In a follow-up memo dated September 30th, [Vishal] Shah1 said that employees still weren’t using Horizon enough, writing that a plan was being made to “hold managers accountable” for having their teams use Horizon at least once a week. “Everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can’t do that without using it. Get in there. Organize times to do it with your colleagues or friends, in both internal builds but also the public build so you can interact with our community.”
He went on to call out specific issues with Horizon, writing that “our onboarding experience is confusing and frustrating for users” and that the team needed to “introduce new users to top-notch worlds that will ensure their first visit is a success.”
Shah said the teams working on Horizon needed to collaborate better together and expect more changes to come. “Today, we are not operating with enough flexibility,” his memo reads. “I want to be clear on this point. We are working on a product that has not found product market fit. If you are on Horizon, I need you to fully embrace ambiguity and change.”
I’m assuming that asking “What the fuck are we spending $70 billion on again?” wouldn’t be a recommended way to embrace ambiguity.
Zuckerberg told employees this year to have their meetings on Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app, where people can come together as avatars in virtual workspaces, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
[…] The source, who remained anonymous, told The Times that many Meta employees didn’t have VR headsets this year or hadn’t gotten around to setting them up. Those staff then had to rush to purchase headsets and register them before their managers realized, the source told The Times.
And the kicker:
Included in the Times report was inside information from two employees who told the newspaper that some workers call important metaverse projects “make Mark happy,” abbreviating it to “MMH.”
Won’t someone think of our mad king? I’m going to return to the office only to be forced to attend meetings virtually. MMH 🥲
Update
VP Metaverse (at Meta, that is. I don’t know how governance works in the Metaverse). ↩︎
I was rather dismayed to find out that there were no more episodes of “Grill Talk” with the leader of one of the worst companies on the planet1. I wonder if the PR team that thought it was a good idea to show the ‘casual and human’ side of their ethically bankrupt CEO are still with the company.
Here’s a condensed version by umami. It is one of my favorite creepy things on the internet ♥️
Disclaimer: I’m on Instagram, have an Oculus, and cannot get my family off WhatsApp. I console myself by noting that I’m never on Facebook itself and that all these companies were acquisitions whose souls haven’t been polluted by Facebook (yet… and as if that matters because it doesn’t.) ↩︎
I suppose all’s fine and dandy if you’re in news or social media and are spiritually obligated to deliver Value™ to stakeholders via those almighty engagement metrics that do nothing more than sow rancor among people who have a lot more in common than they’re led to believe. All Facebook does is hold a mirror up to society. All the news media does is report. Ethics and responsibility are for the Value™-illiterate. The only thing that matters, as the society and country you and your children live in devours itself, is making gobs of cash.
“They are also simply too young to navigate the complexities of what they encounter online, including inappropriate content and online relationships where other users, including predators, can cloak their identities using the anonymity of the internet,” the letter reads.
[…] “Without a doubt, this is a dangerous idea that risks the safety of our children and puts them directly in harm’s way,” New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said in a statement Monday. “There are too many concerns to let Facebook move forward with this ill-conceived idea, which is why we are calling on the company to abandon its launch of Instagram Kids. We must continue to ensure the health and wellness of our next generation and beyond.”
What AG James fails to understand is that cradle-to-grave engagement greatly enhances Shareholder Value. This is the only thing in the world that matters. Here’s the Plastic Shithead Overlord who runs the sordid business:
“I think helping people stay connected with friends and learn about different content online is broadly positive,” Zuckerberg said. “There are clearly issues that need to be thought through and worked out, including how parents can control the experience of kids, especially of kids under the age of 13 but I think that something like this could be quite helpful for a lot of people.”
And why should Value be affected by the few tens of thousands of children who may not enjoy the the “broadly positive” effects of our product which has issues to be worked out?
You see, Value cannot (and should not) be shackled by the kind of careful research and measured approach that considers a target audience’s well-being. If such research by the so-called-experts establishes that our venture is, indeed, harmful to children, it will (and ought to be) brushed aside against their remonstrations. All Facebook does is “hold a mirror up to society”1 and extract Value from whatever it finds ♥️
A shithouse company run by terrible human beings. But I hear the compensation is… *chef’s kiss*.
I’ve heard this lovely sentiment from quite a few Facebook employees. ↩︎
There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is wisdom, and effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. The curious thing is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Almost every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter.
to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Facebook’s engagement practices and likens them to time-tested strategies used by Big Tobacco before they were somewhat regulated.
And he would know. Kendall was the former “Director of Monetization” at Facebook and is currently the CEO of Moment, a company that seeks to help people “build healthier relationships with their phones.” Which I suppose is one way to atone.
