There’s a piece doing the rounds this week claiming Meta is dying. The comments underneath it are, predictably, a mess. Half the people are dunking on the headline without reading past it. The other half are pointing out, correctly, that a company pulling $200 billion in annual ad revenue is not exactly on life support.

Both groups are sort of right, which is the annoying thing.

The article isn’t really claiming Zuckerberg will be selling pencils on Swanston Street by Christmas. The actual argument is quieter and more interesting than that: that Meta is showing the early signs of a slow institutional rot. Turning the screws on advertisers. Cramming more ads into already bloated feeds. Daily active users down for the first time, even if only by a couple of million and even if Meta blames it on Iranian traffic. The argument is that these are the moves of a company that has stopped growing and started harvesting.

There’s something deeply unsettling about watching a multinational corporation celebrate the fact that they used “even fewer people” to create their annual Christmas advertisement. Coca-Cola’s latest AI-generated Christmas ad has dropped, and while the company frames it as pushing boundaries and embracing the future, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re witnessing something darker unfold in real-time.

Let me be clear: the technology itself is genuinely impressive. Compared to last year’s rather uncanny attempt, this year’s ad shows remarkable progress. The quality jump is undeniable, and from a purely technical standpoint, watching AI video generation evolve this rapidly is fascinating. I’ve spent enough time in IT and DevOps to appreciate the engineering achievement behind it. But here’s the thing – just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should be applauding corporations for weaponising it against their own workforce.

The tech industry never ceases to amaze me with its tone-deaf approaches to user privacy. Today’s exhibit: Perplexity’s CEO proudly announcing their new browser will track everything users do online to deliver “hyper-personalized” ads. Reading this news over my morning batch brew, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’ve entered some bizarre parallel universe where privacy invasion is now a selling point.

Let’s be clear about something - nobody is sitting at home thinking, “Gee, I wish my browser would track me more thoroughly so I can get better ads!” The sheer disconnect between Silicon Valley executives and actual users has reached new heights of absurdity.