Om Malik: The problem with Facebook

Meta’s north star doesn’t take into account value to the users, the benefit to the larger ecosystem or even the experience. Instead it is about how the company’s users time can be translated into dollars for the sole benefit for Meta.

This vibes with what I mentioned last week about Instagram's goal:

I think that people see Instagram and think their goal is to be the best place for sharing photos online, but I think that their ultimate goal is to be the place people spend the most time consuming visual content, and they will chase whatever trends they need to stave off competitors who challenge them.

Obviously every company is out there to make money, and gaining users is a great way to do that, but it does really hit me how often Meta's reasons for explaining why they're doing things is because "we need to get to 1 billion users" and not "we wanted to make the best product possible."

I know there are people inside Meta who do want to make great products, but the message from the top doesn't communicate to me that leadership is committed to this.