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Meta’s Monopoly Made It a Fair-Weather Friend
As the FTC trial has shown, a lack of competition allowed the company to shift its focus away from users—and toward its bottom line.
Consider that, in that 2023 press release about Facebook not being dead, Alison listed the priorities for the app that year, including “artificial intelligence, messaging, creators and monetization.” Not a word about boosting friend content, even though Meta executives knew that people wanted to see just that. Its biggest innovations on its social apps in recent years aren’t directed at improving the experience for users but at delivering content from strangers that compels you to click or becoming more efficient in serving personalized ads. I can sympathize with Meta’s argument that it may be unfair to roll back a merger that the government originally approved—but I found out that at the time, one of the five FTC commissioners wanted to pause the deal and take its investigation to the next stage.
Or read this on Wired
