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Technology

Meta's Monopoly Made It a Fair-Weather Friend

Wired
Summary
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71% Informative

Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in an antitrust trial that could result in the breakup of Meta ’s social networking empire.

John Sutter : Mark Zuckerberg has been aware that his users crave hearing more from their friends.

He says Facebook users spent only 17 percent of their time looking at content shared from friends.

Sutter says the company's core purpose of connecting friends just fell away.

John Sutter : Meta was able to shift to entertainment because it had locked in billions of customers who originally joined the platform to be in touch with their friends.

He says Meta 's gold standard is not a post about your cousin having a baby but some viral dispatch from an influencer or pundit, whether or not it makes you feel bad about yourself or appeals to some prurient instinct.

Zuckerberg 's spyware operation determined that WhatApp 's growth was a threat, and his offers kept getting larger.