Tag: zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg Can Sack 11,000 Workers But Shareholders Can’t Sack Him: It’s Called ‘Management Entrenchment’
BUSINESS, POLITICS

Mark Zuckerberg Can Sack 11,000 Workers But Shareholders Can’t Sack Him: It’s Called ‘Management Entrenchment’

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg told the 11,000 staff he sacked this week. But does he really? The retrenchment of about 13% of the workforce at Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, comes as Zuckerberg’s ambitions for a “metaverse” tank. The company’s net income in the third quarter of 2022 (July to September) was US$4.4 billion – less than half the US$9.2 billion it made in the same period in 2021. That’s due to a 5% decline in total revenue and a 20% increase in costs, as the Facebook creator invested in his idea of “an embodied internet – where, instead of just viewing content, you are in it” and readied for a post-COVID boom that never came. Since he changed the company’s name to Meta a year ago, its s...
Who May Be In Hot Water With The SEC – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
IN OTHER NEWS

Who May Be In Hot Water With The SEC – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg

Jena Martin, West Virginia University The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that Facebook treats users’ posts differently depending on their wealth, privilege and status. That and other findings based on internal Facebook documents may be troubling enough, but the social network’s bigger problem could be the Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents suggest Facebook presented different, contradictory versions of these policies in public and private. From a securities regulation standpoint, any big lie could potentially defraud investors and invite an investigation – especially when the company involved is Facebook. I’m a legal scholar who spent five years as an enforcement attorney at the SEC, the agency that protects investors and regulates securities. Let me explain secur...
‘Myth Of The Founder’ Puts Tremendous Power In Hands Of Big Tech CEOs Like Zuckerberg – Posing Real Risks To Democracy
BUSINESS

‘Myth Of The Founder’ Puts Tremendous Power In Hands Of Big Tech CEOs Like Zuckerberg – Posing Real Risks To Democracy

Coinbase’s plan to go public in April highlights a troubling trend among tech companies: Its founding team will maintain voting control, making it mostly immune to the wishes of outside investors. The best-known U.S. cryptocurrency exchange is doing this by creating two classes of shares. One class will be available to the public. The other is reserved for the founders, insiders and early investors, and will wield 20 times the voting power of regular shares. That will ensure that after all is said and done, the insiders will control 53.5% of the votes. Coinbase will join dozens of other publicly traded tech companies – many with household names such as Google, Facebook, Doordash, Airbnb and Slack – that have issued two types of shares in an effort to retain control for founders and insid...
The Facebook Antitrust Case Relies So Heavily On Mark Zuckerberg’s Emails
BUSINESS

The Facebook Antitrust Case Relies So Heavily On Mark Zuckerberg’s Emails

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s own words play a starring role in the government’s case to break up his social network. “It is better to buy than compete,” he allegedly wrote in an email in 2008, according to the lawsuit. Four years later, after Facebook purchased what he had called a “very disruptive” photo-sharing app, he celebrated by explaining to a colleague in another email: “Instagram was our threat. … One thing about startups though is you can often acquire them.” As an antitrust professor preparing a new spring course called “Antitrust for Big Tech,” I read the FTC’s Dec. 9 complaint with great interest. I have taught my students for years that internal documents can come back to haunt antitrust defendants. But I have never seen a plaintiff’s case rely so heavily on a CEO’s own w...
TECHNOLOGY

Zuckerberg: ‘Fifth estate’ should not decide what is credible

Facebook CEO says social media companies ought not be responsible for judging the merits of political expression. Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the social network doesn't fact-check political advertisements because it's not the place of technology companies to become arbiters of truth. "I don't think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true," Zuckerberg said on Thursday to an auditorium full of students at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall in Washington. "People should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying." In recent weeks, Facebook has been criticized for its policy on political ads, with the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Elizabeth...