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Facebook Should Pay All of Us

110 points by prawn 11y ago

lachesisdecima 11y ago
I would reckon that the market for personal data is lot bigger. 45 billion e-mails, 10 billion text messages and submit 95 million Tweets are sent in an average day. Now according to this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528866/researchers-test-personal-data-market-to-find-out-how-much-your-information-is-worth/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528866/researchers-test... each piece of data is worth about $2. Now, simple maths would tell any company that making money off that data is a lot more profitable than collecting $0.20. Also, how many people would actually want to enrol in such a premium service? It would not be every person that uses Facebook, for sure. Plus, selling off the data is lot easier than soliciting people to buy their premium product (people give them the licence to do so through the ToS).
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Why not set the bar at $2 or greater than? More than a few of us would be happy to pay for that. I definitely would for youtube.
zamalek 11y ago
So far as I am concerned: Facebook is a token economy broker where users pay each other in likes. Just like all the "major" social networks. That is the elegance of them: the users are providing the gratification.
charlesray 11y ago
Facebook IS paying us: through the free use of their service.
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  Except significantly fewer people would use it if it weren't free.
  - azhenley 11y ago
    Isn't that true for many (if not most) free services? Would you pay to use Google?
    - ArekDymalski 11y ago
      People (and even more companies) used to pay for services which now are replaced by Google searches.
    - panglott 11y ago
      If there wasn't a free search engine, wouldn't you pay to use one?
jgrahamc 11y ago
Surely, if you value your privacy then don't bother using Facebook at all. More precisely, she wants the company to offer a cash option (about twenty cents a month, she calculates) for people who value their privacy, but also want a rough idea of what their friends’ children look like. They could just email with their friends. It's unclear to me, at least, that a 'feed' of data about people I know is an important service. Clearly, I must be an outlier given the number of people I see looking at Facebook every day.
- dhimes 11y ago
  I also want this option- last I checked fb earned about USD $0.95/month/person. Charge me $25/year and double profits from me.
Rainymood 11y ago
"If it's free, you're the product."
- kpcyrd 11y ago
  How much do you pay for your hackernews account?
  - gknoy 11y ago
    My HN account costs me hours of productivity, and a great deal of imposter-syndrome-feelings, in exchange for a curated list of really interesting things, not to mention every comment by patio11, tptacek, edw519, and just about every highly-ranked commenter on threads. It seems a fair trade, especially when you factor in that I learn about new frameworks and concepts.
kdamken 11y ago
This is silly. Yes, if you're not the one paying, then you're the product. However, I do get things in return - I get to connect with people I don't get to see too often anymore and see what they're up to in their lives. Everyone and their grandma has one, so I know if I'm trying to find someone they're on there. It also reminds me of people's birthdays, which I'm pretty terrible with otherwise. People do get things out of facebook. Why else would they be on it all the time, checking it at least a couple times a day?
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  From what I observe[1] they're on it all the time because its a diversion. TV is another worthless diversion[2] but at least the TV networks don't (yet) sell your private information. But ultimately there is very little on Facebook that I see as critical or something I can't get from a myriad of other sources. 1: Watching my wife peruse FB but I suspect she is an example of a typical user. 2: I'll grant that worthless diversions have their place when used sparingly. But neither FB nor TV are used sparingly by most people unfortunately.
  - arihant 11y ago
    Not everything worthless to you is worthless to everyone. TV might be a worthless distraction to you, but not everyone. I don't understand how the sell your information argument comes in either. They run their own custom ad network. They aren't even leasing that infrastructure to anyone. I challenge you, to please go pay Facebook and buy information about where I was on Sunday in the evening. If they sell you that, I'll pay you five times the amount. If you can't buy it, they aren't selling it.
    - Zelphyr 11y ago
      Your argument would be right if it weren't of a very large straw man persuasion. Nobody is saying an individual is being sold your personal information. But when Coke comes along and wants it, Facebook is selling. But even that's not a problem, really. Who cares if Coke knows where you were on Sunday evening? What about Allstate though? Or Humana? One commenter noted above that our personal information isn't valuable without our attention and he's right. Don't you think that an auto insurance company would just love to know that one of their customers is a fan craft beer and was out partying with Jane Doe on Saturday and that Jane Doe has a DUI? Now they're raising rate on the guy who happened to pay passing attention to craft beer. I concede that we don't have evidence that Facebook sells that kind of detailed information on an individual. In fact, I believe they probably don't. Right now. I guarantee you that if comes down to keeping your information private and keeping their stock price up, you might as get a For Sale sign tattoo'd to your forehead.
minimaxir 11y ago
Fun Graph API fact: while it's incredibly easy for any user to scrape data off of public Facebook Pages (https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper), it is very hard to scrape personal data from people on Facebook, even if you are Friends with them or their Facebook statuses are public. Personal data is much more valuable. I've tried multiple endpoints to do so (for data analytics purposes) and they have all failed. The only way to get data on a person is for them to opt into granting the necessary permissions for the app.
- comrh 11y ago
  Have you tried a non-API reliant way? Like Selenium?
- kuschku 11y ago
  You can use the endpoints for the Facebook Android App. You will not comply with their ToS, but you will get all that data.
Yhippa 11y ago
I'm not the biggest fan of FB or for the fact that I pretty much have to use it to keep up with friends and family these days. These are some things that you get in exchange for giving up your information: A place to store photos A platform to publish your photos A communications platform (Messenger) A platform to stay officially connected to things you "like" and their updates Near instant publication of your brain thoughts to a curated group of people High availability Maintenance of connections to other people IRL event management Mobile and web applications to use the aforementioned Some of the best engineering talent in the world working on the aforementioned I think the average person does get a lot in exchange. Look at all of the other social networks that tried to solve this in the past and failed. I don't see any legitimate alternatives.
- kuschku 11y ago
  And, in many places people don’t use most of these features, but Facebook still collects Shadow-Profiles of them. At least for shadow profiles Facebook should pay.
  - crusso 11y ago
    Well, really it would be best if it were legislated that shadow profile type information not be allowed since by definition the user (or even a non-user) has not given informed consent. It would be great if we could move toward a model where each citizen had copyright-like protection of his personal data.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      It is not allowed under EU legislation, which is why Facebook was fined again and again, and had to delete it again and again. But sadly most people don’t see this as a problem Facebook caused, but as EU overregulation.
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  I don't have a FB account and I get all those things. I also don't feel like "Some of the best engineering talent in the world working on the aforementioned" is a compelling reason to give away my personal information.
eck 11y ago
Once again, someone has proposed that an ad supported company offer subscriptions for exactly its revenue-per-user, without seeming to realize that not all users are equally valuable to advertise to, and only the most valuable ones will opt out.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Ha, imagine how creeped out said people would be if the company calculated personalized fees for opting out. "Ehhhhhh? Why am I worth $76 to them?"
nslocum 11y ago
In other news: Google should pay all of us. Yahoo should pay all of us. ...
- api 11y ago
  Maybe so, or at least it's an interesting thought experiment. I've thought for a while that the dominant business model of the web is for-profit piracy. I don't mean The Pirate Bay -- those are small time players and are not very profitable if at all. I mean Google, Facebook, etc. To make that argument work you have to define piracy independently of whether or not it's illegal piracy. In this case we'd define for-profit piracy as the "indirect monetization of content you did not produce or license and in which you do not pay the producer." Google monetized the entire web. They didn't create the content, but they sold ads on it. It's like having a radio station where you don't make the music, don't license the music, and don't even run the transmitter, but you get to present ads in-stream. Then on top of that you get to charge people for those ads while you are also monetizing them. It's brilliant. That's not illegal (in this case), but it is perhaps a form of piracy. Google would have had no value had the web not been full of people dumping valuable information online. Does this mean Google is a value extraction enterprise rather than a value creating one? I'm picking on Google but this applies to a whole lot of the web's business models. I think it's legitimate to question the economic justice of this. Again it's not illegal, but there are many things that are not illegal that are shady. Is the monetization of what began as an open gift culture shady? Obviously Google's founders didn't think of it this way when they built Google, but one of the things social criticism does is to question what things really are or really become independent of their original intent. The counter argument is that Google provided a valuable service that made the web more useful. That's undeniably true. But how much effort went into that vs. creating all the web's content? Does building a road to make it easier to reach someone's farm entitle you to 100% of the proceeds of their farm?
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Your premise is backwards. Does your desire to be a farmer oblige society to build a road so you can get access to the market? The the internet is a big stack of books in a room, Google is a librarian with a master index who organizes the data. Calling that piracy is a stretch of the term. Actually, taking the thought experiment further, you could argue that book publishers are the real pirate, taking ideas and making themselves toll keepers.
heapcity 11y ago
While it is possible to capture some value from data; like heat; most of that data does not actually have value until it is captured.
SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago
I went to a conference last month where software vendors would do an RFID scan of your conference badge. My coworker (I do not have facebook) had companies that had scanned his badge show up on his Facebook advertisement feed the next day. To me, this was the real eye opener. Facebook doesn't just sell to advertisers the promise of groups of users. They can offer to sell to you, specifically, by name if they want to.
- netcan 11y ago
  Specifically, it's by email or Facebook ID. Most likely, your friend was targeted for advertising using Facebook's custom audiences. FB let advertisers upload a list of email addresses or Facebook IDs to show ads to. Personally, I consider this much further on the creepy scale than it is on the genuinely worrisome scale, more creepy than harmful. It's pretty creepy though, so.. relativity.
- hellweaver666 11y ago
  this is actually really easy - you can target adverts to anyone you have an email address for on Facebook - just upload a list of email addresses and you can "retarget" them
austenallred 11y ago
The thing that so many people fail to realize is that the data isn't valuable in and of itself. Excluding the type of information that lets you steal identities (and therefore bank accounts), there's not much you can do with huge swaths of data. There's not really a market for sheer information. What makes Facebook (and other platforms that use your personal data) valuable is that they have both information about you and a place where they can show you ads. These platforms are not, contrary to popular belief, trying to "sell" your information. They're allowing advertisers to use the platform to display ads to you based on that information. The data is a means to an end, which is showing you relevant ads. If everyone stopped using Facebook tomorrow, the value of all the information Facebook has gathered would be negligible. The real reason Facebook is worth $X Billion is because a significant portion of the population of the world logs in to use same product every day. In other words, your attention is the thing that is valuable. Your data just lets advertisers be really efficient in how they pay for your attention.
- j03m1 11y ago
  +1billion
- williamcotton 11y ago
  What if the model was flipped, so instead of advertisers paying Facebook to cover their operation costs, individual users covered their own operation costs, and perhaps the advertisers directly subsidized individual users at the time of publication? This would mean that people who wanted to pay could turn off advertising and just use Facebook as pay-as-they-go service. I dunno what kind of accounting they're doing at Facebook, but with their current approach of having advertising indirectly subsidizing users, there is no price discovery mechanism. Right now there's no way to price how much a user is worth and how much they actually cost, which seems like a very strange way to run a business. This type of accounting, where the content itself is given a cost and a value, would mean it we're finally treating what people publish as intellectual property instead of the "user being the product". --- Edit, to expand on perhaps the advertisers directly subsidized individual users at the time of publication: Ah, I think you're assuming that I'm saying they should go to a completely paid-for-in-cash-by-users model... which I'm not! I'm just saying that if they flipped the model, and covered the operations costs directly from users, that the books would make more sense. This would make the accounting significantly more complex, so I wasn't making an argument for simplicity, rather as much detail and accuracy as possible! This information can be later analyzed and acted upon in simple ways. This doesn't mean that there can't be a free to use service on top of a model like this. It just means that advertisers are literally paying on behalf of users for hosting, distribution and other operating costs. This would mean that there wouldn't be advertisements on the read-side, in the "stream", rather on the write-side, when publishing... like with sponsored posts... Like, I personally choose to make my post sponsored by the Buffalo Bills because I love giving my money to the Buffalo Bills and the NFL (which I really do). Or maybe some low-rent ads make you watch a 20 second video before paying for you to upload 200 photos from your phone, but at least you don't have to associate yourself with them. We're smart enough to create the kinds of incentive structures that have made intellectual property function in a market economy for hundreds of years, we just need to revisit some deep fundamentals about how we buy and sell information. It'll work out better for everyone. Facebook could take a percentage of the business for having created the market that introduced the advertisers to the authors. The authors are now free to do business as they please, directly covering their own costs or choosing to have them subsidized. The advertisers can establish better relationships with the authors, essentially treating them like business partners.
whyenot 11y ago
I don't trust Facebook. At one point I even deleted my account. But, FB has allowed me to get back in contact with friends I made in college and at my first job (in Panama). The reward to me has been tremendous. It has meant so much to me. Prices are not just a function of costs, but also what consumers are willing to pay. Also I think this article over-values personal information in a world where your local supermarket, Amazon, ad networks, the government, etc. already know so much about us. In that context, you aren't giving up that much additional privacy by also sharing with Facebook -- the price you are paying may not be that great.
hiou 11y ago
This will not change until regulators step in and force companies to disclose what they store, how they use it and most importantly, what behaviors they are actively attempting to coerce their users into. Much like the agriculture industry, tech companies that deal in user data use the shield of trade secrets, NDAs, lobbying etc to hide their actions from the public as they all know that if they general public knew what they were truly doing, they would have a much more difficult choice when deciding upon using that service. It's not that users don't care or think they are getting a good value for their information, it's that users have so little information about how it is being used.
de1978st 11y ago
Just dont use it. I never have, and guess what? I still keep in touch with friends in family, because, those are the people who categorically won't disappear from your existence.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Ugh, ridiculous title that is barely touched upon at all, and when it does mention it, doesn't actually explain how or why the proposition 'FB should pay us' makes sense. Why write an article titled with a proposition that you do not at all go into? tl;dr: FB makes money on our data, so we're 'paying' FB with our data, something that's no secret and everyone who ever cared knows and easily finds out. It doesn't relate to the title of the article at all. The only thought mentioned is that if we're giving FB our data, then we must get rewarded for it, or 'paid', while blatantly ignoring the obvious, that the use of FB for free is that reward. Ironically, this article is entirely driven by an event that the writer mentioned about how a sociologist offered to pay FB with actual money, rather than data. This sociologist keeps getting mentioned which one can summarise with 'such a thought-provoking thing to do, exposing the relationship between your data and FB's business model', as if it's anything new. Yet the writer misses the point which is why it's ironic: the sociologist offered to pay actual money because guess what, FB is actually providing a product, one of communication, news, media, information, entertainment, connectivity, networking, debate, that has genuine value. And so the notion that FB has to pay money to people for providing them a free service that they value, is ridiculous. It's the consumer who has to pay, and they happen to do it through data instead of money. You can question if they should, but that's not what the article is about. The only way the writer's article makes sense is if FB was a data collecting agency who did absolutely nothing but provide a form on their website where you could fill in all your data, while somehow verifying it's truthful data, then selling that data to other companies, and offering you nothing in return. Indeed it would make sense then for FB to pay you money for that data. ---- Anyway, a different discussion I was hoping some people had some insights into for me to read is this... One thing I'd be curious about, is if anyone has any data on the actual value/impact of FB's data on their advertising revenue, versus their service simply being extremely well used and thereby driving a lot of revenue. After all, FB's average revenue per user is something like 15% of that of a Google user, despite FB reaching ridiculously high levels of daily use, activity, minutes spent, sessions, engagement etc. So where FB has some of the most granular per-customer data ever to drive ads, and has some of the highest activity per user (and thereby, ability to show ads over and over through tons of sessions), they're trailing pretty far. You'd think that their ARPU is more driven by simply being extremely popular (data or no data), than offering advertisers the best data-driven advertising platform. Surely a big part of it can be explained by maturity, their ARPU is growing faster than Google's so they're slowly catching up, and it's true that Google's data isn't exactly poor either of course. But still, contrary to common belief, common sense and intuition, it doesn't seem their revenue indicates their data position is all that valuable (yet). Would love other people's thoughts and insights on this.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Similarly, newyorker.com should pay us. Their site seems to be running Adobe DMP, revenue science, Facebook, google ads, parsely and pointroll, so they've certainly got quite a bit of info on us. (Incidentally, privacy badger is a pretty nice plugin.)
onion2k 11y ago
In order to pay us, Google would presumably need our real names, real addresses, and real credit card or bank accounts. I don't like that idea very much.
icewater0 11y ago
A typical Facebook is mildly nauseating at first, and this increases the longer you look at it. The privacy sacrifice is unacceptable. I don't use it. I do use diaspora*. No one I know IRL uses it, but that's fine for now.
quadrangle 11y ago
What Facebook should do is open-source all their code, become a user-owned cooperative, and implement policies that actually serve the public interest. Short of that, it should shut down.
- beobab 11y ago
  Why?
  - quadrangle 11y ago
    Because business should (should is a value judgement, remember) only do things that are positive for the world, and if a business is overall negative for the world or unethical, it shouldn't exist. Yes, that means a notable portion of today's businesses shouldn't exist. And Facebook is overall negative because they are taking things that otherwise can exist without Facebook, like people sharing personal updates with each other, and works to be the gatekeeper "capturing value" i.e. exploiting people for their own gain in ways that severely lack accountability and democracy.
tuberry 11y ago
We should really think about who we give our personal information to, how that information is stored, and why it's being collected because the trend here seems to be that companies are expanding their collection efforts and it's reaching a point where (some) people are seeking alternatives. If you don't mind trading your information like photos, locations, address book, and browser history, then Facebook is a good tool to stay connected with people. On the other hand, if you want that information to stay private, you should still be able to connect and share online with your friends and family.
yarrel 11y ago
I'd pay more than ten dollars a year for a system that didn't treat me as the product.
jebblue 11y ago
Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. you call all start having my photos and blogs and other stuff if you agree to share some of the profits you make off of me. Until then, no dice.
skybrian 11y ago
Perhaps people don't value their data because so many business transactions require you to fill out a form with your name, address, phone number, and often more. You can't easily travel without doing that at every hotel you stay at. If you've become used to handing it out for free, it's a bit weird to say that Facebook alone should pay for it.
ape4 11y ago
Yeah, I keep waiting for something non-evil to replace - at least - part of Facebook.
patientfrog 11y ago
In a sense, facebook does pay us: it let's us use its platform for free. In exchange we give facebook our data and usage patterns and the right to put targeted ads in our feed.
sparkzilla 11y ago
I'm surprised there is no mention of tsu.co, a Facebook clone that attempts to pay contributors revenue-share based on their social connections. The site rapidly grew to around three million users last year until people began to realize that 1) they couldn't make any money (too many people chasing too little revenue) and 2) the system encouraged feed spam. Also, as a clone it didn't feel different enough to take people away from FB, which has a lot of value as a free tool for managing your friend and family connections.
gabea 11y ago
Here is an article refuting the concept that Facebook should pay the people that use it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/16/the-economics-of-facebook-it-would-be-absurd-if-they-were-to-pay-us/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/16/the-econo...
hadeharian 11y ago
If they did that, I might consider rejoining after my 5 year hiatus. Second thought...no...never. I will not allow the level of manipulation and control that facebook had over my life again, pay or none.
raddad 11y ago
Seriously, facebook is a federal agents, stalkers and pedophiles dreams come true.

110 points by prawn 11y ago

I would reckon that the market for personal data is lot bigger. 45 billion e-mails, 10 billion text messages and submit 95 million Tweets are sent in an average day. Now according to this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528866/researchers-test-personal-data-market-to-find-out-how-much-your-information-is-worth/ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528866/researchers-test... each piece of data is worth about $2. Now, simple maths would tell any company that making money off that data is a lot more profitable than collecting $0.20. Also, how many people would actually want to enrol in such a premium service? It would not be every person that uses Facebook, for sure. Plus, selling off the data is lot easier than soliciting people to buy their premium product (people give them the licence to do so through the ToS).

kelukelugames 11y ago
Why not set the bar at $2 or greater than? More than a few of us would be happy to pay for that. I definitely would for youtube.

zamalek 11y ago

So far as I am concerned: Facebook is a token economy broker where users pay each other in likes. Just like all the "major" social networks. That is the elegance of them: the users are providing the gratification.

charlesray 11y ago

Facebook IS paying us: through the free use of their service.

Zelphyr 11y ago
Except significantly fewer people would use it if it weren't free.
- azhenley 11y ago
  Isn't that true for many (if not most) free services? Would you pay to use Google?
  - ArekDymalski 11y ago
    People (and even more companies) used to pay for services which now are replaced by Google searches.
  - panglott 11y ago
    If there wasn't a free search engine, wouldn't you pay to use one?

jgrahamc 11y ago

Surely, if you value your privacy then don't bother using Facebook at all. More precisely, she wants the company to offer a cash option (about twenty cents a month, she calculates) for people who value their privacy, but also want a rough idea of what their friends’ children look like. They could just email with their friends. It's unclear to me, at least, that a 'feed' of data about people I know is an important service. Clearly, I must be an outlier given the number of people I see looking at Facebook every day.

dhimes 11y ago
I also want this option- last I checked fb earned about USD $0.95/month/person. Charge me $25/year and double profits from me.

Rainymood 11y ago

"If it's free, you're the product."

kpcyrd 11y ago
How much do you pay for your hackernews account?
- gknoy 11y ago
  My HN account costs me hours of productivity, and a great deal of imposter-syndrome-feelings, in exchange for a curated list of really interesting things, not to mention every comment by patio11, tptacek, edw519, and just about every highly-ranked commenter on threads. It seems a fair trade, especially when you factor in that I learn about new frameworks and concepts.

kdamken 11y ago

This is silly. Yes, if you're not the one paying, then you're the product. However, I do get things in return - I get to connect with people I don't get to see too often anymore and see what they're up to in their lives. Everyone and their grandma has one, so I know if I'm trying to find someone they're on there. It also reminds me of people's birthdays, which I'm pretty terrible with otherwise. People do get things out of facebook. Why else would they be on it all the time, checking it at least a couple times a day?

Zelphyr 11y ago
From what I observe[1] they're on it all the time because its a diversion. TV is another worthless diversion[2] but at least the TV networks don't (yet) sell your private information. But ultimately there is very little on Facebook that I see as critical or something I can't get from a myriad of other sources. 1: Watching my wife peruse FB but I suspect she is an example of a typical user. 2: I'll grant that worthless diversions have their place when used sparingly. But neither FB nor TV are used sparingly by most people unfortunately.
- arihant 11y ago
  Not everything worthless to you is worthless to everyone. TV might be a worthless distraction to you, but not everyone. I don't understand how the sell your information argument comes in either. They run their own custom ad network. They aren't even leasing that infrastructure to anyone. I challenge you, to please go pay Facebook and buy information about where I was on Sunday in the evening. If they sell you that, I'll pay you five times the amount. If you can't buy it, they aren't selling it.
  - Zelphyr 11y ago
    Your argument would be right if it weren't of a very large straw man persuasion. Nobody is saying an individual is being sold your personal information. But when Coke comes along and wants it, Facebook is selling. But even that's not a problem, really. Who cares if Coke knows where you were on Sunday evening? What about Allstate though? Or Humana? One commenter noted above that our personal information isn't valuable without our attention and he's right. Don't you think that an auto insurance company would just love to know that one of their customers is a fan craft beer and was out partying with Jane Doe on Saturday and that Jane Doe has a DUI? Now they're raising rate on the guy who happened to pay passing attention to craft beer. I concede that we don't have evidence that Facebook sells that kind of detailed information on an individual. In fact, I believe they probably don't. Right now. I guarantee you that if comes down to keeping your information private and keeping their stock price up, you might as get a For Sale sign tattoo'd to your forehead.

minimaxir 11y ago

Fun Graph API fact: while it's incredibly easy for any user to scrape data off of public Facebook Pages (https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper https://github.com/minimaxir/facebook-page-post-scraper), it is very hard to scrape personal data from people on Facebook, even if you are Friends with them or their Facebook statuses are public. Personal data is much more valuable. I've tried multiple endpoints to do so (for data analytics purposes) and they have all failed. The only way to get data on a person is for them to opt into granting the necessary permissions for the app.

comrh 11y ago
Have you tried a non-API reliant way? Like Selenium?
kuschku 11y ago
You can use the endpoints for the Facebook Android App. You will not comply with their ToS, but you will get all that data.

Yhippa 11y ago

I'm not the biggest fan of FB or for the fact that I pretty much have to use it to keep up with friends and family these days. These are some things that you get in exchange for giving up your information: A place to store photos A platform to publish your photos A communications platform (Messenger) A platform to stay officially connected to things you "like" and their updates Near instant publication of your brain thoughts to a curated group of people High availability Maintenance of connections to other people IRL event management Mobile and web applications to use the aforementioned Some of the best engineering talent in the world working on the aforementioned I think the average person does get a lot in exchange. Look at all of the other social networks that tried to solve this in the past and failed. I don't see any legitimate alternatives.

kuschku 11y ago
And, in many places people don’t use most of these features, but Facebook still collects Shadow-Profiles of them. At least for shadow profiles Facebook should pay.
- crusso 11y ago
  Well, really it would be best if it were legislated that shadow profile type information not be allowed since by definition the user (or even a non-user) has not given informed consent. It would be great if we could move toward a model where each citizen had copyright-like protection of his personal data.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    It is not allowed under EU legislation, which is why Facebook was fined again and again, and had to delete it again and again. But sadly most people don’t see this as a problem Facebook caused, but as EU overregulation.
Zelphyr 11y ago
I don't have a FB account and I get all those things. I also don't feel like "Some of the best engineering talent in the world working on the aforementioned" is a compelling reason to give away my personal information.

eck 11y ago

Once again, someone has proposed that an ad supported company offer subscriptions for exactly its revenue-per-user, without seeming to realize that not all users are equally valuable to advertise to, and only the most valuable ones will opt out.

kelukelugames 11y ago
Ha, imagine how creeped out said people would be if the company calculated personalized fees for opting out. "Ehhhhhh? Why am I worth $76 to them?"

nslocum 11y ago

In other news: Google should pay all of us. Yahoo should pay all of us. ...

api 11y ago
Maybe so, or at least it's an interesting thought experiment. I've thought for a while that the dominant business model of the web is for-profit piracy. I don't mean The Pirate Bay -- those are small time players and are not very profitable if at all. I mean Google, Facebook, etc. To make that argument work you have to define piracy independently of whether or not it's illegal piracy. In this case we'd define for-profit piracy as the "indirect monetization of content you did not produce or license and in which you do not pay the producer." Google monetized the entire web. They didn't create the content, but they sold ads on it. It's like having a radio station where you don't make the music, don't license the music, and don't even run the transmitter, but you get to present ads in-stream. Then on top of that you get to charge people for those ads while you are also monetizing them. It's brilliant. That's not illegal (in this case), but it is perhaps a form of piracy. Google would have had no value had the web not been full of people dumping valuable information online. Does this mean Google is a value extraction enterprise rather than a value creating one? I'm picking on Google but this applies to a whole lot of the web's business models. I think it's legitimate to question the economic justice of this. Again it's not illegal, but there are many things that are not illegal that are shady. Is the monetization of what began as an open gift culture shady? Obviously Google's founders didn't think of it this way when they built Google, but one of the things social criticism does is to question what things really are or really become independent of their original intent. The counter argument is that Google provided a valuable service that made the web more useful. That's undeniably true. But how much effort went into that vs. creating all the web's content? Does building a road to make it easier to reach someone's farm entitle you to 100% of the proceeds of their farm?
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Your premise is backwards. Does your desire to be a farmer oblige society to build a road so you can get access to the market? The the internet is a big stack of books in a room, Google is a librarian with a master index who organizes the data. Calling that piracy is a stretch of the term. Actually, taking the thought experiment further, you could argue that book publishers are the real pirate, taking ideas and making themselves toll keepers.

heapcity 11y ago

While it is possible to capture some value from data; like heat; most of that data does not actually have value until it is captured.

SOLAR_FIELDS 11y ago

I went to a conference last month where software vendors would do an RFID scan of your conference badge. My coworker (I do not have facebook) had companies that had scanned his badge show up on his Facebook advertisement feed the next day. To me, this was the real eye opener. Facebook doesn't just sell to advertisers the promise of groups of users. They can offer to sell to you, specifically, by name if they want to.

netcan 11y ago
Specifically, it's by email or Facebook ID. Most likely, your friend was targeted for advertising using Facebook's custom audiences. FB let advertisers upload a list of email addresses or Facebook IDs to show ads to. Personally, I consider this much further on the creepy scale than it is on the genuinely worrisome scale, more creepy than harmful. It's pretty creepy though, so.. relativity.
hellweaver666 11y ago
this is actually really easy - you can target adverts to anyone you have an email address for on Facebook - just upload a list of email addresses and you can "retarget" them

austenallred 11y ago

The thing that so many people fail to realize is that the data isn't valuable in and of itself. Excluding the type of information that lets you steal identities (and therefore bank accounts), there's not much you can do with huge swaths of data. There's not really a market for sheer information. What makes Facebook (and other platforms that use your personal data) valuable is that they have both information about you and a place where they can show you ads. These platforms are not, contrary to popular belief, trying to "sell" your information. They're allowing advertisers to use the platform to display ads to you based on that information. The data is a means to an end, which is showing you relevant ads. If everyone stopped using Facebook tomorrow, the value of all the information Facebook has gathered would be negligible. The real reason Facebook is worth $X Billion is because a significant portion of the population of the world logs in to use same product every day. In other words, your attention is the thing that is valuable. Your data just lets advertisers be really efficient in how they pay for your attention.

j03m1 11y ago
+1billion
williamcotton 11y ago
What if the model was flipped, so instead of advertisers paying Facebook to cover their operation costs, individual users covered their own operation costs, and perhaps the advertisers directly subsidized individual users at the time of publication? This would mean that people who wanted to pay could turn off advertising and just use Facebook as pay-as-they-go service. I dunno what kind of accounting they're doing at Facebook, but with their current approach of having advertising indirectly subsidizing users, there is no price discovery mechanism. Right now there's no way to price how much a user is worth and how much they actually cost, which seems like a very strange way to run a business. This type of accounting, where the content itself is given a cost and a value, would mean it we're finally treating what people publish as intellectual property instead of the "user being the product". --- Edit, to expand on perhaps the advertisers directly subsidized individual users at the time of publication: Ah, I think you're assuming that I'm saying they should go to a completely paid-for-in-cash-by-users model... which I'm not! I'm just saying that if they flipped the model, and covered the operations costs directly from users, that the books would make more sense. This would make the accounting significantly more complex, so I wasn't making an argument for simplicity, rather as much detail and accuracy as possible! This information can be later analyzed and acted upon in simple ways. This doesn't mean that there can't be a free to use service on top of a model like this. It just means that advertisers are literally paying on behalf of users for hosting, distribution and other operating costs. This would mean that there wouldn't be advertisements on the read-side, in the "stream", rather on the write-side, when publishing... like with sponsored posts... Like, I personally choose to make my post sponsored by the Buffalo Bills because I love giving my money to the Buffalo Bills and the NFL (which I really do). Or maybe some low-rent ads make you watch a 20 second video before paying for you to upload 200 photos from your phone, but at least you don't have to associate yourself with them. We're smart enough to create the kinds of incentive structures that have made intellectual property function in a market economy for hundreds of years, we just need to revisit some deep fundamentals about how we buy and sell information. It'll work out better for everyone. Facebook could take a percentage of the business for having created the market that introduced the advertisers to the authors. The authors are now free to do business as they please, directly covering their own costs or choosing to have them subsidized. The advertisers can establish better relationships with the authors, essentially treating them like business partners.

whyenot 11y ago

I don't trust Facebook. At one point I even deleted my account. But, FB has allowed me to get back in contact with friends I made in college and at my first job (in Panama). The reward to me has been tremendous. It has meant so much to me. Prices are not just a function of costs, but also what consumers are willing to pay. Also I think this article over-values personal information in a world where your local supermarket, Amazon, ad networks, the government, etc. already know so much about us. In that context, you aren't giving up that much additional privacy by also sharing with Facebook -- the price you are paying may not be that great.

hiou 11y ago

This will not change until regulators step in and force companies to disclose what they store, how they use it and most importantly, what behaviors they are actively attempting to coerce their users into. Much like the agriculture industry, tech companies that deal in user data use the shield of trade secrets, NDAs, lobbying etc to hide their actions from the public as they all know that if they general public knew what they were truly doing, they would have a much more difficult choice when deciding upon using that service. It's not that users don't care or think they are getting a good value for their information, it's that users have so little information about how it is being used.

de1978st 11y ago

Just dont use it. I never have, and guess what? I still keep in touch with friends in family, because, those are the people who categorically won't disappear from your existence.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

Ugh, ridiculous title that is barely touched upon at all, and when it does mention it, doesn't actually explain how or why the proposition 'FB should pay us' makes sense. Why write an article titled with a proposition that you do not at all go into? tl;dr: FB makes money on our data, so we're 'paying' FB with our data, something that's no secret and everyone who ever cared knows and easily finds out. It doesn't relate to the title of the article at all. The only thought mentioned is that if we're giving FB our data, then we must get rewarded for it, or 'paid', while blatantly ignoring the obvious, that the use of FB for free is that reward. Ironically, this article is entirely driven by an event that the writer mentioned about how a sociologist offered to pay FB with actual money, rather than data. This sociologist keeps getting mentioned which one can summarise with 'such a thought-provoking thing to do, exposing the relationship between your data and FB's business model', as if it's anything new. Yet the writer misses the point which is why it's ironic: the sociologist offered to pay actual money because guess what, FB is actually providing a product, one of communication, news, media, information, entertainment, connectivity, networking, debate, that has genuine value. And so the notion that FB has to pay money to people for providing them a free service that they value, is ridiculous. It's the consumer who has to pay, and they happen to do it through data instead of money. You can question if they should, but that's not what the article is about. The only way the writer's article makes sense is if FB was a data collecting agency who did absolutely nothing but provide a form on their website where you could fill in all your data, while somehow verifying it's truthful data, then selling that data to other companies, and offering you nothing in return. Indeed it would make sense then for FB to pay you money for that data. ---- Anyway, a different discussion I was hoping some people had some insights into for me to read is this... One thing I'd be curious about, is if anyone has any data on the actual value/impact of FB's data on their advertising revenue, versus their service simply being extremely well used and thereby driving a lot of revenue. After all, FB's average revenue per user is something like 15% of that of a Google user, despite FB reaching ridiculously high levels of daily use, activity, minutes spent, sessions, engagement etc. So where FB has some of the most granular per-customer data ever to drive ads, and has some of the highest activity per user (and thereby, ability to show ads over and over through tons of sessions), they're trailing pretty far. You'd think that their ARPU is more driven by simply being extremely popular (data or no data), than offering advertisers the best data-driven advertising platform. Surely a big part of it can be explained by maturity, their ARPU is growing faster than Google's so they're slowly catching up, and it's true that Google's data isn't exactly poor either of course. But still, contrary to common belief, common sense and intuition, it doesn't seem their revenue indicates their data position is all that valuable (yet). Would love other people's thoughts and insights on this.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Similarly, newyorker.com should pay us. Their site seems to be running Adobe DMP, revenue science, Facebook, google ads, parsely and pointroll, so they've certainly got quite a bit of info on us. (Incidentally, privacy badger is a pretty nice plugin.)

onion2k 11y ago

In order to pay us, Google would presumably need our real names, real addresses, and real credit card or bank accounts. I don't like that idea very much.

icewater0 11y ago

A typical Facebook is mildly nauseating at first, and this increases the longer you look at it. The privacy sacrifice is unacceptable. I don't use it. I do use diaspora*. No one I know IRL uses it, but that's fine for now.

quadrangle 11y ago

What Facebook should do is open-source all their code, become a user-owned cooperative, and implement policies that actually serve the public interest. Short of that, it should shut down.

beobab 11y ago
Why?
- quadrangle 11y ago
  Because business should (should is a value judgement, remember) only do things that are positive for the world, and if a business is overall negative for the world or unethical, it shouldn't exist. Yes, that means a notable portion of today's businesses shouldn't exist. And Facebook is overall negative because they are taking things that otherwise can exist without Facebook, like people sharing personal updates with each other, and works to be the gatekeeper "capturing value" i.e. exploiting people for their own gain in ways that severely lack accountability and democracy.

tuberry 11y ago

We should really think about who we give our personal information to, how that information is stored, and why it's being collected because the trend here seems to be that companies are expanding their collection efforts and it's reaching a point where (some) people are seeking alternatives. If you don't mind trading your information like photos, locations, address book, and browser history, then Facebook is a good tool to stay connected with people. On the other hand, if you want that information to stay private, you should still be able to connect and share online with your friends and family.

yarrel 11y ago

I'd pay more than ten dollars a year for a system that didn't treat me as the product.

jebblue 11y ago

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. you call all start having my photos and blogs and other stuff if you agree to share some of the profits you make off of me. Until then, no dice.

skybrian 11y ago

Perhaps people don't value their data because so many business transactions require you to fill out a form with your name, address, phone number, and often more. You can't easily travel without doing that at every hotel you stay at. If you've become used to handing it out for free, it's a bit weird to say that Facebook alone should pay for it.

ape4 11y ago

Yeah, I keep waiting for something non-evil to replace - at least - part of Facebook.

patientfrog 11y ago

In a sense, facebook does pay us: it let's us use its platform for free. In exchange we give facebook our data and usage patterns and the right to put targeted ads in our feed.

sparkzilla 11y ago

I'm surprised there is no mention of tsu.co, a Facebook clone that attempts to pay contributors revenue-share based on their social connections. The site rapidly grew to around three million users last year until people began to realize that 1) they couldn't make any money (too many people chasing too little revenue) and 2) the system encouraged feed spam. Also, as a clone it didn't feel different enough to take people away from FB, which has a lot of value as a free tool for managing your friend and family connections.

gabea 11y ago

Here is an article refuting the concept that Facebook should pay the people that use it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/16/the-economics-of-facebook-it-would-be-absurd-if-they-were-to-pay-us/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/16/the-econo...

hadeharian 11y ago

If they did that, I might consider rejoining after my 5 year hiatus. Second thought...no...never. I will not allow the level of manipulation and control that facebook had over my life again, pay or none.

raddad 11y ago

Seriously, facebook is a federal agents, stalkers and pedophiles dreams come true.