The real threat to Facebook and Twitter isn't a pandemic or a president
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Alexei Oreskovic
May 27, 2020, 19:45 IST
Samantha Lee/Business Insider
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This week: The biggest threat to Facebook and Twitter
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It feels like ages ago, when the coronavirus lockdowns began in March, that skepticism about social media screentime and digital health were summarily cast aside. Who's got time to worry about those kinds of things when you need a crucial lifeline to the outside world?
On Wednesday, Facebook is holding its annual shareholder meeting (virtually) and Zuckerberg, who has spent the past few years promoting "time well spent" on the social network, will have to offer up some explanation for his company's apparent indifference and disdain for its professed values.
But for social media services — whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or even YouTube — there's a festering problem within the business that's not reflected in income statements or balance sheet, and it's getting worse every day. Put simply: Social media services have absolutely no idea why they exist anymore other than to simply keep all the plates in the air.
Twitter used to brag about being the "free speech wing of the free speech party." You may or may not have admired it, but it was a principle employees and users could understand. Now Twitter is an ugly knot of contradictions and ineffective posturing that's left it in the humiliating position of getting publicly chastised by the very person it's contorted itself for.
YouTube, which has the power of Google's army of computer programmers and AI experts behind it, looks incompetent with each new colony of conspiracy videos discovered on its site. And Facebook looks even more brazen and unscrupulous at this point.
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This isn't a problem that's going to blow a hole in any of these businesses overnight. Facebook's family of apps has 3 billion users. It would be a remarkable feat to lose the trust of 3 billion people at once.
But the way it looks now, the biggest threat these businesses face isn't disruption by a new technology or competitor, or even by a regulator or a pandemic. The biggest threat is what the social media companies have done to themselves by disrupting their own sense of purpose.
Exodus, Silicon Valley
Is Silicon Valley's reign as America's innovation capital over? It's one of the biggest questions being discussed in these parts after several big tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, announced that employees will be free to work from anywhere.
"I have no idea why they don't publish articles. I have no idea why we haven't seen anything come out. I don't know why no one seems to know what they're working on doing. It all seems very contrary to the spirit of openness and transparency that advances science, but no, I don't get it; it's not how I envisioned it at all."
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