Meta now fundamental to 'dark side of the economy' - early Facebook investor
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News


Legendary venture capitalist Roger McNamee said Thursday that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) has become "fundamental to the dark side of the economy," with the company exploiting data to drive profits whatever the social costs.
"Without any regulatory interference, that's just a great business and they're going to continue to grow by using data to exploit human weakness," the co-founder of Elevation Partners and an early investor in Facebook (FB) told CNBC.

McNamee framed Meta's challenge of balancing profits with social good as a general problem that has become more acute lately.
"We are so dependent on the market to make choices and allocate resources that we've finally run into examples of where the market is no good," the Elevation Partners co-founder argued.
"[The market] has not done a good job addressing climate change. It's not done a good job of allowing the United States to address a pandemic. And it's done a horrible job of defending democracy," he added.
On the current market situation, McNamee contended that a more hawkish stance by the Federal Reserve is unlikely to halt the upward momentum of markets. He acknowledged that higher interest rates would curb some speculation but he believes that the dynamics that have driven trading over the past couple of years will continue into the near future.
"My expectation is that we'll just continue going along like this until eventually all of the speculation that's going on in all of these different sectors runs out of new buyers and then it eventually comes tumbling down," he predicted.
FB rose 4% in Thursday's intraday action, reversing a sharp decline seen Wednesday amid a general sell-off in tech. At about 11:30 a.m. ET, FB was up $13.91 to $338.08.
Looking longer-term, FB reached a 52-week high of $384.33 in early September, but shares sold off in response to a whistleblower's revelations about how the company responds to toxic content on the platform. Shares have generally held to a trading range over the past three months.
Given its recent PR problems, FB has significantly underperformed the market since the beginning of September. The stock is down 15% over that time, compared to a 4% rise in the S&P 500, as you can see in this chart.