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
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.