this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Facebook has been stagnant for a while, as they focused on pushing advertising and monetising users. It's not just "uncool", it's broken what made it good in the first place. I left Facebook a few years ago due to it's enshittification, and it's very very different to what it was right back at launch. It's a very similar issue to Reddit's but just manifesting in a different way.
Meta bought Instagram and Whatsapp to stay ahead of it's competition, particularly with younger users when it comes to Instagram. It's increasingly pushing ads on Instragram and trying to monetise users, and at the moment trying to monetise Whatsapp by getting businesses to pay for access via new tools. They've already changed terms of services on Whatsapp to the benefit of businesses and Meta, and are trying to merge it in with Facebook and Instagram messaging. On all platforms it is harvesting and selling user data.
Meta's revenues fell for the first time in 2022, and profits are also down, plus the "metaverse" is not succeeding despite heavy investment. Expect "enshittification" to accelerate as ultimately Meta cares about it's share price more than anything else, and shareholders in the tech space expect year on year growth. Meta's pivot to the Metaverse is because the company knows there is not much growth left in it's core social media products, and also a lot of competition it's struggling to beat (TikTok for example).
Meta is treading water at best, and it already monetises it's users and disrespects their privacy and data in ways that people wouldn't tolerate if they understood what is going on. I honestly wouldn't hold Meta up as a company that Reddit should look to for good PR.
This is an important point. Just because a platform is profitable, doesn't mean it hasn't been enshitified. It's far more likely to have been enshitified to drive profits, imo.
And the underlying problem is capitalism itself. There's nothing wrong with making money. But capitalism is based on the pursuit of infinite growth and profit, which of course is impossible, which means that every capitalist enterprise is doomed to follow the same predicable path of enshittification and eventually collapse.
Capitalism is a plague on society—a malignant cancer on humanity.
They don't care.
Pump and dump.
Inflate reddit's value in the short term by any means, IPO, cash out. Watch reddit implode after they've left.
Facebook is a repository for aging, red-cap-wearing boomers. Meanwhile, Meta is focusing all efforts on Instagram, which becomes shittier by the day as they attempt to transform it into whatever competing service is most successful—currently TikTok.