Kirkpatrick says while Meta is skilled at generating profits with over 4 billion users, systemic issues persist across the social media empire's businesses. He notes concerns around "empowering autocrats", "harming teens", and violating privacy guidelines.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
JOSH LIPTON: Meta is firing on all cylinders. That stock is up nearly 40% just this year, boosted by earnings and a dividend announcement. But our next guest, who has been reporting on this company for 17 years, says despite its success, Meta is, quote, "a tragedy of world historical proportions." Author and journalist David Kirkpatrick joins us for more. David, thank you for being here.
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- Thanks for having me, Josh.
JOSH LIPTON: So I thought it's interesting, David, because firing on all cylinders is a great way to put this, right? There's a lot of viewers who are watching right now, and they would look at this company and say, they seem to be just killing it financially, competitively. The stock's up 170% in the past 12 months. And normally, David, you know, see a move like that, analysts tend to back off a little bit. Not here, 85% of analysts still say you should buy this one.
But your argument, David, is that that's only part of the story for Meta.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Thank you for saying that for me, because, yes, your viewers love this company because it's made so many of them so much money. I mean, but at and there's a weird dichotomy that exists here and you have to really parse, because Zuckerberg is a brilliant business strategist. But he's also an amoral, antisocial human being in the way that he has led his company.
Those things can both be true.
JOSH LIPTON: What do you mean by that, David? Tough words.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Haven't you paid attention to all the news over the last-- ever since Trump--
JOSH LIPTON: An amoral-- give us an example.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Ever since Trump was elected there have been an unremitting stream of reports, very well-documented many of them based on insider whistleblowers about things they have known and chosen not to act on about empowering autocrats, about harming teens, about privacy violations, of course, Cambridge Analytica. And they get a pass because they make people so much money. And look, they are in a brilliantly conceived business that is almost incapable of not making money.
And I do think Zuckerberg has done a lot of very smart things from a cold-blooded business management point of view. Like, for example, pivoting away from the idiotic Metaverse idea, which-- and we can talk about why they renamed the company, because I don't think it was quite what it seemed, to understanding AI really is the opportunity. And they have been investing in it for a long time, so they're incredibly well positioned. And they're already making money from AI with ad design, ad targeting, and you know-- so you can't fault them on figuring out good ways to make money. You can fault them on their social impact. Those are two different things.
JULIE HYMAN: OK, so what do you do with that? In other-- you know, the history of corporate America is littered with companies that were very successful and amoral at best, evil at worst, right? And they just kept going, right? In some cases, they did--
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: A lot of them were harmed by cigarette-- that--
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JULIE HYMAN: That one, yes, as an example, but there are others that just kept on with the same business model or slapped in different ways, but kept on with the business model. So what happens, I guess, is what I'm asking.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: I'd be curious to know what companies you think would be analogous to this one. Don't forget, they have 4 billion users, 4 billion. No company has ever had that. Maybe Google is in that range. But they have 4 billion users. They're about to surpass half of humanity, so their impact is so vast they deserve our scrutiny in every direction. They are one of the world's most important socioeconomic, sociocultural forces in both realms. So you cannot not pay attention to their impact.
JULIE HYMAN: And yet Congress time and time again has failed to regulate them.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, that's what the answer to your question before is what do we do about it, we regulate. And Europe has figured that out. In Europe now, it's more or less about to be true that Facebook will not-- Meta will not be able to share data between Instagram and Facebook for ad targeting, which for them is very bad news. And they decided to do that based on privacy obsessions they have in Europe.
I'm not saying that was the best thing to regulate. But the point that is one of many, many regulatory innovations and initiatives that they've made in Europe that are beginning to push back against all these companies on perceived harms that Europeans care about. So they're showing that it can be done.
In the US, don't forget, Meta is number one in us lobbying expenditure of all companies. That is not a coincidence. They are very, very afraid of regulatory pushback.
JOSH LIPTON: All right, David--
JULIE HYMAN: I have to tell you about those other companies, I think, might be in the category, offline.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Oh, I have so many more negative things to say.
JOSH LIPTON: David, thank you for joining us. It was great--