Tomorrow's Business Today
Schadenfreud at Facebook
No one should feel glad that Facebook (Meta if you insist) is axing thousands of jobs. To the people and families affected, sincere best of luck.
That said it is very hard to completely avoid schadenfreude here at least about the woes of the wider company, which nearly all come down to arrogance.
The strikes against Facebook include that it: steals other people’s work (sometimes mine); publishes some of the most offensive material available (sometimes next to mine); tries to avoid any responsibility for that (not a responsibility my employers shirk from) ; tramples on people’s privacy (not just on the dignity of their cats); spies on people in ways few understand (I can’t see who’s picked up the Standard at the tube); and drives users to content they already agree with (sometimes you can read my article and my column on the same page), making the world an angrier, more hostile place (as far as CEO salaries are concerned, that’s my job).
It has been accused of monetising the worst misery imaginable.
Some of the above also applies to Twitter.
The answer both tech giants have always given to this stuff is mostly to just ignore it.
Or just deny it.
Or have that clown Nick Clegg claim all Facebook is really for is swapping pictures of cats.
For quite a while there, it did look like these tech giants would rule the world forever. That they were unstoppable. It is pleasing to see that this isn’t so.
Their decline would be gentler and garner more sympathy if they had been nicer along the way. If they had, in other, words done some decent PR.
Press release of the day
LGBT+ employees are prevented from getting senior roles, says this from INvolve.
Two in three of them think they have to tone down their identity to get the role they want.
Suki Sandhu of INvolve says: “With the recent rise in hostility towards the LGBT+ community across the world, it’s never been more important to celebrate and learn from those who are driving real change.”
Stories that will keep rolling
1) Are the Fed’s rate rises having any impact on inflation yet?
2) Are markets reassured by the US election outcome?
3) How worried is National Grid about power cuts this winter?
4) Is Auto Trader seeing people trade down or are there still not enough new cars?
