4th of July holiday weekend.

> * Meta announced plans to make staffing cuts on September 21st, just days after Queen Elizabeth’s funeral service broadcast across the globe and the associated news cycle.

This is numerology. Just dumb. Wow, announcements on the 1st of a month? Must be a master plan. Days after the queen's funeral (not even days after her death)? This is grasping at straws.

There’s always something in the news. No matter what day you pick you can always claim it was timed perfectly

I don't think it's a coincidence that you're posting this on the 77th anniversary of the creation of the IMF.

What are you hiding?

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