The Problem Is Not That Facebook Is an Ad Company

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Zuckerberg was famously very resistant to putting ads on Facebook for the longest period of time. And part of it was like because of the user experience and these things are ruining the user experience. I think the lure of the platform and the messiness of the ads, Google recognized very quickly.

Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform.

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Links

James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium
Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery
Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times
Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery
Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Wired About Facebook’s Privacy Problem — Wired
Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery