Social media is deliberately addictive? Who knew? While markets barely reacted to yesterday’s Product-Liability award against Meta and Alphabet in California, the growing pushback against Big Tech will see valuation multiples diminish over the long run as increased regulation becomes inevitable. Perhaps it’s time to look at how Tobacco firms have evolved to understand the future value of Social Media parasites?

Big Tech is so yesterday. Prices peaked last year, but there are limited reasons to expect they will ever become so dominant again. They are too big, under the regulatory cosh, and increasingly under competitive pressure. They are heading the same way as the dinosaurs.

April 2022 will go down in market history as the month it all became obvious.. But what? That the global economy is in need of repair, markets are overly euphoric and consumers can’t consume when they are broke.

Facebook is now Meta, and Meta wants to own the Metaverse. Just what is the Metaverse, what are the opportunities, and can Mark Zuckerberg repeat the success of Facebook by monetising a whole new way of doing business, or is it shaping up to be something much, much more?

The market has apparently shrugged off the platform outages and whistleblower testimony on Facebook’s prioritisation of profits over people. Or is Facebook mortally wounded and a regulatory quietus inevitable? Can the social media genie be put back in the bottle?