[cmiles8]

Meta isn’t going away anytime soon, but it’s on a slow and gradual decline into irrelevance. Ironically Zuckerberg has now broadly become the has-been geriatric business type he raged against so hard when Facebook began.

Companies in this stage default to exactly what Meta is doing, pound their employees with pointless initiatives and programs that just grind people to the bone and ultimately go nowhere.

[cheschire]

He was done with Facebook. Then he read Ready Player One and thought fuck it, why not?

It was a bet. It didn’t pay off. His billions might be tied to the value of the company but his millions are safe and secure. He can keep taking bets for a long time.

Meta is just an investment vehicle for him at this point.

[cmiles8]

Yes Zuckerberg will be fine. The employees caught up in his misadventures, maybe not so much.

[noisy_boy]

Well they hitched their wagons with their eyes wide open. Highly qualified engineers can't even feign ignorance due to lack of knowledge or education.

[strongpigeon]

Unlike a startup that pays with illiquid RSUs, Meta paid its people extremely well for its bets though. I dont think Zuck is a great leader at all, but he’s definitely willing to pay for talent.

[treis]

I dunno I think AI is pretty cataclysmic for the ad supported web. For one, why go to any webpage instead of reading the LLM summary. For two, why look at an ad riddled page when an LLM can clean it up for you.

[cosmicgadget]

Currently ad-free LLMs.

[treis]

They show them now but yeah they're another ad driven service in waiting. That's ultimately the end for Meta. When ad dollars go from websites to LLMs.

[zombot]

That's why Zuck is desperately trying to build Meta AI. It's an ad company, they couldn't care less whether their vehicle is websites or LLMs. But they do need the LLMs if they want to continue to sell ads.