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 11 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
Weinberg: Google and Facebook hold a duopoly over digital advertising
“In the world, there's a duopoly in digital advertising, and it's Google and Facebook owns basically all the digital advertising on the web, which relates to all this data profiles.”
Pincus: Zynga drove 20% of Facebook page views and 10% of revenue at IPO
“They gave it on Friday, and they said, you have till Monday to sign this agreement, or we're gonna take down your apps, which was their right and that could have happened the whole way through, and who knows what would have happened, because, you know, at this…”
Nir Eyal: Science does not support claims that digital media damages brains
“So don't believe these chicken little tech critics that say video games are melting your brain and Facebook is melting your brain and everything is melting your brain. Ridiculous. The science doesn't support that at all, right?”
Norena Hertz: Quitting Facebook for two months significantly reduces loneliness
“And there was a landmark study that was carried out by Stanford University about a year and a half ago, a real gold standard of a study where they had 3000 participants 1500 in a control group, and the other 1500 were expressly charged to go off, in this case,…”
Hertz: Stanford study showed deactivating Facebook reduces loneliness and increases socializing
“And there was a landmark study that was carried out by Stanford University about a year and a half ago, a real gold standard of a study where they had 3000 participants, 1500 in a control group, and the other 1500 were expressly charged to go off, in this case…”
Eyal: Facebook will not block feed-eradicating browser extensions
“I think the blowback would be so severe if they tried to do something about it that I can't see that on their radar.”
Google Tracks 80% of the Top Million Websites; Facebook Tracks 25%
“Google's on about 80% of the top million sites and a lot of that's Google Analytics, but also, like the Google Ads and stuff like that. Facebook's on 25% and that's this Facebook pixel where it could be the Facebook login, or just sites run Facebook ads, or th…”
Evans: Big Tech capex reached $220B and will surpass $300B
“I think last year the Google, Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Meta spent about two hundred and twenty billion dollars of CapEx last year, And we'll probably spend something over 300 this year.”
Robinson: US Tech Giants Own User Data Unlike European Frameworks
“In the United States, You don't own your data. Google does, or Facebook. It's their corporate data. But in Europe, the individual owns his or her data.”
Pincus: Roughly 20% of Facebook users played FarmVille at its peak
“And Farmville was the first time that we hit this, like, mass market consumer tipping point where lots of people knew about Mafia Wars, but with Farmville, we hit this density on the social network and the feed with Facebook that something I think, like, 20% o…”
Dicks: Early Facebook retention hinged on acquiring seven friends in ten days
“At Facebook early on when they were failing to gain traction, they looked at their data and they realized that if a user accumulated seven friends, made seven friends or seven connections on Facebook in 10 days, they were likely to stay on the platform. And if…”