You live by the algorithm, you die by the algorithm. Facebook got straight slaughtered yesterday. By the time Wall Street closed yesterday, Facebook's shares were down 19%, wiping out over 120 billion of the companies value. To put that into perspective, that's almost four times the entire market capitalization of Twitter. It was the largest single day wipeout in stock market history. Mark Zuckerberg himself lost over 15 billion dollars.
The official reason for all this that you'll hear from business analysts and the media is, well I'll just quote one: "This comes a day after executives forecast years of lower profit margins due to Facebook's concerns over privacy and its role in global news flow."
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Ok, privacy concerns are definitely real, as seen after the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. But the second part of the quote that I just read, where Facebook is managing its quote, "role in the global news flow" is the entire reason why people are beginning to bail on the company. I want Facebook to be a place where I can go and pick and choose the type of content that I choose is important to me. I don't want Facebook to choose for me.
Facebook's algorithm has been destroying media companies lately, especially the smaller ones - and even more so - those that lean conservative. The Independent Journal Review, a conservative site the focuses on millenials, had to lay off most of their employees back in February. The reason why? Facebook's algorithm was choking off their reach. And IJR is just one of the many that have been struggling.
So why would Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook do this if it A: hurts businesses And B: hurts their own business model? It's your typical progressive mindset. Listen to this quote from Zuckerberg a few months ago where he lays out Facebook's focus areas for 2018:
We feel a responsibility to make sure our services aren't just fun to use, but also good for people's well-being. So we've studied this trend carefully by looking at the academic research and doing our own research with leading experts at universities.
It's the same with progressives in Washington as it is with progressives in silicon valley. They feel that you're too stupid to be able to make your own decisions. You're too stupid to be able to pick the type of content that you feel is important to you. You're too much of an idiot to decipher fake news from real news. So Facebook is trying to be the gatekeepers - you know - so you don't hurt yourself.
I'm sorry but I don't need some progressive computer algorithm telling me the content that I should be consuming.
I'm sorry but I don't need some progressive computer algorithm telling me the content that I should be consuming. I can do that on my own. The free market will fix this. You saw that a little bit yesterday. Users are fed up with being told what to do, and what they should be watching and reading. Someone soon will come along and provide the services that Facebook is denying. The free market fixes these situations.
Progressivism doesn't.
