That doesn’t really help shareholders does it? Except Zuck has his own shareholder class so it really does!
This is another reason against multiple classes of share
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If we’re talking about this from strictly the shareholders’ perspective, deposing Zuckerberg would do more than $5 billion in damage to Facebook.
Why do you assume that?
I think Facebook has a lot of dirty secrets.
FB investors seem pretty happy with Zuck's leadership of the company, and it's pretty easy to see the argument that the additional cost was well worth it to keep him at the helm.
I would argue against that argument. Arguably, Zuckerberg was instrumental in getting FB to where it is today. It is not inconceivable that protecting him is protecting shareholder value.
That was then and this is now. As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results
I think you are right. It is not a guarantee, but in real life there are no guarantees. However, there are ways to make things more likely. And given that one of the best predictors for what person will do is what they have done..investors would likely be more assured that FB is with Zuckerberg at the helm than not.
> Arguably, Zuckerberg was instrumental in getting FB to where it is today.
I agree that it would not be where it is today, but they are a troubled massive corporation beset on all sides by issues. They duck and dodge any issues and responsibility without fixing root causes. He definitely helped with the rise, but he will definitely also be responsible if it falls.
From which alternate reality, where you were able to observe how a Facebook "fork" governed in a non-dictatorial fashion has turned out, did you learn this "arguable" information?
I am genuinely not sure why this is a controversial statement. Allow me to rephrase this in a very quantifiable way.
FB IPO opened at $38 ( https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/11/17/if-you-invested-50... ). Today it trades at $346 ( https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB?p=FB ). That is 9 times the initial investment value.
Now, we can argue how much of that increase should be given to Zuckerberg in the form of credit for directing the company, but I am relatively certain that the answer is not zero.
I stand by my initial post. It is very much arguable.
edit: Hatred of Zuckerberg really should not be blind. I mean there is enough there to dislike him for. There is no need to invent stuff.
> It is one thing for the media to say false things about my work, but it's crossing the line to say I'm riding an electric surfboard when that video clearly shows a hydrofoil that I'm pumping with my own legs.
Just read that incredibly smug quote from him in response to the many recent articles critiquing Facebook.. It is not blind hatred, I would say it is very well targeted hatred of someone who has an enormous impact on the world while only caring about Facebook. His denial and stubbornness is approaching that of a very recent ex president.
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10113917270654841&set=...
"That was on Thursday. What did he do on Friday?"
He could have protected himself by making his shares the same voting rights as common class and not selling them, signalling his loyalty to shareholders. It should be illegal to issue shares to public with lower voting rights in my view. Our world would be a different place if google/facebook had only one type of voting class and I dont think what I view is strictly political.
Sadly, our world could be decidedly worse as well.
I used to discuss putting obvious skinnerian and behavioral systems in games as a joke back in the day when Diablo 2 came out. Years later what I thought as an awful joke was the mobile gaming business model.
There are many jokes I can make about how to run Facebook more “efficiently”. How to take the wrong lessons from the many, many business propaganda efforts that have been successful.
Sorry, at this point I am a bit disheartened just thinking about it. I was trying to connect to your point, but I really can’t thin of anything positive to say anymore.
FB's valuation is currently around $1T. Shareholders should be pretty happy with what Zuck has done with FB's business and this seems sufficient to justify protecting him from what would have been a major personal distraction.
But by all means, have sympathy for all those shareholders who were forced to invest their money in FB stock against their will and without any knowledge of the ownership structure.
Where does this logic end? If Zuck shoots a guy in the middle of the street, is it fine for FB to finance his legal defense fund? Hire operators to bust him out of jail if he's convicted? Both of those "protect shareholder value" in the same sense as this.
> Where does this logic end?
When there is an actual cost to Zuckerberg's behavior. So far, Silicon Valley is fine working for Facebook and Wall Street fine financing it. Users aren't rebelling. Advertisers are docile.
Where is a politician aspiring to take Zuckerberg on supposed to find berth? (Genuine question.) The only fecund ground, to my sense, is the far right accusing Facebook of censoring its Nazism and far left upset that Zuckerberg is rich. Neither makes for a sustainably extensible base.
What about the far middle who have been hearing for years how Facebook is eroding democracy, providing a platform for misinformation, instilling anxiety in teenage girls (the latest headline), and on and on. Zuckerberg continually makes decisions that benefit him and shareholders to the detriment of society and humanity. I think there's a greater appetite for change than it might appear, but I also think for the average person, it's really, really hard to imagine what that might be.
>instilling anxiety in teenage girls
If it wasn't facebook it would be tv, magazines, or something else. I find it exhausting how people blame facebook for being a reflection of societies ailments as opposed to trying to solve the underlying ailments.
Seems pretty clear. Zuck helped some people make a decent return on their investment so he shouldn't be held accountable for anything and it's cool for him to pillage the company coffers to bribe governments to let him off.
s/shouldn't/can't/ but you've pretty much got it.
Obviously Facebook should not do something illegal to protect Zuckerberg.
However, if there is a legally permitted action that Facebook can take to protect him personally, and only Facebook can take it, I don't see the problem with them deciding to do so.
If Zuckerberg is accused of a crime as a private citizen, he is of course capable of paying for his own defense. These are the examples you gave but they do not reflect the situation here. The story here is that the FTC wanted Facebook to pay a $5B fine. Not that they made Zuckerberg pay a $5B fine and Facebook decided to reimburse him for the expense.
>If Zuckerberg is accused of a crime as a private citizen, he is of course capable of paying for his own defense. These are the examples you gave but they do not reflect the situation here. The story here is that the FTC wanted Facebook to pay a $5B fine. Not that they made Zuckerberg pay a $5B fine and Facebook decided to reimburse him for the expense.
The story here is that Zuck was going to be accused of a crime as a private citizen, until FB decided to up its settlement offer from 100 million to 5 billion.
Legitimate question: what crime would they have accused him of? Or would they just be civil offenses that aren't actually crimes? That is a meaningful distinction, but I haven't managed to read anything talking about what the actual charges would have been.
Stealing's a crime; breaking contracts between FB and the FTC is not.
There are many, many things that are legal but are still corrupt, wrong, and despicable.
It ends in illegal activities. If you disagree with the settlement you should harp on the FTC for having offered it. Zuck is no saint but this "where does it end" is a poor argument.
FTC seemed to think that Zuck was taking part in illegal activities right up until he offered a few extra billion in the deal. So it ends, well, before the article being discussed?
You can't prove it's illegal if you stop it from ever going to court.
I'm not sure what you think minority ownership of a public company should entail, but surely you'd agree that it should protect them from the majority shareholder spending unlimited amounts of company cash to save themselves from personal inconvenience/embarrassment?
"Personal inconvenience/embarrassment" will hurt his ability to operate the company efficiently. Protecting CEO is (usually) in the best interest of minor shareholders.
This is why companies pay for personal security of CEOs or for their personal PR (most large companies, not just Facebook).
> spending unlimited amounts of company cash
This is clearly not the case here.
$4.9B over what the fine would otherwise have been is pretty hefty. I don't think any human alive is worth $4.9B to their employer.
Perhaps damage to Z would result in damage to FB for more than 5B (company market cap would definitely fall for more than that, and it could result in large mismanagement in the following years), so he is worth it.
I meant "really" worth, for some reasonable definition of "really." But I can't argue that market cap is a more pragmatic definition of worth, so your point is fair enough I guess.
So if I buy a share today at the $1T valuation, I DON'T support Zuck in this case, but if I bought one ten years ago I DO, because he made me rich?
> So if I buy a share today at the $1T valuation, I DON'T support Zuck in this case, but if I bought one ten years ago I DO, because he made me rich?
If you bought a share today, you presumably aren't doing it out of charity.
They bought under the condition of the ownership structure and also the law. If, as alleged, the law was broken, then there is nothing wrong with shareholders seeking redress.
This wouldn't be a "distraction", this would be him owning his shit. The distraction from that is what he fills the rest of his life with.
Who exactly was forced to invest money into FB stock?
Why should we have any sympathy for them given the stock is up 200% over the past 5 years?
I was being sarcastic.
My apologies, that went over my head. Thank you for clarifying.
Anyone with a retirement account in an index fund!
Anyone with a retirement account can pick a different fund. They can be even buy individual stocks to collect their own portfolio. Or even buy anti-Facebook security.
But there's no demand for that as far as I see. So I guess shareholders are actually happy, and unhappy are the people here on HN who are not shareholders.
There is a rather large number of investors that are not happy, and aren't quiet about it. That's why Facebook faces investor lawsuits every so often.
Investors sue because they can, not because they are unhappy.
My friends mocked me for buying on IPO day. Sold 1/2 a few months ago. I don't use the network but thanks for the money Zuck!
Weird flex. Do you have a system I can buy that will let me reproduce your results?
Dice. Purchase from your local gaming house.