On Meta’s Q1 2026 earnings call, CFO Susan Li said the quiet part out loud. “We recently shared internally that we plan to reduce the size of our employee base in May. We believe a leaner operating model will allow us to move more quickly while also helping to offset the substantial investments we are ... Mark Zuckerberg Just Told 8,000 Employees Their Layoffs Are a Line Item in His $145 Billion AI Bill
Can’t wait to read a near-future article about all those employees making a new company that is unionized private non-stock and does better than Zuck’s Facebook. Making an open-source Facebook alternative so good that they end uo replacing Facebook altogether
Also, some people were open to making an open source business community on this platform to share how to get different businesses up and running, and how to grow/maintain them. Wonder if they would still like to do that
You must be new around these parts. Facebook (and the rest of big tech) are monopolists. For the past ~26 years, the tech industry has been using illegal anticompetitive tactics to suppress competition and destroy potential competitors. The government has done nothing, because they’re stupid and think “big = good”.
An example is Instagram. It was a start up that was growing rapidly, and actually became a threat to Facebook. What did Facebook do? They placed a massive bid to buy the company at like 10x their actual market value. It’s an offer so huge that every investor in Instagram would support the deal even if the founders were against it.
A sane government would see that as an obvious anticompetitive decision, and block the merger. Facebook should instead use that money to improve their own product and compete fairly. Obviously, that didn’t happen, the merger went through, and Facebook is still the owner of Instagram. Users and the tech industry at large are worse off.
Look at TikTok’s huge success. If they weren’t a Chinese company, they probably would have met a similar fate. Unfortunately for Facebook, they weren’t allowed to buy a Chinese company.
To be honest I prefer one place such as facebook to 108 places they acquired like facebook. Can you imagine having 108 platforms to register at and keep track, because each of your friends prefers a different one?
*because they are bribed to think “big = good”.
Don’t think they’re stupid; they want you to think that. They are greedy, short-sighted, and unempathetic to their fellow man. Their actual intelligence varies widely, but there are brilliant minds among them that lack the psychological traits that prevent our species from wiping itself out.
Facebook thrived because it got access to cheap money through Carlyle Investments. They used that cheap money to buy up a bunch of their competitors (most famously, Instagram, but there’s 108 different acquisitions in the Wikipedia list alone) and either insource them or close them out.
Very real possibility that a gaggle of Facebook refugees form a new company, get some decent Series A or B financing, start to take off on user numbers, and grow big enough to be worth adding to some bigger firm’s M&A list.
But the idea that they’re going to capture the 1B+ user Facebook market share? On what hardware? With what IT support? In partnership with which ISPs? Through which advertisement agencies? Come on, dude. Think about how these businesses function in practice. Setting aside how many “Facebook Clone” companies have flopped, there’s a value-add to Facebook that comes directly from their deplorable business model. You can’t make a “better Facebook” without sacrificing what makes the Facebook revenue play work. That’s before asking how you’re going to win a headbutt fight with a dinosaur.
It would take a lot to replace Facebook at this point, not only that but they are into much more then just social media. It would be awesome to see something happen, but even Google failed to beat them.
That being said, I can’t tell you how many times people started a business network, resource, etc on Reddit over the past 15 years. They don’t work, people get bored, people show up for the first few days then forget they exist, etc. It would be awesome to help others get to the point where they could launch and become successful, but it takes time and every on both sides, and most people aren’t willing to do the work either way long term.
I wish I didn’t agree with you, however, I have friends who rail against Facebook constantly and still send me Instagram links and use their meta headsets. Facebook is too ingrained into the social media structure to just easily be replaced. There’s about as much chance of replacing Facebook as Blue sky was at replacing Twitter. No matter how much people hate the people in charge, they’re still going to continue to use their product.
Im in that boat. Only reason im on Instagram is because the only way I can stay in continued contact with my friends and family is through it. If not for that this would be the only social media I would use
Cool and they well eat and pay their bills with unicorn farts and rainbows.
Personally, I prefer social communities to not be so heavily monetized. On the other hand, it would be nice if Frendica ran a bit better, but I can hardly complain if I’m not giving any time/money to that project to make it so.
Remember diaspora?
Why is that not already a thing?
Being blunt. I am 48 and have 3 kids to feed and 2 have disabilities. I have no interest in the risk that comes with doing something pro bono on the hopes it will work especially when everyone else is doing it pro bono. There’s no immediate individual incentive.
I may want socialism but I live in a capitalist world. I can’t have me and my family survive on good feelings.
Problem is, what you call “surviving” is just kicking the can down the road.
I don’t think the onus is on you alone. Nor do I think you need to play hero.
You need to be honest. You are feeding the beast that will eat your family later. Yes, you get another day. Meanwhile your horizons just got narrower, as you assist forces in your world that are closing off (privatizing) your world.
Just look at it all in context. We certainly can’t just keep indefinitely playing along nicely in the name of survival. At some point your world becomes a place not even worth surviving in. Are we looking for that point?
Nothing changes until the government reprioritizes which system is in play and then it becomes a global problem. I think we both want the same thing, but the reality is we aren’t getting it until it gets much worse and/or blood spills and I have neither the capacity nor the appetite for either.