The Facebook Armageddon

As bad as scraping for advertising revenue might be, there’s another way the Facebook threat could actually get worse: Instead of continuing to be a primary platform for news companies and trying to strike relationships with them, the company could decide to simply wash its hands of news entirely, either because it isn’t generating enough revenue, or because it has become too much of a political headache. To really come to grips with what its size and influence have wrought both in journalism and society at large, Facebook is going to have to not only change its outlook but also its culture. But is that even possible at this stage? Can a company that became a $500 billion colossus by thinking in one way start to think in a different way? In a way, Facebook is like a band of revolutionaries who don’t know what to do once they manage to topple the dictator and actually become the government. And we are all living in the world that they have created for us, whether we like it or not.