• g0nz0li0@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Twitter no longer has a media relations department. The company responded to a request for comment with a poop emoji.

      • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It’s just news. And nowadays this just means it’s panic and excessive exaggeration and a pinch of populism.

        Since the company is now in private hands of only one person, there is no need to paint a picture for the public. And with the efforts of making it more economical, there are of course hurdles to overcome.

        But overall most decisions were reasonable. The provider change and the change to the financial model were reasonable and will eventually lead to more profits, also with a smaller team behind the platform.

        Many here want to see the company fall, just because a person is bought it that’ll whom they despise. That’s just childish.

        The only bad decision on musks way so far was buying twitter for simply too much. And the second worst decision was shooting a shitty car into space. Now the aliens will believe us to have no standards.

            • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I think this covered it well:

              But overall most decisions were reasonable. The provider change and the change to the financial model were reasonable and will eventually lead to more profits, also with a smaller team behind the platform.

              • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                A smaller team as a reasonable thing doesn’t mean that I think it’s reasonable to not pay employees that are owed.

                But a company is not owed to employ someone.

                • lps2@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  He slashed damn near 2/3 of the company, their HRIS systems were in disarray, they removed much of the force that made it advertiser friendly, came up with obscene API pricing (no doubt to try and cash in on LLM companies), and have failed to pay rent and server costs. Elon took a flawed business model and made it significantly worse all while giving a middle finger to their advertisers which is overwhelmingly their primary revenue source.

              • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Oh no, I get called a bootlicker and oh no, downwards pointing arrows are clicked on my comments by people without knowledge about economics.

                I feel like walking into a group of Scientologists, trying to explain them Quantum Mechanics.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Paying severance isn’t a “hurdle” to “overcome,” it’s the cost of doing business. Not paying for things you have to pay for is not overcoming a hurdle. It’s running into it and continuing to run.

          • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I am just trying to explain basic economy to a bunch of angry emotional people. But you are of course free to believe that everything would be better without people like musk.

            • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I am just trying to explain basic economy to a bunch of angry emotional people.

              You are trying to sound superior, and it is not going well.

        • cassetti@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Well, well, well, look who’s defending their beloved billionaire. It’s truly fascinating how some people can overlook glaring issues and defend questionable decisions. Let’s dissect your defense, shall we?

          Firstly, you claim that since Twitter is now in private hands, there’s no need to paint a picture for the public. Ah, yes, because transparency and accountability are such outdated concepts, right? Who needs the public’s trust when one person can make all the decisions behind closed doors? It’s not like Twitter is a platform that millions of people rely on for news, communication, and information.

          You also applaud the efforts to make the platform more economical, but conveniently ignore the consequences. Sure, reducing the team might save some money, but what about the impact on content moderation? By firing a significant number of content moderation staff, Twitter has allowed extremist content to flourish, tarnishing its reputation and driving away advertisers. But hey, who needs ad revenue when you have a billionaire at the helm, right?

          Speaking of advertisers, you seem to brush off the importance of brand safety and the impact of hate speech on ad placements. Advertisers understandably don’t want their brands associated with extremist views or hate speech. By failing to address this issue effectively, Musk has driven away advertisers, causing a significant loss of revenue for Twitter. It’s not “childish” for people to criticize such negligence; it’s simply holding a company accountable for its actions.

          And let’s not forget Musk’s refusal to pay rent on Twitter’s offices. It’s truly admirable how he thinks he can just disregard contractual obligations and leave property owners high and dry. Such behavior shows a complete disregard for the law and basic decency.

          Oh, and the whole bedroom installation in the San Francisco headquarters? That’s just downright creepy. Who in their right mind thinks it’s acceptable to convert a commercial space into a residential one without proper zoning? Musk’s actions in this regard are not only inappropriate but also demonstrate a lack of respect for regulations and the communities in which his company operates.

          While it’s true that many billionaires own media outlets, that doesn’t excuse Musk’s questionable decisions and mismanagement. Controlling the narrative should never come at the expense of allowing hate speech and extremism to run rampant. Musk’s actions on Twitter are not the signs of a genius businessman; they’re the actions of someone more interested in their own ego and power.

          So, before you rush to defend your beloved Musk, take a step back and consider the real consequences of his decisions. Twitter deserves better leadership and accountability, not blind adoration from its defenders.

          • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Oh man. I just answered you to every point and then the Memmy app crashed. And my comment in the making was gone.

            I am not willing to repeat everything in a foreign language.

            We will not agree anyway.

            The world will continue to spin around. And platforms will come and go over the years.

            Good and bad is a matter of taste. And who are we to degrade another’s taste as bad…

        • gd42@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Half the time a site just refuses to work. I click on a link to a tweet, and it’s either “Ooops…” or a sign in window. This can’t be good for a social media site, that mainly gets its value from the number of users. Disregarding laws in Europe regarding the firings is also a very shortsigthed decision that will bite them in the ass.

          • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Half the time a site just refuses to work. I click on a link to a tweet, and it’s either “Ooops…” or a sign in window.

            The links not working might be connected to the provider change. But so had no such experiences so far. The forced login to see content is actually something Facebook and other companies already do. It forces people to make an account. This always works out in favour of a company, if the company already has a very large amount of users and has a monopoly on the market.

            This can’t be good for a social media site, that mainly gets its value from the number of users.

            This works especially well with media. Newspapers that embed tweets must link them In their articles, often embedded in an article. This means the newspaper will need more than the current 600 tweets a day to work. It will need to pay to make use of 6000. This concept only works if you need to login to see tweets.

            Disregarding laws in Europe regarding the firings is also a very shortsigthed decision that will bite them in the ass.

            I am uninformed about the firings of European twitter personnel. You might be right about that. Or it’s just an inflated problem. Twitter still has a legal team.

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Many here want to see the company fall, just because a person is bought it that’ll whom they despise. That’s just childish.

          The only bad decision on musks way so far was buying twitter for simply too much.

          What the actual fuck???

          Not paying bills, rent, employees’ severance and bonuses? This has real consequences for ordinary people who aren’t asshole billionaires. I don’t think anyone here wants the company to fail because they despise him. We want it to fail because he’s a terrible person doing terrible things.

          • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Hold on. A company is not always bound to pay all those things. It’s always a legal question. And while the media makes a big deal out of it, the severance and bonuses claims are still just lawsuit claims.

            And to my knowledge, many of those claims are still questionable.

            • TheFriendlyDickhead@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Yea it’s legal question. If you break the contract they will get their lawyers. It’s as simple as that. And you will probably loose that trial.

              • very smart Idiot@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Exactly. And now the question is, if the contract was broken or not. To my knowledge Musk didn’t fire twitters legal team. So letting some employees go, should have been looked I to by said legal team.

            • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              And to my knowledge, many of those claims are still questionable.

              Since when are service bills and rent questionable after they’ve been rendered?

        • graphite@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          What about the severance for those employees?

          I think it’s important to be critical; Musk is someone who I tend to be neutral with, and I refuse to align myself with the “eLoN MuSk bad!!!” crowd, because I’m a fucking adult.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And the second worst decision was shooting a shitty car into space.

          I don’t have a moral judgement on that but I agree with one microbiologist who spoke about it. It is the single most influential event in the history of all life on earth.

          Because it won’t just crash into a planet or zip off to nowhere it will just orbit for who knows how long. Breaking apart by outgassing and random microimpacts. Containing who knows how many protected and suspended bacteria and fungal spores. Pieces will reach every major body eventually. Including ones that can support life, such as Europa.

          The impact of this event could stretch out for billions of years. Long after the sun ruins the inner planets the outer moons could still support life.

          • MartyFarty@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            So billions of years from now, millions of light years away, there could be ‘intelligent’ life forms on another planet that evolved from bacteria on elon’s unwashed poop hands?

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Like his buddy Donald, Elon seems to have a real problem paying his bills.

    • ForgetReddit@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If we had a functioning government it would liquidate his assets and pay it out to those he refused to pay.

      • Gogo Sempai@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        We do have a functioning govt. It functions to make the rich richer and give them all the freedom in the world, including exploiting the workforce in all ways possible. But hey, at least our economy is #1! Rejoice!

      • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We do have a functioning government. I requires claims to be tried in court instead of just taking $500 million dollars away without any sort of due process.

  • Candybar121@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It really is hilarious how quickly Elon went from a cool guy to being the worlds biggest loser 😂😂

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      he stopped being a cool guy the moment we could see him. he was the enigmatic batman/edison figure for a while, when most people only knew him by the projects he funded. then he decided he wanted to be a celebrity and as soon as we figured out who he is watching him fail miserably has become a pastime for most of us.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          a transition from people’s image of bruce wayne to what bruce wayne would be like in reality.

          I’ve always wanted to do a batman universe where bruce sees his parents killed, and immediately receives some form of mental health care. Just month after month, releasing comics about a guy who lives comfortably within his means, donates heavily to charities that help alleviate the need for most gothamites to turn to crime and uses his discipline and focus to cultivate an attitude of kindness and centeredness. a bruce wayne that teaches raja yoga, but all of it, not just the poses and breathing exercises. to me, batman is a story about the extraordinary things dudes will do to address their trauma other than go to therapy.

    • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Meh, his base still loves him. Like Trump, this is considered a “smart move business men do” and those getting fucked “are losers for allowing it to happen”.

      • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think his base has shifted, though. Used to be people who were interested in technology, in space exploration, in green and sustainable technology, etc.

        Now a significant part of his fan base are people that decided he’s their hero after he purchased Twitter and then unblocked white supremacists, Nazis, racists, white nationalists, fascists, conspiracy theorists, xenophobes, etc. and decided to harass, block, and mock middle-of-the-road journalists, national public media, and use all the far right dog whistles and megaphones.

        So yeah, he still has a lot of support - but it’s not the same support he had 10 years ago.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I was never a fanboy of his but I am still a spacex fanboy. Lucky everything I read he really was only involved in the beginning. Asked me say five years ago I would have said something like “yeah he does some cool projects”.

          • dustyData@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “yeah he does owns some cool projects”

            FTFY He only owns those things. There’s interviews around about how at the beginning the only way SpaceX could get anything off the ground was by gaslighting the Muskrat into hyper-focusing on something irrelevant while actual engineers solved the hard problems. Management had what they called Elon’s “handlers”, whose job was to keep him off critical things and whose motto was “just let him take credit for it”.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t know that 5 years ago :/

              Look, I really was never a fanboy of his. I am an engineer and I have seen his type enough. The good version of his type does their job which is sell sell sell, smooth things over, and cheerlead a bit. The bad version, well you get to see that on the news every day.

              Yes we have a good type of version of him at my job. He dresses well, binges Ted Talks, and got me a new laptop when mine was running slow. He can have all the credit, I get all the glory.

      • Cabrio@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Funny how it’s only ever spectators that think like that because they’ve never had a dog in the race.

        • zeppo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s how conservatives view everything. Anything other people think is a problem or want to change, NO WAY, it’s your fault, “personal responsibility, and so on. But as soon as they’re personally affected by something, oh wow! It turns out say, being forced into bankruptcy from medical bills or whatever actually is a problem and they’re really concerned about it.

    • graphite@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Eh, I wouldn’t say loser. He still has billions of dollars.

      A dick move though for sure.

      • void@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        being a billionaire doesn’t grant you immunity to being a loser, I would actually say being a billionaire makes it so you have a significantly higher chance of being a loser.

  • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The same CEO who didn’t understand the law when purchasing Twitter, also didn’t understand employment law when unceremoniously dumping employees?!

    There’s a big surprise. Like Iago, I’m about to have a heart attack and die of “not surprise”.

  • Bizzacore@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    He’s proving day after day, that no matter how much money he has, he wants nothing more than to be a terminally online shitposter.

    Everyone who called him a “loser” in this thread, is 1,000% correct.

  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I’m really starting to think that Musk deliberately destroying Twitter is not a conspiracy theory.

    I mean, with Twitter and Reddit gone, only Facebook remains.

    Ah, well, there are also WhatsApp, Viber, Tik-Tok, Youtube, Telegram which need similar treatment.

    Of these I casually use YT and Telegram.

    The former is slowly being replaced by uploading videos to the platforms they are posted on.

    The latter - well, there was a time Durov promised there would be no ads ever, there are ads everywhere now. And technically it’s junk (the protocol, I mean, while the QT desktop client itself on the contrary is notoriously CPU and memory efficient for my loads of subscribed channels, groupchats etc ; it does crash sometimes, but no Matrix or XMPP client would simply survive that amount of garbage perpetually updating, so).

    • FightMilk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I use Youtube more than any other service. If you like video essays, documentaries, and other medium- and long-form content, it’s the only place on earth to get it. Cable television ditched intelligent content long ago. Nebula and Curiousity are okay, but most of the content that I couldn’t already get on Youtube has that shitty cable tv vibe.

      The only downside with Youtube is it’s huge and the algorithm is iffy. It can take a long time to build up a library of subscriptions that provide high level content every day. But now that I have that, it’s basically my exclusive streaming platform. I watch 1hr of Netflix/HBO/whatever with my wife every night, and all the rest is history, cooking, science, etc. on Youtube.

      • kobra@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I am very similar and did not realize before you said it, that I’m essentially just replacing the early days of educational TV when TLC, History Channel, Discovery, etc. were all showing educational/interesting content.

    • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Look people are gonna say Elon was always like this but I disagree. There’s a difference between being a major asshole and this kind of insanity.

      We all acknowledge how being terminally online has a huge negative effect on your mental health. We all acknowledge that covid drove a lot of people crazy.

      I’m pretty this happened to Elon. This isn’t a sympathy thing just an observation.

      I think YouTube is in an extremely good position to elevate long form content. The problem is that I have 0 faith in googles management to the point where I’m sure they’ll ruin it eventually.

      I disagree on telegram. It’s never been more relevant. Both Russian and Ukrainians post on them real time involving the war. You could follow the failed coup on Wagner via telegram.

      Conceptually, I think there’s a huge need for a telegram like service that’s more or less free for all parties to broadcast via channels. Obviously there are downsides, but I’d argue the ability to broadcast revolutions real time is worth it.

      The problem is telegram itself isn’t really trustworthy given the Russia connection

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        I disagree on telegram. It’s never been more relevant. Both Russian and Ukrainians post on them real time involving the war. You could follow the failed coup on Wagner via telegram.

        That’s because of the user base, no other reason. And you could follow not that much.

        Conceptually, I think there’s a huge need for a telegram like service that’s more or less free for all parties to broadcast via channels. Obviously there are downsides, but I’d argue the ability to broadcast revolutions real time is worth it.

        We are on one of such services now, FFS.

        The problem is telegram itself isn’t really trustworthy given the Russia connection

        You don’t have to think that far to say it’s not trustworthy. Just read about its protocol and how its creators are as people.

    • Grimr0c@lemmy.world
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      I could be wrong, but I firmly believe that the dismantling of Social Media is an indicator of the state of the economy, instead of being intentional. I believe that investors are hurting for money and are pushing platforms to turn a profit at all costs which is hurting the industry. Additionally, This appears to be happening elsewhere in other industries too but is manifesting into other symptoms. However, I think that the Tech and Entertainment industries will be the first to “Fall” (for lack of a better word) as these industries are more of a luxury rather than a necessity.

    • ඞmir@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Durov also went full NFTbro with his fucking username sales. I was a massive Telegram advocate until that moment. Destroyed my trust in him. Now we move to targeted ads inserted everywhere… the end of Telegram is near :(

      • buran@lemmy.world
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        I haven’t used Telegram in ages. Now I think they may have reset my username. And I can’t reset it because it insists it’s taken.

        Oh well. It’s just another service full of crazy.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Living in Russia, I had some idea who Durov is from his interviews and reputation and actions, before Telegram when he was in control of VKontakte too, so I never was a Telegram advocate.

        Also that mtproto is a load of hacky crap is something people were writing whole articles about from the very beginning, and their arguments that their IM is “secure” were also quite typical for frauds.

        But, still, at some point it was usable. EDIT: And there was hope for alternative clients pleasant to use.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        I thoguht it was more like WhatsApp with extra security?

        About the opposite, WhatsApp is Telegram with extra security. Telegram is not secure at all. It’s not even E2E for anything but “secure chats” which its desktop client doesn’t have.

        So not social media at all - just a messenger client.

        In channels and group chats it has reactions similar to social media and used as such. Channels are like blogs - they consist of posts by the channel’s authors with a link to comments. Channels and group chats can be private or public. Private ones you can’t search for and can join if somebody adds you.

        You don’t have any kind of news feed, yes. But in general it’s pretty close to social media in experience.

        Creating a channel and posting something there is similar to your page in Facebook, just optional. You can add the link to it in your profile description so that people could go there after clicking at your avatar pic in a group chat, for example.

        In fact it is being used like social media. Just no news feed and no friends (contacts are rather similar to that anyway).

        EDIT: Describing it made me realize that I’m probably unfair to Durov. If from VK the most important things he’d remove were friends and news feeds, then he might actually be not such a bad person. It’s just that I want a p2p messenger\social network with user directory, like old Skype, but completely p2p. It wouldn’t become worse if it had Telegram-like channels functionality, just first things first.

  • Jordan Lund
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    1 year ago

    “Yeah, we owe a lot of people a lot of money. Get in line.” - Elon, probably…

  • Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    First Twitter, then Reddit. Wonder when/ how Facebook is gonna destroy itself.

    • GreyBeard
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      1 year ago

      Facebook did harm to themselves with the whole metaverse thing. They’ve already pivoted away from it though.

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        1 year ago

        I wonder how they can change their name back from Meta without admitting that it was an incredibly dumb decision in the first place.

        • StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk
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          1 year ago

          Do people still not understand the name change?

          They’re called Meta instead of Facebook, because Meta is not only Facebook, but also Instagram, Whatsapp, Threads and so forth.

          • AssPennies@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And by all accounts it still has the same c-suite/management structure as before.

            This “restructuring” was done in part to protect the whole when all the antitrust shit finally starts to roost. I’ll give their lawyers credit here, they foresaw the inevitability getting slammed with antitrust lawsuits, and now they can less painfully peel off the “offending” subsidiaries and blame them for any wrong doing instead of parent meta.

            Plot twist: It’s totally still meta that’s dictating the evil, they aren’t fooling anyone, fuck their plausible deniability.

            • Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Google did the same thing when they formed their parent company, Alphabet (an equally stupid name compared to Meta).

  • Hazdaz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Never gonna happen.

    This will probably settle out of court, the lawyers will get 1/2 the settlement and the thousands of employees involved will a few hundred bucks each. If that.