Meta: An AI Management Issue Maybe?
December 17, 2025
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I really try not to think about Facebook, Mr. Zuckerberg, his yachts, and Llamas. I mean the large language model, not the creatures I associate with Peru. (I have been there, and I did not encounter any reptilian snakes. Cuy chactado, si. Vibora, no.)
I read in the pay-walled orange newspaper online “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Turbulent Bet on AI.” Hmm. Turbulent. I was thinking about synonyms I would have suggested; for example, unjustifiable, really big, wild and crazy, and a couple of others. I am not a real journalist so I will happily accept turbulent. The word means, however, “relating to or denoting flow of a fluid in which the velocity at any point fluctuates irregularly and there is continual mixing rather than a steady or laminar flow pattern” according to the Google’s opaque system. I think the idea is that Meta is operating in a chaotic way. What about “juiced running fast and breaking things”? Yep. Chaos, a modern management method that is supposed to just work.
A young executive with oodles of money hears an older person, probably a blue chip consultant, asking one of those probing questions about a top dog’s management method. Will this top dog listen or just fume and keep doing what worked for more than a decade? Thanks, Qwen. Good enough.
What does the write up present? Please, sign up for the FT and read the original article. I want to highlight two snippets.
The first is:
Investors are also increasingly skittish. Meta’s 2025 capital expenditures are expected to hit at least $70bn, up from $39bn the previous year, and the company has started undertaking complex financial maneuverings to help pay for the cost of new data centers and chips, tapping corporate bond markets and private creditors.
Not RIFed employees, not users, not advertisers, and not government regulators. The FT focuses on investors who are skittish. The point is that when investors get skittish, an already unsettled condition is sufficiently significant to increase anxiety. Investors do not want to be anxious. Has Mr. Zuckerberg mismanaged the investors that help keep his massive investments in to be technology chugging along. First, there was the metaverse. That may arrive in some form, but for Meta I perceive it as a dumpster fire for cash.
Now investors are anxious and the care and feeding of these entities is more important. The fact that the investors are anxious suggests that Mr. Zuckerberg has not managed this important category of professionals in a way that calms them down. I don’t think the FT’s article will do much to alleviate their concern.
The second snippet is:
But the [Meta] model performed worse than those by rivals such as OpenAI and Google on jobs including coding tasks and complex problem solving.
This suggests to me that Mr. Zuckerberg did not manage the process in an optimal way. Some wizards left for greener pastures. Others just groused about management methods. Regardless of the signals one receives about Meta, the message I receive is that management itself is the disruptive factor. Mismanagement is, I think, part of the method at Meta.
Several observations:
- Meta like the other AI outfits with money to toss in the smart software dumpster fire are in the midst of realizing “if we think it, it will become reality” is not working. Meta’s spinning off chunks of flaming money bundles and some staff don’t want to get burned.
- Meta is a technology follower, and it may have been aced by its message and social media competitor Telegram. If Telegram’s approach is workable, Meta may be behind another AI eight ball.
- Mr. Zuckerberg is a wonder of American business. He began as a boy wonder. Now as an adult wonder, the question is, “Why are investors wondering about his current wonder-fulness?”
Net net: Meta faces a management challenge. The AI tech is embedded in that. Some of its competitors lack management finesse, but some of them are plugging along and not yet finding their companies presented in the Financial Times as outfits making “increasingly skittish.” Perhaps in the future, but right now, the laser focus of the Financial Times is on Meta. The company is an easy target in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2025
Did Meta Tell a Little Bitty Lie?
December 8, 2025
Meta lied about the danger of its services and products? SHOCK! GASP! Who would have guessed? Everyone did! In an article from the legendary magazine Time comes the story: “Court Filings Allege Meta Downplayed Risks To Children And Misled The Public.”
The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California and alleges that Meta, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok purposely ignored strange adults contacting minors, denied that that social media exacerbates mental health issues in teens, and allowed content related to child sex abuse, suicide, and eating disorder to be shared. Meta, the case claims, didn’t share this information with Congress and didn’t implement safety features to protect kids.
It’s a painful reality:
“ ‘Meta has designed social media products and platforms that it is aware are addictive to kids, and they’re aware that those addictions lead to a whole host of serious mental health issues,’ says Previn Warren, the co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case. ‘Like tobacco, this is a situation where there are dangerous products that were marketed to kids,’ Warren adds. ‘They did it anyway, because more usage meant more profits for the company.’”
Meta denies the allegations that it pursued profit over safety. Meta did add safety features, including teen accounts with privacy options. It was barely a plug on a leaking dam. Teen accounts didn’t stop the addictive behavior that social media accounts nurture and exploit. It affects the brain like tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and more. Meta could be described a pusher of a “digital drug”.
Meta, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat conducted research on the psychological ramifications of using social media and they found out:
Around the same time, another user-experience researcher at Instagram allegedly recommended that Meta inform the public about its research findings: ‘Because our product exploits weaknesses in the human psychology to promote product engagement and time spent,’ the researcher wrote, Meta needed to ‘alert people to the effect that the product has on their brain.’ Meta did not.”
If this lawsuit triumphs it will be akin to Big Tobacco losing their case that “tobacco wasn’t addictive and actually had health benefits.” We can hope it wins.
Whitney Grace, December 30, 2025
Can Meta Buy AI Innovation and Functioning Demos?
September 22, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
That “move fast and break things” has done a bang up job. Mark Zuckerberg, famed for making friends in Hawaii, demonstrated how “think and it becomes real” works in the real world. “Bad Luck for Zuckerberg: Why Meta Connect’s Live Demos Flopped” reported
two of Meta’s live demos epically failed. (A third live demo took some time but eventually worked.) During the event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed it on the Wi-Fi connection.
Yep, blame the Wi-Fi. Bad Wi-Fi, not bad management or bad planning or bad prepping or bad decision making. No, it is bad Wi-Fi. Okay, I understand: A modern management method in action at Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Or, bad luck. No, bad Wi-Fi.
Thanks Venice.ai. You captured the baffled look on the innovator’s face when I asked Ron K., “Where did you get the idea for the hair dryer, the paper bag, and popcorn?”
Let’s think about another management decision. Navigate to the weirdly named write up “Meta Gave Millions to New AI Project Poaches, Now It Has a Problem.” That write up reports that Meta has paid some employees as much as $300 million to work on AI. The write up adds:
Such disparities appear to have unsettled longer-serving Meta staff. Employees were said to be lobbying for higher pay or transfers into the prized AI lab. One individual, despite receiving a grant worth millions, reportedly quit after concluding that newcomers were earning multiples more…
My recollection that there is some research that suggests pay is important, but other factors enter into a decision to go to work for a particular organization. I left the blue chip consulting game decades ago, but I recall my boss (Dr. William P. Sommers) explaining to me that pay and innovation are hoped for but not guaranteed. I saw that first hand when I visited the firm’s research and development unit in a rust belt city.
This outfit was cranking out innovations still able to wow people. A good example is the hot air pop corn pumper. Let that puppy produce popcorn for a group of six-year-olds at a birthday party, and I know it will attract some attention.
Here’s the point of the story. The fellow who came up with the idea for this innovation was an engineer, but not a top dog at the time. His wife organized a birthday party for a dozen six and seven year olds to celebrate their daughter’s birthday. But just as the girls arrived, the wife had to leave for a family emergency. As his wife swept out the door, she said, “Find some way to keep them entertained.”
The hapless engineer looked at the group of young girls and his daughter asked, “Daddy, will you make some popcorn?” Stress overwhelmed the pragmatic engineer. He mumbled, “Okay.” He went into the kitchen and found the popcorn. Despite his engineering degree, he did not know where the popcorn pan was. The noise from the girls rose a notch.
He poked his head from the kitchen and said, “Open your gifts. Be there in a minute.”
Adrenaline pumping, he grabbed the bag of popcorn, took a brown paper sack from the counter, and dashed into the bathroom. He poked a hole in the paper bag. He dumped in a handful of popcorn. He stuck the nozzle of the hair dryer through the hole and turned it on. Ninety seconds later, the kernels began popping.
He went into the family room and said, “Let’s make popcorn in the kitchen. He turned on the hair dryer and popped corn. The kids were enthralled. He let his daughter handle the hair dryer. The other kids scooped out the popcorn and added more kernels. Soon popcorn was every where.
The party was a success even though his wife was annoyed at the mess he and the girls made.
I asked the engineer, “Where did you get the idea to use a hair dryer and a paper bag?”
He looked at me and said, “I have no idea.”
That idea became a multi-million dollar product.
Money would not have caused the engineer to “innovate.”
Maybe Mr. Zuckerberg, once he has resolved his demo problems to think about the assumption that paying a person to innovate is an example of “just think it and it will happen” generates digital baloney?
Stephen E Arnold, September 22, 2025
Grousing Employees Can Be Fun. Credible? You Decide
September 4, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby working the old-fashioned way.
I read “Former Employee Accuses Meta of Inflating Ad Metrics and Sidestepping Rules.” Now former employees saying things that cast aspersions on a former employer are best processed with care. I did that, and I want to share the snippets snagging my attention. I try not to think about Meta. I am finishing my monograph about Telegram, and I have to stick to my lane. But I found this write up a hoot.
The first passage I circled says:
Questions are mounting about the reliability of Meta’s advertising metrics and data practices after new claims surfaced at a London employment tribunal this week. A former Meta product manager alleged that the social media giant inflated key metrics and sidestepped strict privacy controls set by Apple, raising concerns among advertisers and regulators about transparency in the industry.
Imagine. Meta coming up at a tribunal. Does that remind anyone of the Cambridge Analytica excitement? Do you recall the rumors that fiddling with Facebook pushed Brexit over the finish line? Whatever happened to those oh-so-clever CA people?
I found this tribunal claim interesting:
… Meta bypassed Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) rules, which require user consent before tracking their activity across iPhone apps. After Apple introduced ATT in 2021, most users opted out of tracking, leading to a significant reduction in Meta’s ability to gather information for targeted advertising. Company investors were told this would trim revenues by about $10 billion in 2022.
I thought Apple had their system buttoned up. Who knew?
Did Meta have a response? Absolutely. The write up reports:
“We are actively defending these proceedings …” a Meta spokesperson told The Financial Times. “Allegations related to the integrity of our advertising practices are without merit and we have full confidence in our performance review processes.”
True or false? Well….
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2025
Picking on the Zuck: Now It Is the AI Vision
September 1, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby working the old-fashioned way.
Hey, the fellow just wanted to meet girls on campus. Now his life work has become a negative. Let’s cut some slack for the Zuck. He is a thinking, caring family man. Imagine my shock when I read “Mark Zuckerberg’s Unbelievably Bleak AI Vision: We Were Promised Flying Cars. We Got Instagram Brain Rot.”
A person choosing to use a product the Zuck just bought conflates brain rot with a mass affliction. That’s outstanding reasoning.
The write up says:
In an Instagram video (of course) posted last week, Zuck explains that Meta’s goal is to develop “personal superintelligence for everyone,” accessed through devices like “glasses that can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day.” “A lot has been written about the scientific and economic advances that AI can bring,” he noted. “And I’m really optimistic about this.” But his vision is “different from others in the industry who want to direct AI at automating all of the valuable work”: “I think an even more meaningful impact in our lives is going to come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend, and grow to become the person that you aspire to be.”
A person wearing the Zuck glasses will not be a “glasshole.” That individual will be a better human. Imagine taking the Zuck qualities and amplifying them like a high school sound system on the fritz. That’s what smart software will do.
The write up I saw is dated August 6, 2025, and it is hopelessly out of date. the Zuck has reorganized his firm’s smart software unit. He has frozen hiring except for a few quick strikes at competitors. And he is bringing more order to a quite well organized, efficiently run enterprise.
The big question is, “How can a write up dated August 6, 2025, become so mismatched with what the Zuck is currently doing? I don’t think I can rely on a write up with an assertion like this one:
I’ve seen the best digital minds of my generation wasted on Reels.
I have never seen a Reels, but it is obvious I am in the minority. That means that I am ill-equipped to understand this:
the AI systems his team is building are not meant to automate work but to provide a Meta-governed layer between individual human beings and the world outside of them.
This sounds great.
I would like to share three thoughts I had whilst reading this essay:
- Ephemeral writing becomes weirdly unrelated to the reality of the current online market in the United States
- The Zuck’s statements and his subsequent reorganization suggest that alignment at Facebook is a bit like a grade school student trying to fit puzzle pieces into the wrong puzzle
- Googles, glasses, implants — The fact that Facebook does not have a device has created a desire for a vehicle with a long hood and a big motor. Compensation comes in many forms.
Net net: One of the risks in the Silicon Valley world is that “real” is slippery. Do the outputs of “leadership” correlate with the reality of the organization?
Nope. Do this. Do that. See what works. Modern leadership. Will someone turn off those stupid flashing red and yellow alarm lights? I can see the floundering without the glasses, buzzing, and flashing.
Stephen E Arnold, September 1, 2025
If You Want to Work at Meta, You Must Say Yes, Boss, Yes Boss, Yes Boss
August 18, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby working the old-fashioned way.
These giant technology companies are not very good in some situations. One example which comes to mind in the Apple car. What was the estimate? About $10 billion blown Meta pulled a similar trick with its variant of the Google Glass. Winners.
I read “Meta Faces Backlash over AI Policy That Lets Bots Have Sensual Conversations with Children.” My reaction was, “You are kidding, right?” Nope. Not a joke. Put aside common sense, a parental instinct for appropriateness, and the mounting evidence that interacting with smart software can be a problem. What are these lame complaints.
The write up says:
According to Meta’s 200-page internal policy seen by Reuters, titled “GenAI: Content Risk Standards”, the controversial rules for chatbots were approved by Meta’s legal, public policy and engineering staff, including its chief ethicist.
Okay, let’s stop the buggy right here, pilgrim.
A “chief ethicist”! A chief ethicist who thought that this was okay:
An internal Meta policy document, seen by Reuters, showed the social media giant’s guidelines for its chatbots allowed the AI to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual”, generate false medical information, and assist users in arguing that Black people are “dumber than white people”.
What is an ethicist? First, it is a knowledge job. One I assume requiring knowledge of ethical thinking embodied in different big thinkers. Second, it is a profession which relies on context because what’s right for Belgium in the Congo may not be okay today. Third, the job is likely one that encourages flexible definitions of ethics. It may be tough to get another high-paying gig if one points out that the concept of sensual conversations with children is unethical.
The write up points out that an investigation is needed. Why? The chief ethicist should say, “Sorry. No way.”
Chief ethicist? A chief “yes, boss” person.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2025
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Some Outfits Takes Pictures… Of Users
May 23, 2025
Conspiracy theorists aka wackadoos assert preach that the government is listening to everyone with microphones and it’s only gotten worse with mobile devices. This conspiracy theory has been running circuits since before the invention of the Internet. It used to be spies or aluminum can string telephones were the culprit. Truth is actually stranger than fiction and New Atlas updated an article about how well Facebook is actually listening to us, “Your Phone Isn’t Secretly Listening To You, But The Truth Is More Disturbing.”
Let’s assume that the story is accurate, but the information was on the Internet, so for AI and some humans, the write up is chock full of meaty facts. It was revealed in 2024 that Cox Media Group (CMG) developed Active Listening, a system to capture “real time intent data” with mobile devices’ microphones. It then did the necessary technology magic and fed personalized ads. Tech companies distanced themselves from CMG. CMG stopped using the system. It supposedly worked by listening to small vocal data uploaded after digital assistants were activated. It bleeds into the smartphone listening conspiracy but apparently that’s still not a tenable reality.
The mobile cyber security company Wandera tested the listening microphone theory. They placed two smart phones in a room, played pet food ads on an audio loop for thirty minutes a day over three days. Here are the nitty gritty details:
“User permissions for a large number of apps were all enabled, and the same experiment was performed, with the same phones, in a silent test room to act as a control. The experiment had two main goals. First, a number of apps were scanned following the experiment to ascertain whether pet food ads suddenly appeared in any streams. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the devices were closely examined to track data consumption, battery use, and background activity.”
The results showed that phones weren’t listening to conversations. The truth was on par and more feasible given the current technology:
“In early 2017 Jingjing Ren, a PhD student at Northeastern University, and Elleen Pan, an undergraduate student, designed a study to investigate the very issue of whether phones listen in on conversations without users knowing. Pretty quickly it became clear to the researchers that the phones’ microphones were not being covertly activated, but it also became clear there were a number of other disconcerting things going on. There were no audio leaks at all – not a single app activated the microphone,’ said Christo Wilson, a computer scientist working on the project. ‘Then we started seeing things we didn’t expect. Apps were automatically taking screenshots of themselves and sending them to third parties. In one case, the app took video of the screen activity and sent that information to a third party.’”
There are multiple other ways Facebook and companies are actually tracking and collecting data. Everything done on a smartphone from banking to playing games generates data that can be tracked and sent to third parties. The more useful your phone is to you, the more useful it is as a tracking, monitoring, and selling tool to AI algorithms to generate targeted ads and more personalized content. It’s a lot easier to believe in the microphone theory because it’s easier to understand the vast amounts of technology at work to steal…er…gather information. To sum up, innovators are inspirational!
Whitney Grace, May 23, 2025
Meta Knows How to Argue: The Ad Hominem Tactic
May 20, 2025
No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zillennials.
This is exciting for me, the dinobaby. Meta (a Telegram inspired outfit) is now going after “real” media people. Yep, individuals as in ad hominin just like the old times in Greek discourse. Cool. A blast from the past. Check out the title from the pay-to-read outfit, The Verge:
Now that is a headline: Meta, antitrust trial, attorney, failed, and the ultimate “real” journalist pejorative “blogger.” A blogger. Wow. Harsh.
The write up says, which for the purpose of this short essay, as the sacred truth:
In court, he [Meta’s lead attorney] projected a headline about her [Kara Swisher] recently calling Mark Zuckerberg a “small little creature with a shriveled soul.”
But who is the failed blogger because Ms. Swisher is no longer just a blogger; she is a media personality? It is Om Malik. Before you say, “Who?” Here’s a snapshot: Mr. Malik is the founder of Gigaom. He is a venture capitalist.
The Verge story asserts:
Malik critiqued Facebook’s intentions for offering free access to its apps and others in India, after board member Marc Andreessen blamed local resistance to the program on “anti-colonialism” in a later-deleted tweet. “I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts,” Malik wrote at the time.
How will this trial play out? I have zero idea. I am not sure the story with the “failed blogger” headline will do much to change opinions about Meta and its “bring people together properties.”
Several observations:
- What types of argumentative strategies are taught in law school? I thought the ad hominem method was viewed as less than slick.
- Why is Meta in court? The company has been chugging along for 21 years, largely unimpeded by regulations and researchers who have suggested that the company has remarkable influence on certain user cohorts? Will a decision today remediate alleged harms from yesterday? Probably not too much in my opinion.
- With Meta’s increasing involvement in political activities in the US, won’t other types of argumentative techniques be more effective and less subject to behaviors of the judicial processes?
Net net: Slick stuff.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2025
Zuckerberg Wants WhatsApp To Compete With Telegram
April 24, 2025
After 13 years of just borrowing Telegram’s innovations, the Zucker wants to compete with Telegram. (Wasn’t Pavel Durov arrested?)
Mark Zuckerberg is ready to bring WhatsApp to the messaging race and he plans to give Telegram and Signal a run for their money. Life Hacker posted a press release about the updates to the message app: “WhatsApp Just Announced a Dozen New Features.”
Group chats are getting a major overhaul. There will be an indicator that shows who has WhatsApp open in real time. This will allow users to see how many people are active on a threat. There will also be a “Notify for” section in group chat settings for managing thread notifications and there will be a “Highlights” option to limit what alerts users. The option to create events will be extended to one-on-one chats. Apple iPhone users get the exclusive update of a built-in document scanner and WhatsApp can now be set as the default message app.
Calls have been updated too:
You’ll notice three new features when placing calls. On iOS, you can pinch to zoom when on a video call. This works on both your video feed, as well as the feed of the person you’re talking to…You can now add a friend to a one-on-one call by swiping over to their chat, tapping the call button, and choose "Add to call.”…Finally, WhatsApp says they’ve upgraded their video call tech, optimizing the routing system and boosting bandwidth detection.”
Updates will has some important changes:
“There are also three changes to the Updates tab: Channel admins can record and post videos to their followers directly from the app (though these videos need to be 60 seconds or less). You can also see a transcription of voice messages updates in channels, and channel admins can share QR codes to link to the channel.”
Why not implement the live video, the crypto wallet, and the bots? Oh, right. Those are harder to emulate.
Whitney Grace, April 24, 2025
Why Is Meta Experimenting With AI To Write Comments?
April 18, 2025
Who knows why Meta does anything original? Amazon uses AI to write snapshots of book series. Therefore, Meta is using AI to write comments. We were not surprised to read “Meta Is Experimenting With AI-Generated Comments, For Some Reason."
Meta is using AI to write Instagram comments. It sounds like a very stupid idea, but Meta is doing it. Some Instagram accounts can see a new icon to the left of the text field after choosing to leave a comment. The icon is a pencil with a star. When the icon is tapped, a new Meta AI menu pops up, and offers a selection of comment choices. These comments are presumed to be based off whatever content the comment corresponds to in the post.
It doesn’t take much effort to write a simple Instagram comment, but offloading the task appears to take more effort than completing the task yourself. Plus, Instagram is already plagued with chatbot comments already. Does it need more? Nope.
Here’s what the author Jake Peterson requests of his readers:
“Writing comments isn’t hard, and yet, someone at Meta thought there was a usefulness—a market—for AI-generated comments. They probably want more training data for their AI machine, which tracks, considering companies are running out of internet for models to learn from. But that doesn’t mean we should be okay with outsourcing all human tasks to AI.
Mr. Peterson suggest that what bugs him the most is users happily allowing hallucinating software to perform cognitive tasks and make decision for people like me. Right on, Mr. Peterson.
Whitney Grace, April 18, 2025
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