The left yet again is prematurely celebrating the demise of Facebook, similar to in 2012, in which they were wrong then and wrong now. The left wants so badly for Facebook to fail they have the invent fake news purporting of a huge Facebook backlash, when as I discussed last week such a backlash is only limited to a handful of users. But many on the ‘right’ want Facebook to fail too, agreeing with the ‘left’ that Facebook is too powerful, too big, and disregards its user’s privacy. A shared dislike or suspicion of big tech companies like Google and Facebook is one of few things that unite both sides of the political aisle. Maybe someone in 2020 could run under the ‘anti-Facebook party’ and win. But as much as people dislike Facebook, they will not stop using it, and they will not stop clicking the ads…same for Google.
Barrons writes: The View From Silicon Valley: 2 Facebook Risks That Seem Forgotten
The proverbial sky seems to be falling on Facebook (FB), with founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to finally answer questions from Congress in the coming weeks.
Lawmakers will be pushing Zuckerberg about the company’s privacy controversy, but the issues go deeper for Facebook. The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting episode has exposed Facebook to two risks that aren’t getting much attention: One is the possibility, slight as it might be, that Facebook is newly vulnerable to competition. The other very real risk is Facebook’s ability to retain and recruit top talent in hypercompetitive Silicon Valley. The biggest names in the Valley routinely poach workers from one another.
First, those plucky competitors. I need not look further than my email folder. Idka, an advertising-free social network, on Wednesday announced its subscription-based platform would be free to new users through October 2018. The company, which has vowed not to sell or share user data, claims a 50% increase in new users and an 800% increase in website visits in the past week.
Umm….really….the sky is falling because people are criticizing Facebook…as if that hasn’t happened before. Facebook has been controversial since its inception. Just do a Google search. Facebook has been stepping one user’s toes regarding privacy forever and it hasn’t had any negative impact on Facebook’s business, beyond a some negative press and having to release public statement. Remember Ello, which in 2015 I correctly predicted would fail. This will also fail. The reason why people use Facebook is because that’s where everyone is. A social network becomes exponentially more valuable the more people are on it.
Like it or not, Facebook is in a stronger position than ever and I predict it will be a trillion-dollar company within a few years. The liberal media wants successful Silicon Valley companies to fail. They tried in vain to bring down Tesla and Uber, due to false accusations of employee misconduct on the part of Uber and overblown safety concerns regarding Tesla; neither stuck. Even if you think Silicon Valley is too powerful and ideologically left-wing, which it certainty is, it’s interesting how the left-wing media has such great animus against Silicon Valley. This is possibly evidence of a long-standing ‘civil war’ among the left between the welfare liberals vs. the techno-comemrcalist neo liberals. The old left-wing institutions, such as the New York Times, CBS, Target (low-IQ retail), PBS, Stanford University, etc. see their power being eroded by the Cathedral of techno-commercialism, which although left-wing regarding social issues is more right-wing/libertarian regarding economic ones. The ‘old media’ empires and the legacy old Old Liberalism is slowly fading, being replaced by tech, social networking, Amazon.com, and Silicon Valley, that can be described ideologically as an amalgamation of libertarianism and neoliberalism. I predict the Old Left will lose, but the outcome will not be good for the ‘right’ either way.