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Facebook 2020

Mark Zuckerberg is just fine

Moving the Market: Mark Zuckerberg's latest turn in the media spotlight would have you believe he is in the midst of a multi-pronged crisis, beset by scandals — political advertising, foreign misinformation, a friendship with Pete Buttigieg — that are damaging the Facebook brand and that of its chief executive.

• The big picture: This is mostly noise. The metrics that matter to Zuckerberg and his fellow executives — user growth and revenue — both continue to rise despite all the supposed controversies. As has been the case for three years now, the media's alarm bells overstate the true level of the emergency.

Facebook coverage often centers on the litany of issues the company faces, as though Facebook's greatest problem is the sheer scale of its problems. The latest news always seems to come "as Zuckerberg faces criticism" over "misinformation, privacy, election meddling, bias," etc. — even when the latest news has nothing to do with those issues.

• Reporting on Facebook this way provides fuel for the company's political critics, who have cast Zuckerberg as the whipping boy for the consolidation of corporate power. To them, the scale of his problems are evidence that his power is too broad.

• This can obfuscate the nuances of Facebook's challenges — privacy is a different issue than misinformation is a different issue than antitrust, etc. — as well as what the company is doing to address each of those challenges. Once you isolate Facebook's myriad issues, it becomes clear that they're actually quite disparate.

• More importantly, it becomes clear upon isolating these issues that there's actually no single controversy that justifies the portrayal of Zuckerberg as a corporate leader under siege. Indeed, he's been quite aggressive in presenting solutions to problems or standing in defiance of his critics.

The bigger picture: It's not clear that the average Facebook user cares about any of the above. Zuckerberg may be a convenient whipping boy for politicians and the press, but until the user base and/or revenue starts to decline, there's no evidence that any of this is doing real damage.

• What's next: Facebook reports Q3 earnings on Oct. 30.

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Holt-Zuckerberg highlights

Big in the Bay: Mark Zuckerberg spoke to my colleague Lester Holt about his efforts to battle election meddling and uphold free speech in political advertising last night on NBC Nightly News. He also addressed his own personal growth as a chief executive.

Top lines:

• "I get that a lot of people are angry at us. Part of growing up for me has just been realizing that it is more important to be understood than it is to be liked, and I believe it very strongly."

• "Historically I've had a very hard time expressing myself. I just come across as robotic. This is one of the things that in growing up I need to get, I need to get better at in running this company."

• "Of course, I want to know that when my girls grow up that they're going to be able to say that, their dad made the world better and stood up for what he believed in."

🏛️ Status Update 🏛️

Zuckerberg will be in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on the company's Libra cryptocurrency plans.

• On Friday, Zuckerberg will join News Corp chief Robert Thomson at the Paley Center in New York to preview Facebook's new "News Tab."

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Adam Silver talks China

Big in Beijing: NBA commissioner Adam Silver tells The Wall Street Journal that he won’t cut ties with China, despite Beijing's attempt to censor the league after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke out about the political protests in Hong Kong.

• "I hear some people saying that we should disengage from China, and I respectfully disagree,” Silver told WSJ's Ben Cohen.

• "My personal belief is that isolationism doesn’t make sense in this highly interconnected world. We have no choice but to engage and to attempt to have better understanding of other cultures and try to work through issues."

What's next: "NBA games have been restored to the Tencent Sports streaming platform," Cohen reports, "but the Rockets are still banned from Chinese airwaves, and it’s unclear when they will be allowed [back]."

• "Silver said it’s 'still a little bit too raw' to strategize for how the league will respond if Rockets games are not broadcast in China."

Bonus: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stood by Silver last night at WSJ Tech Live. “Daryl Morey can say whatever he wants,” he said.

Market Links

• Daniel Ek charts Spotify's next course of action (Fortune)

• David Marcus pushes ahead with Facebook's Libra (NYT)

• Ajit Pai says Silicon Valley should be regulated (WSJ)

• Shari Redstone says ViacomCBS can compete (WSJ)

• Bryan Goldberg fails to stick the Gawker launch (Esquire)

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Reed Hastings borrows $2b

The Streaming Wars: Netflix chief Reed Hastings has announced plans to borrow an additional $2 billion in debt to fuel his massive content spend, which is projected to hit $15 billion by the end of this year.

• This will bring Netflix’s gross debt to more than $14 billion, with more than $20 billion in outstanding content-payment obligations.

The big picture: Netflix is borrowing heavily to fuel subscriber growth (and retention) in an increasingly competitive landscape. Their ambition: to become the essential streaming platform, and too big to fail.

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Bob Iger teases 'Star Wars'

Talk of Tinseltown: Disney premiered the trailer for the final installment of the Star Wars "Skywalker Saga" during last night's Monday Night Football broadcast and announced that advance tickets were available immediately, spurring record sales.

• First-hour sales for "The Rise of Skywalker" beat out first-hour sales for "Avengers: Endgame," the highest grossing movie of all time, by 45 percent, Deadline's Geoff Boucher reports.

• Disney has already set a Hollywood record with five films grossing more than $1 billion at the box office this year. "Skywalker" will almost certainly bring the total to six, whether it bests "Avengers" or not.

The big picture: Fueled by big-budget films from Marvel and Lucasfilm, Disney is setting all-time box office records even as other studios flounder amid pressure from streaming services.

📽️ What's next: The trailer.

See you tomorrow.