Meta seems to be doing fine financially besides the VR money pit. Also in a weird way having TikTok around just bolsters their case against any sort of anti trust enforcement. That said I am sure they would be happy if TikTok did get banned but I also doubt they are sticking their neck out lobbying for that to happen (although I would not be surprised to be wrong)
privacy and security is a pendulum, it swung hard to security post 9/11 and is swinging hard towards privacy currently. Id be surprised if we ever actually reach a happy middle ground but I am sure at some point we will see things swing back towards security
and to clarify when I say security there is of course the national security apparatus angle but also things like spam, fraud, cyber security, crime etc. All of these will happen and as governments grapple with addressing them unfortunately the easy button tends to negatively impact privacy versus things like providing better funding/training for law enforcement and regulatory bodies
anecdotally from a few folks I know who work there it does get completely deleted after a month or two I believe. Like you said between GDPR, the FTC settlement and just general bad press they actually take deleting data pretty seriously
I am skeptical. The reason is because I worked for a bank that had a policy of deleting data after 7+ years. The thing is, a number of database tables were just simply removed from the index but still existed and if you knew the name of the table you could continue accessing them. Likewise, all the tape backups continued to exist, they weren't shredded and this was proven when someone in IT somewhere screwed up and restored my team's network drive with an image from 10+ years ago. It was interesting poking around to see what files were on it from before anyone on the current team was a member, but that shouldn't have happened. So, if a multi-national bank was acting this way, why would FB be any different? They are so large now, fines are just background noise and they have to be caught to be fined.
yep, its because of the FCO ruling. The other thing I think everyone spouting money are missing is that FB would much rather be able to use the link between your FB and IG accounts to better serve you up ads based on that combined data.
yep, a lot of this is fallout from the financial crisis and all of the bank mergers that have happened. A number of the big banks i worked with a few years ago had sooo many different systems from all their acquisitions and what they really want is one
This is an excellent point. It's fun to blame consultants, but the amount of M&A that has occurred can probably be implicated for half of the complexity seen in banking today.
The nuance with M&A between 2 banks is that one usually "wins" in terms of the core tech (i.e. where all the customers and accounts are ultimately stored) and absorbs the other. There are companies that specialize in this exact activity. The part where it gets super messy is with the jurisdiction-specific systems & procedures that have to be folded into 1 operational space.
I have worked a lot with lobbyists and part of the reason is that the tech companies dont work together. When the banks or oil companies go to capital hill their lobbyists are generally in alignment. The sense iv gotten from folks I talk to is that is not the case with the tech companies and instead they have competing opinions on things.
Another place you can see this illustrated is when the CEOs of these companies testify in front of congress. The bank CEOs all stay more or less on the same message. Comparatively on the tech side there is a lot more variance in message. Some of this is changing, you can clearly tell Zuck is getting much more coaching and Sundar Pichai is well prepped. Then you have Dorsey who is always a complete wild card.
yep I think alternatives have improved but pre covid i traveled all over the world for work and the big thing was Zoom worked the best on iffy connections and also played best with multiple companies IT systems
Gold is certainly more popular in India then the western world but most married people are walking around wearing a wedding ring and id guess the majority of those are gold?
Gold also has very practical industrial applications which give it value, like you say most of the value boils down to scarcity but it is both desirable as a status symbol and for functional applications
