The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Meta AI's User Numbers Are Inflated by Accidental Instagram Searches
“That was complete garbage. That was people searching Instagram who accidentally hit a llama model that made some things happen, and they were like, oh, go away. I actually am just looking for a user.”
DeepMind Is Among the Greatest Tech Acquisitions Ever
“They bought this thing for, we'll talk about the purchase price, but it's worth, what, five hundred billion dollars today? I mean, this is as good as Instagram or YouTube in terms of greatest acquisitions of all time.”
Google Cannot Successfully Build Pure Consumer Experiences Lacking Deep Technical Innovation
“It's a Google-y thing that this genius technology is the product itself, and if you try to Craft some cool idea that you have that is not just directly translating tech breakthrough. It's not gonna be the type of product that succeeds at Google. They don't kno…”
Zuckerberg Negotiated Facebook's $1B Instagram Acquisition Over a Single Weekend
“Not to mention, on top of it all, we're not gonna go into it here because we had a whole episode on Facebook and Instagram, but this was done over two days, over the course of a weekend. Mark didn't do a whole lot of socializing this before pulling the trigger…”
Gilbert: Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp mirrors the Cleveland Massacre
“Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp is a lot like Standard Oil's Cleveland Massacre and you know, the subsequent roll-up of all these other refiners elsewhere.”
Rosenthal: Facebook opening registration created room for Instagram and Snapchat
“Which ultimately would be a problem because that's what created room for Instagram, for Snapchat, et cetera.”
AI feed recommendations made Instagram a $100B to $500B asset for Meta
“Instagram would have been a great acquisition anyway, but it was AI-powered recommendations in the feed that made that into a 102 105 hundred billion dollar asset for Facebook.”
Sequoia invested in Instagram 48 hours before the Facebook acquisition
“It's also funny that Sequoia claims Instagram was one of their investments where it sold 48 hours after they invested.”
Benchmark returned Fund VI entirely from Facebook's acquisition of Instagram
“I mean, they returned the fund on the investment, but, like, with the sale to Facebook.”
Rosenthal: India has the largest population of Instagram users
“India is the largest populations of users on Instagram.”
Gilbert: Virat Kohli has 270M Instagram followers, tying Taylor Swift
“Virat Kohli, the top cricketer in the world, has two hundred and seventy million, and he's approximately tied with Taylor Swift.”
Rosenthal: Instagram pioneered the top-row algorithmic Stories UI, not Snapchat
“Stories as initially launched by Snap in the Snapchat app was a separate tab with a list of your friends who had published stories. It was literally like a table, like a list. ... So when Instagram copied quote unquote stories and launched stories, they launch…”
Instagram found user engagement declined over time due to permanent post fatigue
“The Instagram team noticed over time that even before Snap started eating their lunch that Engagement would decrease the longer you stayed an Instagram user, because you, over time, being done with these permanent posts, and you sort of saved it for the big an…”