Summary: Facebook/Fakebook, whose primary function is misleading a lot of people, isn't doing too well; now it goes offline, too

Social control media is collapsing this year (profit is a necessity; many platforms operate at a loss and some always operated at a loss). Facebook/Fakebook is no exception. We recently wrote about YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter. Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft's LinkedIn shutting down entire offices (same as GitHub, which is proprietary social control media for code). We didn't forget Facebook/Fakebook. There's also some clobbering at Facebook/Fakebook. Don't believe fake "valuations" (market cap) at Wall Street. Market capitalisation of Spotify Technology, for instance, is said to be 30.94 billion at the moment, but Spotify Technology is losing about a billion dollars per year. Total debt on the balance sheet as of March 2023: $1.85 billion. Many people "don't think so" simply because they don't know that and never bothered checking. So they're in debt, they're losing a lot of money, and somehow they're "worth" over 30 billion dollars? Like Twitter was "worth" 44 billion dollars despite having about 13 billion dollars in debt while operating at a loss?

"It's hard to tell for sure that there will even be a thing called "Facebook" 5 years from now."What also matters is inertia or trends. The Web was abuzz some days ago with "Facebook fading" [1] and "Facebook Papers" [2]. Facebook is now dishing out some cash to entice people not to leave [3] and there are attempts to get children "hooked" [4] (yes, Facebook is like a drug dealer). A lot of Facebook staff left in recent years, not just because of the layoffs. Many people resigned. Outages were reported a couple of days ago [5] (brain drain always leads to this) and it's starting to look like a Twitter-type collapse. Just like Twitter, Facebook is a prime source of misinformation (see "Pitt Cheung was scrolling through Facebook one Friday evening when he saw a post by a local media outlet" [6]; it was false). There are also fakes being spread in Facebook, as noted this past Thursday [7].

Facebook/Fakebook has no viable plan. VR headsets aren't it. They just cost the company a fortune and it went nowhere. It's hard to tell for sure that there will even be a thing called "Facebook" 5 years from now. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Social media eclipses publishers as entry point for news – but Facebook fading

   Facebook remained the most important social network for news despite the decline.





2. 2023-06-15 [Older] Read the Facebook Papers for Yourself





3. 2023-06-14 [Older] Meta is expanding its bonus program that pays creators for Facebook posts





4. 2023-06-16 [Older] Facebook Owner Wants Preteens to Step Into Virtual Reality With Its Quest Headset

5. 2023-06-16 [Older] Meta's Social Media Apps Back up After Outage





6. Gore, inaccuracies and sensationalism: Murder coverage reveals Hong Kong media’s race to the bottom

   Pitt Cheung was scrolling through Facebook one Friday evening when he saw a post by a local media outlet. “CCTV footage of the stabbing at Plaza Hollywood,” it read, referring to an incident at a Hong Kong shopping mall that had just taken place.





7. AI Artist Creates Satanic Panic About Hobby Lobby

   Pictures of Baphomet statues on sale at the Christian craft store vent Viral on Facebook as some called for a boycott.