4 ms·

If you are not paying for it, you are probably the product.

by ioquatix 9y ago

kronos29296 9y ago
And privacy isn't worth anything. Nobody cares. Because everybody is on Facebook.
- avaer 9y ago
  If privacy isn't worth anything, someone should tell the advertisers spending billions to buy it.
  - kleer001 9y ago
    Someone really should. Also tell them that 90% of what they do doesn't work. In fact we should get rid of most advertizing.
notliketherest 9y ago
What does that even mean? Do you even know what you're talking about? I don't pay for a lot of things of which I'm certainly not the product. FYI resorting to such banalities is rather pathetic
- breakingcups 9y ago
  Not the original poster, but I think he is quite right. IF you are getting a product or service for free, continuously, the company providing it usually has a different motive, a different way to make money. Usually that means selling your data, thus you are the product being sold in the statement the original poster made. Can you explain why you consider the statement a banality instead of a rule of thumb? What kind of things do you not pay for where the company providing it is not gaining something from you using it?
  - Kiro 9y ago
    I run several free websites where I don't have any ulterior motives. I do it for fun and have quite a lot of active users. Not saying you're wrong, just giving some examples where it isn't applicable.
  - piyush_soni 9y ago
    It has just reduced to the new "cool kids" thing to say "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product". You are saying it usually means "selling your data" - while most of these websites clearly state in their policies that they DON'T sell your "personally identifiable" data in any manner to third parties. So that's that. Of course, it means they could aggregate the data and sell that, but then it really doesn't void my privacy much. Is Google getting benefited from my data? Definitely. Am I getting benefited from Google's services? Definitely. Does Google know much about me? Yes. Is Google selling my personal data? No. One just needs to be aware of what they are sharing with these service.
    - breakingcups 9y ago
      Them not selling data doesn't mean you are not "the product". You are being advertised to based on what Google know about you. To use another hyperbolic term, your "eyeballs" are being sold to others. You are the product. Google not selling personally identifiable information is not out of benevolence, but because it makes their own position stronger. They are optimizing how to sell what you are giving them. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, my point is that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" is usually true. Resigning it to the parenthesized cool-kids corner is (unjustly) diminishing the value of the sentence.
      - piyush_soni 9y ago
        There's just one difference. "You are being advertised" is technically wrong. A product is being advertised to me, and yes, I have to look at it as a cost of using their service. They are advertising masses to the product companies, and product to the masses, but not 'personally me'. There's a huge difference here. I look at it more like a mutual contract between me and the 'free' service. They're not selling "me", it's more like you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
- cobbzilla 9y ago
  Let me rephrase: if you are not paying for it, you are the product, but you probably don't know it, and even if you did know it, you probably don't care. If I was to go one step farther, I'd say the entire powerbase of companies like Facebook and Google is founded on a large mass of people not caring about their privacy. Maybe a step too far, but I'm not so sure.
  - ioquatix 9y ago
    I'd say you are probably right on this - it's interesting to consider how these companies actually function - sometimes the core product has been free - for a long time - and yet for services like YouTube - now there are paid options. Can you imagine an internet search engine with a paid option? Perhaps a personal search assistant who sorts through all the junk to find what you are actually after? It may well happen. As someone whose started a company with a "free product", seeing how it's been monetised has certainly been eye-opening.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Not so much not caring, but getting stuck in a vortext. Free-to-use, privacy-voiding services kill any paid-for, privacy-respecting service. There's a race to the bottom -- Gresham's Law -- and the "good" services can neither gather sufficient users nor revenues to be sustaining. The leaders, at the same time, have to stay ahead of all three fronts in the game: 1. They need low per-user costs to sustain themselves. 2. They need to exploit user data (or whatever other advertising-based edge) they have to retain advertisers. 3. They've got to retain sufficient network size and quality to keep smaller services from taking off, or from boiling-off the high-quality users who are no longer satisfied by the service. Google launched G+ to kill Facebook. It failed in that, with a large number of arguments as to why. But Facebook's initial attraction was that it was literally Harvard. That is: it began as one of the most selective, aspirational, and attractive (to both other participants, and advertisers) cohorts on the planet. Metcalfe's Law is only so powerful, and it's a strong overstatement. There's both a falling value with additional nodes (Tilly-Odlyzko), and a per-user cost constant (myself). The size of a network is ultimately governed by that per-user cost. (There is also, if you will a perverse T-O factor -- a subpopulation who are actively detracting from overall site value. This can be addressed by specifically addressing and neutralising those participants. The cost-constant isn't subject to this.) Which is why a new social network could form, and relatively easily, among some sufficiently large appealing cohort. Throwing some funding money and support to individuals within such contexts might well take down Facebook, eventually. (Though the replacement would almost certainly eventually present the same problem.)
- sctb 9y ago
  Please downvote or flag instead of posting rude replies like this.

If you are not paying for it, you are probably the product.

kronos29296 9y ago

And privacy isn't worth anything. Nobody cares. Because everybody is on Facebook.

avaer 9y ago
If privacy isn't worth anything, someone should tell the advertisers spending billions to buy it.
- kleer001 9y ago
  Someone really should. Also tell them that 90% of what they do doesn't work. In fact we should get rid of most advertizing.

notliketherest 9y ago

What does that even mean? Do you even know what you're talking about? I don't pay for a lot of things of which I'm certainly not the product. FYI resorting to such banalities is rather pathetic

breakingcups 9y ago
Not the original poster, but I think he is quite right. IF you are getting a product or service for free, continuously, the company providing it usually has a different motive, a different way to make money. Usually that means selling your data, thus you are the product being sold in the statement the original poster made. Can you explain why you consider the statement a banality instead of a rule of thumb? What kind of things do you not pay for where the company providing it is not gaining something from you using it?
- Kiro 9y ago
  I run several free websites where I don't have any ulterior motives. I do it for fun and have quite a lot of active users. Not saying you're wrong, just giving some examples where it isn't applicable.
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  It has just reduced to the new "cool kids" thing to say "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product". You are saying it usually means "selling your data" - while most of these websites clearly state in their policies that they DON'T sell your "personally identifiable" data in any manner to third parties. So that's that. Of course, it means they could aggregate the data and sell that, but then it really doesn't void my privacy much. Is Google getting benefited from my data? Definitely. Am I getting benefited from Google's services? Definitely. Does Google know much about me? Yes. Is Google selling my personal data? No. One just needs to be aware of what they are sharing with these service.
  - breakingcups 9y ago
    Them not selling data doesn't mean you are not "the product". You are being advertised to based on what Google know about you. To use another hyperbolic term, your "eyeballs" are being sold to others. You are the product. Google not selling personally identifiable information is not out of benevolence, but because it makes their own position stronger. They are optimizing how to sell what you are giving them. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, my point is that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" is usually true. Resigning it to the parenthesized cool-kids corner is (unjustly) diminishing the value of the sentence.
    - piyush_soni 9y ago
      There's just one difference. "You are being advertised" is technically wrong. A product is being advertised to me, and yes, I have to look at it as a cost of using their service. They are advertising masses to the product companies, and product to the masses, but not 'personally me'. There's a huge difference here. I look at it more like a mutual contract between me and the 'free' service. They're not selling "me", it's more like you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
cobbzilla 9y ago
Let me rephrase: if you are not paying for it, you are the product, but you probably don't know it, and even if you did know it, you probably don't care. If I was to go one step farther, I'd say the entire powerbase of companies like Facebook and Google is founded on a large mass of people not caring about their privacy. Maybe a step too far, but I'm not so sure.
- ioquatix 9y ago
  I'd say you are probably right on this - it's interesting to consider how these companies actually function - sometimes the core product has been free - for a long time - and yet for services like YouTube - now there are paid options. Can you imagine an internet search engine with a paid option? Perhaps a personal search assistant who sorts through all the junk to find what you are actually after? It may well happen. As someone whose started a company with a "free product", seeing how it's been monetised has certainly been eye-opening.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Not so much not caring, but getting stuck in a vortext. Free-to-use, privacy-voiding services kill any paid-for, privacy-respecting service. There's a race to the bottom -- Gresham's Law -- and the "good" services can neither gather sufficient users nor revenues to be sustaining. The leaders, at the same time, have to stay ahead of all three fronts in the game: 1. They need low per-user costs to sustain themselves. 2. They need to exploit user data (or whatever other advertising-based edge) they have to retain advertisers. 3. They've got to retain sufficient network size and quality to keep smaller services from taking off, or from boiling-off the high-quality users who are no longer satisfied by the service. Google launched G+ to kill Facebook. It failed in that, with a large number of arguments as to why. But Facebook's initial attraction was that it was literally Harvard. That is: it began as one of the most selective, aspirational, and attractive (to both other participants, and advertisers) cohorts on the planet. Metcalfe's Law is only so powerful, and it's a strong overstatement. There's both a falling value with additional nodes (Tilly-Odlyzko), and a per-user cost constant (myself). The size of a network is ultimately governed by that per-user cost. (There is also, if you will a perverse T-O factor -- a subpopulation who are actively detracting from overall site value. This can be addressed by specifically addressing and neutralising those participants. The cost-constant isn't subject to this.) Which is why a new social network could form, and relatively easily, among some sufficiently large appealing cohort. Throwing some funding money and support to individuals within such contexts might well take down Facebook, eventually. (Though the replacement would almost certainly eventually present the same problem.)
sctb 9y ago
Please downvote or flag instead of posting rude replies like this.