It's crypto and political season for Facebook — both make the 'Book look bad
Please RSVP no later than Friday... Visa, eBay, Mastercard, and Stripe all sent their regrets to Facebook's inaugural meeting in Geneva today about the global cryptocurrency (it's very jedi council-y). PayPal ditched a week before. Now the "Libra" project is raising questions from the business partners who would've governed its dollars without borders. Next, Zuckerberg chats with Congress about it this month.
Add ad problems to the crypto problems... 2020 could be worse than 2016. Zuck decided this past week that political ads won't be subject to fact-checks like other content — he thinks people should decide themselves. Then this happened:
- On the right: President Trump paid Facebook for a campaign ad that included false statements. CNN isn't airing it — Facebook and other networks are.
- On the left: Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed in an ad that Zuck endorsed Trump for president — just to troll him/prove a point.
- Across the spectrum: Both ads got approved, showing FB's political ad revenue will be salt-and-peppered with instense controversy.
Politics haven't bruised profits... Just look at these slides from Facebook's last earnings report. The graphs still point up and to the right. It paid a $5B fine for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but investors who friended Facebook at its IPO have watched its value rise from $100B then to over $500B today (and it's the #5 biggest public company on Earth). Unless the next prez breaks Facebook up, it'll keep selling more ads for higher prices in your FB/Insta/Whatsapp feeds.