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lamontcgyesterday at 11:51 PM3 repliesview on HN

This is Meta claiming in their internal communications that they plan on doing it while people are distracted with other concerns.

It isn't really "rhetoric", they're talking like they believe this actually happens, this is strategy.

And I tend to agree with them that things like attention and political capital are ultimately finite resources.

I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong (and pretty incredibly patronizing). I think the world works exactly the way Meta thinks that it does here.

It might blow up and turn into a Streisand effect, but more often than not this kind of strategy works.

Much like how people think they can multitask and talk on the phone and drive at the same time and every scientific measure of it shows that they really can't.


Replies

mullingitovertoday at 12:28 AM

If I were Meta's lawyer I would advise them to definitely put into writing how they are fully conscious that this is wrong.

phil21today at 3:40 AM

> I've found that the "we can do two things" and "we can walk and chew bubblegum" line of argument to be simplistic and just wrong

It's painfully obvious to me society cannot do two things at once. You focus on one shared goal as a culture or everything falls apart very rapidly - as we are seeing today. It's why a common external "enemy" (e.g competitor, nation state, culture, whatever) has historically been so important.

The shared goal can be complex in nature, which requires many disciplines to come together to achieve it via a series of many parallel activities that might look like they are all doing something random, but it's all in the service of that singular shared goal.

This holds true from my experience at the national level all the way down to small organizations.

Forgeties79today at 12:04 AM

Damn you’re right. I got so annoyed at the headline I didn’t even read the article so that’s on me

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