Good morning. When the Erin Brockovich-style movie is made about the lawsuits that reined in the social media companies, you can bet that one of the dramatic moments will be the expressions of shock and disbelief on the faces of Meta’s lawyers and executives as the verdict is read aloud.
Sure, they’ll be upset at losing the case. But the scene’s real poignancy will come from their sudden realization of how completely wrong their assumptions have been about the public’s attitude towards their products.
Meta could have settled this case, as
Snapchat and TikTok did. Instead, Meta (along with YouTube) decided to go to trial, no doubt convinced that its 3.6 billion daily users and $1.5 trillion market cap were proof enough that people love them and that a jury would naturally side with the company. “If people feel like they’re not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?”
Zuckerberg responded to a question during the trial.
In two back-to-back courtroom losses this week, Meta has been slapped in the face with a harsh reality check: Billions of people may use social media every day, but that doesn’t mean they like it. Parents don’t like seeing their kids obsessively staring at screens all day, or getting cyberbullied, or exposed to toxic and dangerous influences. Voters don’t like the hyper-partisanship and the breakdown in civility that now passes for public discourse, even if they sometimes can’t help but get sucked into it themselves.
Maybe Meta is just a convenient scapegoat for deeper problems in our society. But the company’s blindness to the public’s sentiment is a sign of being out of touch—and that’s never a good thing for a company, no matter what business it’s in.
Alexei Oreskovic
@lexnfx
alexei.oreskovic@fortune.com
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