Manton responds to my post about his post about Facebook (some people call them Meta). I can never remember how to enter a comment over there, so I’ll post this on my micro.blog.

The thing is, it’s very difficult for any tech company to break out of the tech industry pattern, because people move between companies all the time. The board members, the ones from the industry come from tech companies, and many serve on boards of other tech companies.

I spent ten years in the system, and was for a while trying to start one of these companies. Eventually I sold out to one, and was on the board, and got a look inside. Later, as the web was starting up, first I tried to raise VC, but found the terms onerous, I also saw first-hand what they did to founders. It’s designed to produce one kind of output. One that piles up value and then sells it to the public. There have been later twists, but ultimately once you have the huge cash flow a company like Facebook has, and your shareholders have expectations of great returns, you basically have no choice. You have to run your company by the rules.

However! It is possible to get truly open ideas out there, and the ideas can survive. So let’s do more of that, and don’t depend on S