📈 Facebook short: ad boycott + political-ad ban
The July 2020 advertiser boycott plus a looming political-ads ban put Facebook 'in a fight for survival' — Chamath discloses a short thesis on the stock that he says is already playing out.
0
CONVICTION
peaked 38.4 EMBER
DORMANT
band · contested
▼ SHORT META
expression · bearish equities
WRONG
result · return -46.6% · vs SPY -87.0%
2021-07-11
born 2020-07-11 (E5) → window closed
⚠ CONFLICTING IDEAS ON THE SAME TICKER
— the board is arguing with itself; net it out (ticker view →)
META ·
Meta becomes America's open-source AI champion
LONG
WATCH 55.4
← stronger than this idea (0.0)
META ·
Personal AI agents put the App Store's 30% take and opaque subscription/retail economics on notice
LONG
WATCH 49.3
← stronger than this idea (0.0)
META ·
The AI doomer campaign fails — no FDAI, open source survives
LONG
EMBER 30.5
← stronger than this idea (0.0)
META ·
Independent frontier-model labs lose to hyperscaler capital
LONG
EMBER 18.3
← stronger than this idea (0.0)
META ·
Meta's AI assistant takes ten points of search share from Google
LONG
DORMANT 6.4
← stronger than this idea (0.0)
other ideas on the same ticker, same direction: Tort floodgates open on social media 20 (META) · Narrow Section 230 carve-out unleashes a tort wave on social platforms 3 (META)
⚖ Why this result
fully deterministic — computed from daily closes on the scoring date; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2020-07-11 → 2021-07-11 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT META (primary play). META rose 46.6% over the window → return (sign flipped for a SHORT) = -46.6% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +40.4%
→ vs SPY = -46.6 − (+40.4) = -87.0%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the result uses.
Direction-only read: -6.2% — did META move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.
- Rule fired:
· RIGHT — return ≥ +10% AND beat SPY by 5+· HALF — return ≥ +5% OR beat SPY at all▶ WRONG — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a WRONG earn 0 each, opposers the opposite — this feeds the scoreboard. supported: nobody | opposed: Chamath, Sacks
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2020-07-11)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | META | stock | PRIMARY | the shorted name (then FB); boycott + ad-ban pressure |
Mention log newest first
Chamath
equities 42% · n=163
· E38 (2021-07-03) · sentiment · strength 2
▶ 1:15:57
OPPOSE
“I think that Facebook's monopolistic impact probably tends towards some form of information distribution, but it's a very technical argument that has to be framed accurately on the one side or it's how they've aggregated long-tail advertisers on the other. But to your point, David, on the idea of social networking, I don't think they're a monopoly in the least.”
Sacks
equities 44% · n=96
· E38 (2021-07-03) · sentiment · strength 2
▶ 1:14:32
OPPOSE
“But I do think that of all the big tech companies, the argument for breaking up Facebook is the weakest because it's true. ... It's harder to say definitively they have a monopoly in social networking. When you've got Twitter, you've got Snapchat, you've got Reddit, you've got TikTok, you've got LinkedIn, you've got so many other companies in social media.”
Chamath
equities 42% · n=163
· E6 (2020-07-31) · sentiment · strength 1
▶ 10:20
SUPPORT
“The companies that were the most at risk going in were the same companies at risk coming out. If you had to stack rank the risk, I think Facebook is number one at the top of the list. Then I think it's Google. Then I think it's Apple. And then far, far, far down is Amazon.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total push on the score, in conviction points across every mention — supports and opposes · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -27.1 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E5 2020-07-11 | init | +30.0 | 30.0 | E5 born by Chamath (positioning x2) |
| E6 2020-07-31 | reinforce | +8.4 | 38.4 | E6 Chamath support x1 |
| E7 2020-09-09 | decay | -1.5 | 36.9 | E7 silent |
| E8 2020-09-19 | decay | -1.5 | 35.4 | E8 silent |
| E9 2020-10-03 | decay | -1.4 | 34.0 | E9 silent |
| E10 2020-10-16 | decay | -1.4 | 32.6 | E10 silent |
| E11 2020-11-04 | decay | -1.3 | 31.3 | E11 silent |
| E12 2020-11-11 | decay | -1.3 | 30.1 | E12 silent |
| E14 2020-12-04 | decay | -1.2 | 28.9 | E14 silent |
| E15 2020-12-18 | decay | -1.2 | 27.7 | E15 silent |
| E16 2021-01-08 | decay | -1.1 | 26.6 | E16 silent |
| E17 2021-01-11 | decay | -1.1 | 25.5 | E17 silent |
| E18 2021-01-23 | decay | -1.0 | 24.5 | E18 silent |
| E19 2021-01-30 | decay | -1.0 | 23.5 | E19 silent |
| E20 2021-02-03 | decay | -0.9 | 22.6 | E20 silent |
| E21 2021-02-06 | decay | -0.9 | 21.7 | E21 silent |
| E22 2021-02-13 | decay | -0.9 | 20.8 | E22 silent |
| E23 2021-02-20 | decay | -0.8 | 20.0 | E23 silent |
| E24 2021-03-06 | decay | -0.8 | 19.2 | E24 silent |
| E25 2021-03-13 | decay | -0.8 | 18.4 | E25 silent |
| E26 2021-03-20 | decay | -0.7 | 17.7 | E26 silent |
| E27 2021-03-27 | decay | -0.7 | 17.0 | E27 silent |
| E28 2021-04-01 | decay | -0.7 | 16.3 | E28 silent |
| E29 2021-04-17 | decay | -0.7 | 15.6 | E29 silent |
| E30 2021-04-23 | decay | -0.6 | 15.0 | E30 silent |
| E31 2021-05-01 | decay | -0.6 | 14.4 | E31 silent |
| E32 2021-05-13 | decay | -0.6 | 13.8 | E32 silent |
| E33 2021-05-22 | decay | -0.6 | 13.3 | E33 silent |
| E34 2021-05-31 | decay | -0.5 | 12.8 | E34 silent |
| E35 2021-06-13 | decay | -0.5 | 12.2 | E35 silent |
| E36 2021-06-18 | decay | -0.5 | 11.8 | E36 silent |
| E37 2021-06-25 | decay | -0.5 | 11.3 | E37 silent |
| E38 2021-07-03 | oppose | -11.3 | 0.0 | E38 Sacks opposes x2 |
| E38 2021-07-03 | oppose | · | 0.0 | E38 Chamath opposes x2 |
| E39 2021-07-09 | decay | · | 0.0 | E39 silent |