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Which of two historic developments this past week ought most symbolize the importance of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as his company, Meta, today marks exactly 20 years of existence? Should it be the CEO’s humiliation on Wednesday at the hands of American senators, who told him he “had blood on his hands” and prompted him to turn and contritely address the relatives of young people whose tragic deaths, those relatives believe, were the result of using his company’s products? Or should it be what happened Thursday, when Meta announced vast corporate earnings and its stock the next day soared, adding $197 billion to its overall valuation—more in one day than had any company, ever?
The answer, of course, is both. The unprecedented journey of this society-altering corporate behemoth continues in ways that are almost as hard to comprehend and digest as the generative artificial intelligence technology it is racing to deploy. This company’s genuine financial and business success is, at the same khbrknews, a tragedy of world-historical proportions.
That’s because Facebook and its parent company Meta have truly harmed the world. That it has also been uniquely profitable in the course of doing that is not a coincidence. The willful omission of sufficient guardrails makes everything on Meta’s services go faster, including profit. The company this week announced a $50 billion share buyback alongside huge quarterly earnings. It even launched a shareholder dividend, unusual for a still fast-growing company. Zuckerberg himself, by far the largest stockholder, is set to earn around $700 million a year from that dividend.
I have had a unique perspective on this saga because I was the first journalist to seriously engage with the company’s story, starting in September 2006 when it had a mere 9 million users. (As of the end of 2023, Meta’s various services had a total of 3.98 billion users. The number it directly affects will surpass half the planet’s population in…
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