this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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Increasingly, Meta has been using debt to fuel its spending, amassing $59 billion in long-term debt on its balance sheet by the end of 2025, double the prior year’s total. And that doesn’t count the “aggressive” accounting it has used to keep the cost of a $27 billion Louisiana data center off its books. “The spending growth looks increasingly unsustainable,” The Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” columnist Asa Fitch wrote this week.

Now, as the company careens from one staggeringly expensive misadventure to another, its cash-cow core business is starting to wear out. Last quarter, the number of daily active users across its properties declined for the first time to 3.56 billion from 3.58 billion.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (4 children)

First they'll collapse slowly, then all at once. The debt is catching up to them, they'll start laying off even more people, and they'll try to increase revenue by running more ads, and charging more for the ads, etc.

If you think they, or any of them, including our own government, are "too big to fail", well, it's happened before.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago

Cant wait for businesses to have websites again.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

First they’ll collapse slowly, then all at once.

People have been predicting in imminent collapse of various tech firms for what feels like decades

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I don't understand why businesses don't predict this downward spiral. I recall a city with crap bus infrastructure saying ridership was down so they had to increase fares. So then a while later, oh ridership is lower again, let's increase fares. Duh, its down because the routes suck and you've increased the barrier to choosing to use it. SMH

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

There is a certain type of people that absolutely hate public transit, because its the evilbad socialism.

So they do everything in their power to sabotage it and make it as awful as possible, with the ultimate goal of selling it off to one of their pals and privatize.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago

Businesses are only as smart as the dumb humans who run them

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I believe what you've described is intentional with any service that someone is looking to cut. Step one: this service sucks and doesn't deserve as much funding as it has. Step two: cut funding. Step three: see step one.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Republican playbook.

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

"Starve the beast"

Smaller businesses or privately owned businesses with a smart owner do.

Large publicly traded companies are sustained by a perception that an investment in or loan to that company will pay off in a higher dollar amount in the future, so if the perception becomes the company is shrinking then the investments and loans slow down which makes the perception worse, you get that feedback loop which turns into the death spiral.

So the bigwigs at the top of these companies have to be professional liars and gamblers to change the perception and make it look like everything isn't just fine, they're doing great! The line must go up.

[–] DeathByDenim@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Oh, hey, they are doing that in my city right now. It's a classic!

[–] Dogiedog64@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Nothing is too big to fail. Some things are simply too big to fail gracefully or quietly.

Meta-nay-Facebook is one of those things.