Well that escalated quickly: FB is now down over 20% from its closing highs, losing over $130 billion in market value and erasing all of post-Q1 earnings gains, making Mark Zuckerberg $16 billion poorer, and officially entering a bear market.
Facebook's earnings rarely miss estimates, and their calls have never sent the stock tanking like this. What gives? Their user growth has been crawling to a halt, their revenue growth rates are plateau-ing, and they've had to hire 10,000 more employees (50% rise). Thus, they expect total expense growth to exceed revenue growth in 2019.
The catalyst for Facebook's demise is Russiagate, which exposed how much their business model depends on selling information that they collect on users (who did not appreciate how much they were being spied on), required them to hire an army of content police in order to placate the Russiagaters' paranoia (which can never be satisfied, given how seething and moralistic it is), and drove so many liberal users off the site (as they forever associate the site with Russia hacking the election, and as their mental stability succumbs to all the political arguing on the site).
Conservatives mostly do not care about Facebook's crackdown on their side -- only once you get to the Alex Jones crowd do they resent Facebook enough to angrily post about it, or even delete their account. The liberal rage against Facebook is far more widespread and mainstream. Here's a representative tweet from MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes:
Facebook is the equivalent of a massively profitable factory that just dumps all of its waste into the river and never has to pay for the cost to clean it up.— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 25, 2018
Read the replies, too, and hover over their avatar to see how mainstream their bios are. That tweet and its replies came from earlier today, before its stock plummeted. Now search Twitter for "Facebook," and see how many perfectly mainstream liberals are piggy-backing on the news of its stock price collapse with comments like, "Good -- they deserve it for spreading Russian propaganda and letting Alex Jones stay on the site".
Once worshiped by the cult of info-techno-philic liberals, Zuckerberg now finds himself blasphemed as a false god by his disillusioned followers. Every cause behind the recent collapse will only get worse over time -- the Russiagaters, both in the government and in the general population, simply cannot forgive Facebook for its sins and pretend to go back to the way things were before the Trumpocalypse of November 8th, 2016.
The Silicon Valley priests were supposed to protect us from the Anti-Christ, and yet they welcomed him right into the temple. "Helluva temple you got here, folks -- I'm gonna build it bigger and stronger than ever before, but the phony Pharisees probably won't give me any credit, that's okay." Such an abdication of their sacred duties to the community can never be forgiven, and they can never be allowed to have such power, influence, and wealth ever again.
This crippling effect of Russiagate applies also to Google, for failing to satisfy their paranoia about exorcising the Russian / Trumpian demons from their search results and news feeds, but more importantly from YouTube. So far, Google has managed to avoid the Inquisition and its howling mob, but don't count on that lasting forever, as Russiagate only grows more hysterical, and after they've already claimed their Facebook scalp. With the taste of victory in their mouths, they will only feel emboldened to bring down another false techno god that allowed the apocalypse to happen.
Amazon, a retailer, and Apple, a device manufacturer, seem safer from the original Russiagate accusations. So does Netflix, whose content is entirely fictional and apolitical or liberal. But that doesn't mean that the Russiagaters won't end up accusing them of a second-order failure -- to swoop in when the first-order techno gods had failed. We'll have to see how paranoid they get in their blame-casting.
Returning to the matter of which elite sectors can unite to stop Russiagate before it destroys the nation and the world, now we can add Facebook and likely Google into the anti-war column. One has had its material interests obliterated by Russiagate, making it now hostile to the Russiagaters' agenda.
This also reinforces the hostility of the finance sector toward Russiagate, since so many hedge funds and stock market indexes have Facebook's stock as one of their top holdings. The Russiagate mob has just wiped out another big chunk of the investor class's wealth, on top of blocking the investment banks from doing business with any entity connected in any way to any Russian oligarch or to Russia itself.
This should only give the finance and tech sectors all the more motive to expel the propaganda nexus -- the intel agencies and the news media -- from their political coalition of the Democrat party, and to de-financialize them and trust-bust them so that they're less effective at spreading paranoia. Those two propaganda sectors are directly responsible for Russiagate's creation and continued epidemic explosion. If it keeps spreading, the tech companies will become mere arms of the CIA and NSA, and get financially wiped out as no one uses them any longer.
Instagram is vulnerable to Russiagate too -- it appears in the Mueller indictment for hosting a group called "Woke Blacks," which belonged to the Russian trollers being charged. It's alleged to have stirred up racial tensions, and damaged Crooked Hillary's reputation with Democrat base black voters.
ReplyDeleteOf course, no one saw it, it changed no minds, but that doesn't matter to the witchcraft hysterics.
And Instagram is one of the few places that hasn't banned Roger Stone; that's where he posts after getting the boot from Twitter.
The platform allows all of the activity that the paranoids fear -- posting text, images, videos, etc. that could slam one candidate and boost another, and to pass them along in contagious fashion, affecting a mass audience quickly and cheaply.
If the Russiagaters have already gone after Facebook proper, its acquisition Instagram will not be far behind. Especially as folks leave Facebook for Instagram, a process already well under way among Millennials.
Throw in the "impressionable young minds" / "corrupting the youth" tropes to the political moral panic over Instagram, which wouldn't work regarding the increasingly Gen-X and Boomer users on Facebook.
Instagram was one of the few bright spots that Zuckerberg referred to on the earnings call. But it's no safer than Facebook itself.
After sacrificing tech and finance as false gods, libs have elevated the media and intel agencies as saviors.
ReplyDeleteThe media are like prophets who sounded the alarm that something was profoundly wrong (THIS IS NOT NORMAL), that their leaders were leading them astray and not protecting them or fulfilling God's wishes.
The intel agencies are like the avenging angels -- pursuing both the demons themselves, but also punishing the leaders for not properly tending to their flock.
That's why libs are piling on Zuckerberg's misfortune, while Ashton Kutcher tweets a pic of him drinking from a CIA branded mug saying they're our saviors.
They're no longer counting on the tech sector to provide them with neat futuristic jobs, or the venture capitalists to fund those start-up opportunities. They're immune to material concerns -- eating every lunch at Panera or better, buying a new pair of yoga pants from Lululemon or better, kayaking down a more obscure river in the Balkans on a backpacking tour, etc. Irrelevant, pointless pursuits in the post-Trumpocalyptic hell they must find their way out of.
They're now focused entirely on political warfare, and having to downplay these conspicuous consumption contests that would erode team cohesion as individuals compete against each other.
Unlike their material / lifestyle competition from just a few years ago, where they were riven by individual status-striving and had no squad, or squad goals.
It's funny, though, because they're still such a small minority with no long-term prospects -- shrieking about Russia and Putin forever? Toward what end -- nuclear war? After alienating 99% of the nation?
But it is amusing to see them drop their petty status-striving amongst themselves, in order to unify as a team... to take on all-powerful Putin in the propaganda war. They are so psychologically fucked, they will never recover from November 2016.
Luckily, like the Know Nothings, this "movement" won't last long. But it's an obstacle to useful realignment while it does rage on.
Ag, please delete this...
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit frightened. This post and comments... Tonight, I discovered that the Sadist was, well, being sadistic again (because a blog I read occasionally was discussing it). I did not click on or read the sadist's article, but the excerpted first paragraph fit his familiar pattern: fomenting or taking delight in an attractive woman "on the other team" experiencing pain.
I can tell you, that being a vulnerable nobody and in a place where (he thought) nobody was watching, he was so much worse to me.
Ag, what advice do you have for individuals? I know my situation is extremely unique, but perhaps for others who want to avoid the ire of the deranged in their own circles?
For myself, my few social media accounts are private, and the only real point of vulnerability I can think of are my few anonymous posts here, the only website I post comments anymore.
Of course I still worry even though I don't think he's particularly obsessed (since I believe him to be a narcissist), and he is extremely afraid of getting caught; that means no evidence or trails left. Twitter was like the Dream World of A Nightmare on Elm Street and he was Freddy Kreuger. His threats and abuse only come when I'm there.
Ag, please delete the above comment. Not just for safety reasons, but I am Catholic and believe in mercy. I've gone through proper channels and do not want this getting out.
DeleteFacebook crippled by liberal, not conservative media. "Executives defend having Fox News, 'atrocious' Infowars on platform":
ReplyDeletehttp://ew.com/tv/2018/07/25/facebook-fox-news-infowars/
The tech platforms think if they just agree with the propaganda nexus, and give into their initial demands, that'll stop the mob. It has not, and it will not.
They've had to hire 10,000 censors -- now 1/3 of their entire workforce -- to monitor each individual claim made by Alex Jones or whoever, cross-check it with some outsourced fact-checking website, and flag or not-flag it.
What a waste!
"Hmmm, at 6:13 in this clip, Jones claims that Robert Mueller is 'in it with the queers, they're building landing strips for gay Martians'. Let's see, there's nothing specifically about that claim on Snopes, so we're going to have to sub-contract 500 people at $100 an hour to investigate a random sample of open fields to see if such landing strips are in fact being built, and if so, what role Mueller plays in their construction, if any."
This is mass hysteria. (NOT NORMAL)
Once Facebook or YouTube agree to the first round of censorship hires, dooming its profits for the next three years, the propaganda mob will just ratchet their demands up another level, destroying profits for another 10 years (forever). They're already demanding that milquetoast Fox News be de-platformed after Alex Jones!
Then after that, all videos, press releases, etc. from the official White House site -- after all, just Putin-controlled propaganda.
Facebook exec says their flagging of questionable content reduces its sharing by 80% -- "but that still leaves 20% that does get shared! It only took less than 1% of voters to flip Michigan to Trump! It must be 100% effective, not 80%. Not good enough! This is life and death, the fate of our nation and the liberal international order!"
It will never end, until Facebook allows itself to become a subsidiary of the CIA and NSA.
Then they'll do the same shit to YouTube, Twitter, Google, everything.
Nor will acquiescing to the propaganda nexus keep libs from fleeing. They're already shell-shocked and cannot separate Facebook from Russia hacking the election, Bernie bros dissing Hillary, racist uncles sharing Cernovich memes, etc.
ReplyDeleteLiberals, especially liberal women, are most likely to block or unfollow or unfriend someone on social media for political disagreements. After November 2016, they're gone -- no getting them back.
So either you accept that loss and maintain everyone else, by not caving to the Russiagaters' demands (who will leave the site anyway!), or you cave and drive out more and more normies in addition to the already-lost liberal women.
And by caving to the demands to censor goofy patriotards, the conservatives will organize to punish Facebook / YouTube / Etc. for partisan censorship. Even Vice just blew the whistle on that (conservatives, not liberals, being shadowbanned on Twitter).
By caving, they lose both the liberals (who were already fleeing to safe spaces) and the conservatives (who only left in reaction to arbitrary censorship). Congratulations, you now have only 1% of your original user base.
Facebook et al need to fire their army of censors, restore some profitability, and tell the propaganda nexus and the Russiagater public that they've had enough of this haranguing. They're only going to block obscenity, copyright violations, etc. It's not ideological anymore -- their very financial survival depends on telling the propaganda nexus to go fuck itself.
Then the Bernie wing will get de-platformed by the propaganda nexus's demands on the social media sites.
ReplyDeleteRussiagate is about rabidly upholding the neoliberal status quo -- both Trump and Bernie threaten that stability, and both are the witting or unwitting agents of Putin, the Kremlin, and Russia.
The propaganda nexus has been relatively light on targeting the Bernie wing of the Democrats, but after Ocasio-Cortez's dethroning of neolib bigshot Crowley, they're ramping up their inclusion of Bernie and his supporters in the "Putin's dupes" category.
Trump is the bigger target, as he is actually occupying the WH, but ahead of the mid-terms and especially 2020 presidential race, the Russiagaters are planning on a two-front war against both Trump and Bernie.
Pretty soon MSNBC and yuppie suburban Resistards on Twitter will be demanding that Patreon de-platform Chapo Trap House. Who knows who's *really* paying those subscriptions? Probably a bunch of Kremlin cut-outs.
And say good-bye to viral videos like Ocasio-Cortez's campaign ad -- probably Putin-paid-for propaganda to get extremist, less-electable Democrats out of the primary, to be destroyed by Trumpers in the general (in the Bronx and Queens, mind you).
The Bernie crowd is the one bloc of Democrats that is still energetically engaged on social media, unlike the demoralized and shell-shocked Clintonites who just can't any longer. The Bernie movement wants to keep up the fight and win, while the Clintonites are resigned to opposition status, losing most of the time, and one-cheering their occasional scalp.
If social media knock out both the Trumpers and the Sandernistas, there will be literally no one left (since the Hill shills have already fled en masse, to recover from psychic overload, and to flee a site indelibly associated with Putin spreading propaganda that stole the election from Hillary.)
I hope Google doesn't take out your blog
ReplyDeleteTwitter tanking too! I called it a bubble co. in 2009, when they were valued at $1B:
ReplyDeletehttp://akinokure.blogspot.com/2009/09/all-they-need-is-sock-puppet-mascot.html
In its entirety:
*****
All they need is a sock puppet mascot
I recognize that I'm probably the 4,295,965th person to make that connection, but still.
"So, what does your website do?"
"We empower loud, middle-aged dopes to bore the world with updates about what they're doing."
"Goddamn -- give that man 100 million dollars!"
Worth $1 billion -- lmfao.
*****
Only change is that it shifted from middle-age dopes broadcasting their daily activities to their daily ideological grievances. Still worthless!