There’s a particular kind of corporate misery that gets described in threads like the one circulating this week about Meta’s upcoming round of layoffs. Eight thousand jobs. And the detail that apparently, the people who still have their jobs aren’t exactly celebrating.

One former employee described coming back from an ayahuasca trip and simply being unable to resume the work. Another described engineering “engagement,” which is the sanitised word the industry uses when what they mean is addiction. The rooftop garden that nobody uses. The incredible food that “used to be better.” Miserable millionaires, as one person put it. That phrase has been stuck in my head since I read it.

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.

Sometimes you see a train wreck coming from miles away, and all you can do is watch it unfold. That’s exactly how I felt when news broke about Meta’s AI app exposing users’ private chats in their Discover feed. The collective response from the privacy community was essentially one big “told you so” moment.

The whole situation perfectly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with how tech giants approach user privacy. Meta rolled out this AI feature without giving users any meaningful control – you can’t turn off chat history, you can’t opt out of having your data used to train their models. It was, quite frankly, a disaster waiting to happen.

Looking at the latest controversy surrounding Meta’s platforms, where they’ve mysteriously “hidden” posts about abortion pill providers, I’m struck by how predictable these “accidents” have become. The timing is particularly interesting, isn’t it? Just as reproductive rights become an increasingly heated political issue.

Remember when tech platforms were supposed to democratize information and give everyone a voice? Those idealistic days feel like ancient history now. These days, it seems every week brings another convenient “bug” that just happens to align with certain political interests.