Rather than investigate all the things where investigative journalism could potentially make a difference to real human beings' lives, the Guardian has chosen to pursue a plea for the majority owner of Meta's voting shares (61%) to step down from his position of power. Let us politely ask Sisyphus to stop pushing the boulder instead.

Mark Zuckerberg owns the majority of voting shares. It's his company, over which he specifically wanted to retain control. Therefore, calling on the board to reign him in is... Misplaced.

If you think the actions of Meta are wrong and should be prevented, you need to act on the regulatory level, not appeal to the very shareholders who profit off the behaviour.

Meta should just close. It's like wanting to change CEO for the dioxin factory.

• koolala

  today at 9:12 AM

  Closing sale! 50%+ Off Sale on data for the majority of humans on Earth!

• today at 9:07 AM

• arcanemachiner

  today at 8:42 AM

  Maybe they should rebrand again. It took a few renames to get the stink off of Blackwater (private military contractor).

> through every scandal, Zuckerberg’s net worth has climbed to nearly $200bn, according to Forbes. Fines mean nothing to those with wealth like his, so the first step to safeguard society is to give Meta a fresh start without Zuckerberg’s influence on future products.

What is the author's model of a company?

• gizajob

  today at 8:49 AM

  It’s The Guardian - they just propose left-wing hyperbolic noise with no connection to the real world rather than offer any kind of solutions. Not even aware that Zuck is the biggest shareholder and has all the voting rights, it’s his baby and he owns it, he doesn’t have to resign to make the world a better place in The Guardian’s favour.

  • tonmoy

    today at 8:53 AM

    It’s an opinion piece

    • graemep

      today at 9:00 AM

      Read the last paragraph it calls on the shareholders to push back on Mark Zuckerberg. He owns most of the voting rights so its effectively calling on him to push back on himself.

I’m not sure the next CEO would do any better. The social media craze is built for addiction and that’s their business model. Investors won’t be on board, sadly.

• 21asdffdsa12

  today at 8:34 AM

  Has there ever be a social media plattform that cheered you on for Self-Improvement? DuoLingo comes to mind or some DIY project- like building a piece of furniture?

  Just not rewarding flexing, but creating and world improving?

  • SweetSoftPillow

    today at 8:44 AM

    Duolingo has nothing to do with self improvement, it's just a shiny presentation for highly addictive game.

    We should reward quality of engagement, not just length of it.

    • ACCount37

      today at 8:55 AM

      "Quality of engagement" is as hard to measure as "length of engagement" is easy.

  • nicce

    today at 8:35 AM

    Duolingo has joined to the addiction club

• sznio

  today at 8:29 AM

  I think everyone is infected by doomerism.

  Why care about the long term consequences if the world is going to be over in the next 20 years.

  • stuaxo

    today at 8:33 AM

    At the billionaire level that seems to be the case.

    • alansaber

      today at 8:46 AM

      Actually, they all seem solely interested in the future. The bunkers are a drop in the bucket for them, so why not?

    The CEO is the throughline in a history
    of billion-dollar blunders

For comparison:

He outperformed the Nasdaq 100 which made 18% (plus dividends) in the same time.

And he way outperformed Warren Buffet who made 14% in the same time.

I wonder what's the net value Meta offers for the world today. I had a similar thought about Elon the other day, for all his billions, only several million people use Tesla or Starlink, and SpaceX is cool I guess, but value and wealth don't seem to be strongly coupled. How many Tesla's investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?

• ben_w

  today at 9:00 AM

  Aye.

  > How many Tesla's investors have managed to cash out and how many of Facebook's advertisers managed to turn a profit?

  It me. That said, I didn't buy TSLA because I was expecting to cash out a few years later when he started acting like a threat to democracy and his own judicial system; when I bought it I thought they had a good business model and I thought they were undervalued.

  Now they're overvalued, have lots of visible competitors eating their lunch.

  Worse, even if they succeed, given Musk has yet to pay out dividends on that stock and also enough control over the board to give him as many shares as he wants, I think even success would render the stock monopoly money.

• alansaber

  today at 8:50 AM

  We've rediscovered the need for academia from first principles

• rapsey

  today at 9:06 AM

  Musk probably made more dollar millionaires than anyone in history. Facebook advertisers use it because it works and reaches a hell of a lot of people.

WELL THEN, if Joan Donovan thinks so.

Mark Zuckerberg is the PT Barnum of tech and Meta is his predatory circus. Meta doesn't make much sense without him.

He's not going to

He went out of the way to make his company structure prevent that (also Elon)

> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users

Why would it be interested in that? It's interested in increasing shareholder profits.

> It's time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta

What, like in the leadership of a political party? Meta does not work for the public good; if anything, it's rather the opposite. And it's not like another one of their people would change course and work and make it a public benefit company.

we will look back on it as the big tobacco of our generation

• alansaber

  today at 8:47 AM

  No, that will be the gambling endemic in every aspect of our society.

  • gdiamos

    today at 8:59 AM

    OxyContin, Enron, WorldCom, Super-size-me, Pets.com, Asbestos in the ceiling tiles...

    It was always burning since the world's been turning

We haven't see any meaningful improvement from Meta for years.

Eh dunno. My impression is that from the PoV of his notional bosses - Meta shareholders - he’s doing everything ”right”. Revenue up, addiction/recurring revenue stable, keeping fines low.

I’d be happy to see Meta gone altogether, but unless I missed the memo, Meta isn’t particularly upset about what it’s been up to (beyond bland press releases).

> put safety above profit.

I think does not reflect the reality of how competitive capitalism works.

Honestly, the world has grown past the need for Meta. I would not cry if it completely shut down, problem is, what will fill the void? It would be nice to have something not controlled by Big American Corporation (or Chinese, or any, for that matter), but somehow I don't see it happening.

• XorNot

  today at 8:50 AM

  Okay but like, you can make that happen. You can just stop using it.

  Interestingly I did learn of a niche which is completely unserved except by Meta recently: child-locked messaging apps.

  Messenger for Kids basically does everything you want it to - restricted functionality, restricted contact lists etc. I won't use it, but I only found out about it because I was hoping someone had built a Signal client which did exactly that.

• herbst

  today at 8:39 AM

  What void tho? The majority of people I know below 40 don't use Facebook or any related service at all.

  • tedggh

    today at 8:52 AM

    Most people under 40, 30 and even 20 I know are on Instagram, and many under 40 and 30 are on Facebook. Maybe it varies with country, education level or some other factors.

  • spunker540

    today at 8:42 AM

    Do they use Instagram or WhatsApp?

  • dmortin

    today at 8:48 AM

    It's different by location. E. g. in Europe many people uses Facebook, many under 40s too.

    In the US: 25–34 years: Around 25.7% to 25.9% (the largest single demographic group).

  • esskay

    today at 8:41 AM

    I always find it surprising when I hear of someone younger using facebook. I associate it with retired/elderly folks who love posting cryptic messages about their health or how their day has gone wanting attention.

  • majorbugger

    today at 9:00 AM

    It's still used for stuff like events or groups

  • jmcgough

    today at 8:48 AM

    The people you know aren't exactly representative of the whole country. Most people I know are on instagram.

  • shreedx

    today at 8:47 AM

    I think you're forgetting that Meta owns Instagram and WhatsApp.

  • 0x70run

    today at 8:42 AM

    [dead]

• drstewart

  today at 8:39 AM

  Or European, for that matter. Don't fancy submitting my ID to get access.

Absolutely idiotic take. Why is the Guardian peddling this opinion piece?

Stepping down as CEO would do nothing, so unless you plan on forcing him to sell his share IDK what the point of the article is.

Mark Zuckerberg (13.68% equity; 61.2% voting)[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms

• gizajob

  today at 8:50 AM

  The peddle confusion, not solutions or sense.

> But if Meta is truly interested in prioritizing the safety of users, the board should request the resignation of Mark Zuckerberg and restructure to put safety above profit.

It is singularly idiotic that people think people, companies, boards, governments, or anyone else should be "good", and that society will progress by rooting out "evil" ones, as adjudicated by their own standards.

People and by extension companies of people and by extension corporations, NGOs, governments, and everything else in society behaves according to incentives. "Safety of users" or "approval of The Guardian employees" does not rank particularly highly in the incentive scale next to money for anybody, least of all Facebook shareholders, lol.

The factors that influence behaviors are pretty simple. Money, negative money, threat of judicial or ultrajudicial retribution, etc. The people as a whole have levers to pull in order to shape society as they would like. Wishing for good and praying for evil to be dispelled are not among them, that's just like any other superstition.

• alansaber

  today at 8:49 AM

  Unfortunately framing everything as incentives is the only non-emotional way to analyse these meta-behaviours (get it?).

So says The Guardian, while showing me an illegal “Reject and Subscribe” tracking banner. Mixed messages.

• today at 8:59 AM