8 ms·

The “free” economy comes at a cost

94 points by joubert 9y ago

amelius 9y ago
> In the second quarter of 2017, Facebook eked an average of $4.65 out of each of its users by peppering screens with ads and promoted posts. I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product.
- Maakuth 9y ago
  The thing is they get paid better than that by the advertisers for your attention. Their ARPU is estimated[1] to be $53 for 2016 and that is across all the users, not only people who are ready to spend money on online services. And as a free service, I bet they are quite a bit more resilient to churn than a similar paid offering would be. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/24/why-facebook-will-maintain-its-arpu-advantage-over-snapchat/#4db659d927b9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/24/wh...
  - amelius 9y ago
    But how do you explain that $4.65 per quarter does not match $53 per year?
    - JamesBarney 9y ago
      The $4.65 per quarter is the revenue per user(globally). The $53 per user is a figure for North America only.
  - nightski 9y ago
    What am I missing? That is less than $5 per month and I'd even pay 10-15+. They could make it optional.
    - owebmaster 9y ago
      You would, 99% of facebook would not. You would have to pay 1000 dollars/month together with the rest of the 1% for it to be viable, but with only 1% of Facebook, another free one would appear.
    - ajb 9y ago
      That's the average. Anyone reading hn is probably worth rather more.
    - autokad 9y ago
      My guess is, if the users could pay to opt out, the value of the customers that couldn't would drop dramatically, and you'd end up paying substantially more
- notacoward 9y ago
  You might, I might, but how many others will? A vast number of users can't. Just as many simply won't, for any amount greater than zero (a point briefly alluded to in the article). At some point, the "network effect" breaks down, diminishing value even for the users who remain. Good, you say, so Facebook and Google collapse into the same ruin as AOL and Geocities and all the rest? Perhaps, but the billions of users and advertisers and employees/suppliers who currently get some sort of value from the system might not agree. Also, the advertisers will still be advertising at you, BTW. They'll just be doing it with even less information about what ads might actually interest you. They'll be finding other ways to make sure their ads stay in front of your oh-so-valuable eyeballs. There'd be a lot more "sit through this damn video before we deliver content" all across the web. I for one would not be grateful for that.
  - syshum 9y ago
    > BTW. They'll just be doing it with even less information about what ads might actually interest you. Good, Ads should be Contextual to the context of the site/subject being viewed NOT contextual to me. i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc. Do not reach into a collection of data about me and show me diaper ads because you think I just had a new child
    - kristianc 9y ago
      > i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc. So, it turns out that you completely ignore those adverts because you have banner blindness and you're on the site to read about the latest hard drive, not the one someone is paying to reach you with. If those ads worked, the CPM would be higher and advertisers would invest in those instead. But they don't, so contextual it is.
      - syshum 9y ago
        I dont ever see the ads because I have multiple layers of ad blocking at the network, PC and Browser Level... if a Ad gets through I spend some time figuring out why then ensuring it is blocked going forward
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product. If you paid them you'd just be the customer AND the product. There's no way they will not exploit your data.
- PeachPlum 9y ago
  > I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product. Such as providing support and a contract instead of ToS. Your $5 a month won't far for that
- arikrak 9y ago
  Google is trying that again with news websites: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta Most consumers really don't like paying for things and don't really mind unobtrusive ads, so seems unlikely the economics would work out for google search or facebook.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Presumably a major barrier to offering this is that it threatens to break up network effects and selectively remove the highest-value consumers from the advertising pool. It's not just about losing 'reach', if only a few percent of people bought the opt-out that would probably be a minimal issue. It's also about who buys the opt-out; the people who can (and would) afford to do so are presumably wealthier than average and help justify ad sales more generally. I don't know the exact breakdown, but presumably it's a power-law situation. If you're the kind of consumer who could conceivably buy a truck through a Ford ad, how much more are you worth than everyone else? 2x? 10x? 20x? (Of course, the kind of consumer who deeply dislikes ads is probably less likely to click them regardless of wealth. So maybe charging the ad-block contingent a flat rate would actually work out?)
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    I feel like this is the main reason more apps don't offer an ad-opt-out as an IAP or buying a license or whatever the format might be. The users most likely to go for it are the ones with the highest disposable income, i.e. the people most valuable to Advertisers. Users with high DI * fee for removing ads < value of users to advertisers lost * users with high DI Basically meaning that the revenue gained from allowing removal of ads would devalue their user pool in terms of advertising revenue so much that it's a net loss, even if they gain reputation with the users and possibly attract new ones. This is just my theory though.
- hackeyed 9y ago
  The trouble is that only the most engaged minority of users would be willing to pay for the service directly. What I'm interested to see is whether we can build services where the people who care most end up covering the costs for the rest of the users. So you pay $5 for a facebook-like service that then provides free services to everyone who knows you. You would have all the same funding problems as other public goods but there are plenty of them that make it work. Of course, even if something like a public radio or other public support model would fund a social network sustainably, you would still have the network effect problem in terms of getting people actually switched over.
- mark-r 9y ago
  The problem is that paying doesn't guarantee you won't be treated as product as well. Companies try to maximize their revenue, and if they can get away with charging you while continuing to show you ads and sell your data, they will.
lowglow 9y ago
"Who owns the future" is an interesting book that talks at length about a possible solution of a data-driven economy. It's definitely worth the read and something we're working towards with our latest project[0]. [0] https://synapse.ai/ https://synapse.ai/
- vog 9y ago
  If you want to pitch your project and get feedback from HN readers, the recommended way is to create a "Show HN" submission, rather than hijacking another thread.
Maakuth 9y ago
Considering the title, it did feel quite ironic to hit ctrl-w to close tab after the paywall appeared.
- kubernetes 9y ago
  Paywall posts should be removed
- adjkant 9y ago
  https://outline.com/ https://outline.com/ is a great tool for this.
mdekkers 9y ago
The whole article is essentially a long moan about how things have changed, and how the beancounters would like things to go back to normal because right now they no longer understand how to add stuff up. Example: "tiny payments for digital contributions might correct yet another problem, a misallocation of labour. If companies paid people for useful data, rather than mopping up what they leave behind as they use online services, then prices could nudge people towards more productive online activity." Correct a problem? A problem for who? Neither the consumer nor the provider appear to be in any kind of trouble. The use of "mopping up" implies that the acquisition of data is somehow accidental, and simple an act of unwanted stuff discarded by the visitor, whilst in truth it is an aggressive and intelligent machine that flenses data from the visitor. Finally "productive online activity" is completely fucking meaningless in this context. productive how? for whom? Yet another faux-intellectual bullshit piece by the Economist.
- ForHackernews 9y ago
  > Correct a problem? A problem for who? A problem for users' whose privacy is violated without their understanding, and for content providers, who have to cater to lowest-common-denominator clickbait nonsense.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    That isn't what the article said though, that is your own spin - the article doesn't talk about privacy violations at all in this context.
- peterhartree 9y ago
  > Correct a problem? A problem for who? Neither the consumer nor the provider appear to be in any kind of trouble. In a recent lecture at the RSA [1], James Williams (former Googler who worked on metrics and strategy for search advertising) makes the case that: - The ‘distractions’ produced by digital technologies are much more profound than minor ‘annoyances’ - So-called ‘persuasive’ design is undermining the human will and ‘militating against the possibility of all forms of self-determination’ - Beginning to ‘assert and defend our freedom of attention’ is an urgent moral and political task I'd recommend giving it a listen. Tristan Harris' recent TED talk offers a more popular primer [2]. [1] https://soundcloud.com/the_rsa/are-digital-technologies-making-politics-impossible https://soundcloud.com/the_rsa/are-digital-technologies-maki... [2] https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tr...
ailideex 9y ago
archive.is link so you can get past paywall: https://archive.is/8hBlt https://archive.is/8hBlt
- gogopuppygogo 9y ago
  The most appropriate way possible to load the link criticizing the free economy.
l5870uoo9y 9y ago
Thought for a second that The Economist was criticizing free trade in general.
- Endy 9y ago
  That would be nice.
- etplayer 9y ago
  It would be nice if they did so, but I know better than to expect such a profound criticism from a bourgeois paper.
  - andreime 9y ago
    What's wrong with free trade?
    - etplayer 9y ago
      I think there should be a distinction made between "Free trade" and "free trade", the former being what can be seen in a capitalist economy - not the free association of people, but the requirement of some people (workers) to sell labour-power to landowners (capitalists). This systematic requirement is anything but free[0]. However the latter is the actual equal freedom for all to trade what they want to, in what quantity, which they can do without fear of poverty, destitution and death if they do so. This is what Communists mean when they say they are opposed to Free trade. Because the sale of labour-power for wage is an unequal relationship from the outset, in a similar way to how the feudal serf producing his quit-rent-corn for the feudal lord - yes, he may refuse to hand it over (he has the freedom of choice), but should he take that freedom, which is human-created, structural, he is liable to poverty, destitution and death. Edit: I must also note that it also works the other way. The capitalist is not free from capital either, within a capitalist economy - he must employ wage labour, make it his only concern, in order to survive, without which he will either be forced to become a worker, or if he cannot find work then become destitute. As such, Property itself is a restrictive force, acquiring a mind of its own. It is in the self-interest of the workers and the capitalist to counter this system which restricts them so. [0] Kropotkin wrote in The Conquest of Bread: "We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger. The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets."
Eridrus 9y ago
This meme that you pay for things with your data needs to die. You pay for it with your eyeballs on advertising. Data is not payment, it's sewage that people are finding a use for.
- Tade0 9y ago
  My computer science teacher in high school who was pretty well off(and did this mostly as a favor to the school headmaster) used to say: "The best and easiest money is made by using something somebody else threw away." I can't say he wasn't right about this one.
- privong 9y ago
  > You pay for it with your eyeballs on advertising. Data is not payment, it's sewage that people are finding a use for. Advertising that is targeted using said data. One might be able to argue that it once was true (10 years ago?) that data was just a byproduct that people found a use for. But now it's more explicitly a goal for companies to collect. I don't think anyone can argue that the data google and facebook collect is incidental and they're just trying to find some use for it. Collecting users' data is a core part of their business model.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    > Collecting users' data is a core part of their business model. Collecting data is part of product strategy, it's not a business model unless you're actually selling it - which none of the companies people wring their hands over do. I worked at a startup where part of the pitch to investors is that we would get in early and collect all this data that would be expensive and maybe even impossible to replicate. Well, we collected all the data during the course of actually providing our service, it just turned out there wasn't a whole tonne of value in large volumes of unlabeled data. Every product person hopes that data will make their product better, but not all data is created equal. If it's not signalling what you want somehow, it's basically worthless.
- syshum 9y ago
  That is simply not true. It may have been true a few years ago, but now the actual data is very valuable. It can be used in all kinds of ways not just for advertising. It is actually very dystopian and scary to think about sometimes.
raulk 9y ago
Certain features of social networks like likes, reactions, recommendations, etc. trigger micro-dopamine releases in the brain, which in turn keep the individual craving for more. The infinity scrolling appeals to our hunger for more and more stimuli, which in turn has us spend more time browsing the network. That longer exposure allows FB to monetise even further. One thing that worries me – and it's not discussed in the article – is the loss of productivity, as well as cost of the opportunity for the individual. In fact, individuals who become addicted to social networks may carry a psychological cost as well, which in turn reflects on the productivity of the individual inside the global economy system. You could argue that time spent on Facebook would've been spent on other leisure activities anyway. But is it true? Much of this time is now spent due to compulsive behaviour, every 5 minutes, 10 minutes, as soon as you wake up, before going to bed, etc.
- Clubber 9y ago
  An individual does not owe the world 100% productivity. An individual doesn't owe the world any productivity. The only time an individual owes productivity is when there is an agreement for services in exchange for money or something else of value. People commonly use productivity to try to quantify something in dollars, but it's always struck a nerve. It seems like when using that argument, the arguer assumes the world is owed any type of productivity by nature. In your argument, you say you are worried that Facebook use results in a loss of productivity, as if the world is owed productivity. It is not. I'm not criticizing you, it's a common argument, but it is based on a misconception. If a person wants to spend almost all their time reading Facebook, or reading literature, as long as they are neutral with the system (pay for themselves in some way), that's perfectly fine.
  - rrmm 9y ago
    Depending on how you define productivity, holding a job causes a huge loss in productivity.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      You're absolutely right, that's a great point.

94 points by joubert 9y ago

> In the second quarter of 2017, Facebook eked an average of $4.65 out of each of its users by peppering screens with ads and promoted posts. I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product.

Maakuth 9y ago
The thing is they get paid better than that by the advertisers for your attention. Their ARPU is estimated[1] to be $53 for 2016 and that is across all the users, not only people who are ready to spend money on online services. And as a free service, I bet they are quite a bit more resilient to churn than a similar paid offering would be. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/24/why-facebook-will-maintain-its-arpu-advantage-over-snapchat/#4db659d927b9 https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/24/wh...
- amelius 9y ago
  But how do you explain that $4.65 per quarter does not match $53 per year?
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    The $4.65 per quarter is the revenue per user(globally). The $53 per user is a figure for North America only.
- nightski 9y ago
  What am I missing? That is less than $5 per month and I'd even pay 10-15+. They could make it optional.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    You would, 99% of facebook would not. You would have to pay 1000 dollars/month together with the rest of the 1% for it to be viable, but with only 1% of Facebook, another free one would appear.
  - ajb 9y ago
    That's the average. Anyone reading hn is probably worth rather more.
  - autokad 9y ago
    My guess is, if the users could pay to opt out, the value of the customers that couldn't would drop dramatically, and you'd end up paying substantially more
notacoward 9y ago
You might, I might, but how many others will? A vast number of users can't. Just as many simply won't, for any amount greater than zero (a point briefly alluded to in the article). At some point, the "network effect" breaks down, diminishing value even for the users who remain. Good, you say, so Facebook and Google collapse into the same ruin as AOL and Geocities and all the rest? Perhaps, but the billions of users and advertisers and employees/suppliers who currently get some sort of value from the system might not agree. Also, the advertisers will still be advertising at you, BTW. They'll just be doing it with even less information about what ads might actually interest you. They'll be finding other ways to make sure their ads stay in front of your oh-so-valuable eyeballs. There'd be a lot more "sit through this damn video before we deliver content" all across the web. I for one would not be grateful for that.
- syshum 9y ago
  > BTW. They'll just be doing it with even less information about what ads might actually interest you. Good, Ads should be Contextual to the context of the site/subject being viewed NOT contextual to me. i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc. Do not reach into a collection of data about me and show me diaper ads because you think I just had a new child
  - kristianc 9y ago
    > i.e if I am on a site reading about the latest hard drive to come out, Show me ads for a NAS or a Computer, etc. So, it turns out that you completely ignore those adverts because you have banner blindness and you're on the site to read about the latest hard drive, not the one someone is paying to reach you with. If those ads worked, the CPM would be higher and advertisers would invest in those instead. But they don't, so contextual it is.
    - syshum 9y ago
      I dont ever see the ads because I have multiple layers of ad blocking at the network, PC and Browser Level... if a Ad gets through I spend some time figuring out why then ensuring it is blocked going forward
ekianjo 9y ago
> I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product. If you paid them you'd just be the customer AND the product. There's no way they will not exploit your data.
PeachPlum 9y ago
> I'd gladly pay $5 even per month for Facebook or Google if only they treated me as a customer instead of the product. Such as providing support and a contract instead of ToS. Your $5 a month won't far for that
arikrak 9y ago
Google is trying that again with news websites: https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta Most consumers really don't like paying for things and don't really mind unobtrusive ads, so seems unlikely the economics would work out for google search or facebook.
Bartweiss 9y ago
Presumably a major barrier to offering this is that it threatens to break up network effects and selectively remove the highest-value consumers from the advertising pool. It's not just about losing 'reach', if only a few percent of people bought the opt-out that would probably be a minimal issue. It's also about who buys the opt-out; the people who can (and would) afford to do so are presumably wealthier than average and help justify ad sales more generally. I don't know the exact breakdown, but presumably it's a power-law situation. If you're the kind of consumer who could conceivably buy a truck through a Ford ad, how much more are you worth than everyone else? 2x? 10x? 20x? (Of course, the kind of consumer who deeply dislikes ads is probably less likely to click them regardless of wealth. So maybe charging the ad-block contingent a flat rate would actually work out?)
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  I feel like this is the main reason more apps don't offer an ad-opt-out as an IAP or buying a license or whatever the format might be. The users most likely to go for it are the ones with the highest disposable income, i.e. the people most valuable to Advertisers. Users with high DI * fee for removing ads < value of users to advertisers lost * users with high DI Basically meaning that the revenue gained from allowing removal of ads would devalue their user pool in terms of advertising revenue so much that it's a net loss, even if they gain reputation with the users and possibly attract new ones. This is just my theory though.
hackeyed 9y ago
The trouble is that only the most engaged minority of users would be willing to pay for the service directly. What I'm interested to see is whether we can build services where the people who care most end up covering the costs for the rest of the users. So you pay $5 for a facebook-like service that then provides free services to everyone who knows you. You would have all the same funding problems as other public goods but there are plenty of them that make it work. Of course, even if something like a public radio or other public support model would fund a social network sustainably, you would still have the network effect problem in terms of getting people actually switched over.
mark-r 9y ago
The problem is that paying doesn't guarantee you won't be treated as product as well. Companies try to maximize their revenue, and if they can get away with charging you while continuing to show you ads and sell your data, they will.

lowglow 9y ago

"Who owns the future" is an interesting book that talks at length about a possible solution of a data-driven economy. It's definitely worth the read and something we're working towards with our latest project[0]. [0] https://synapse.ai/ https://synapse.ai/

vog 9y ago
If you want to pitch your project and get feedback from HN readers, the recommended way is to create a "Show HN" submission, rather than hijacking another thread.

Maakuth 9y ago

Considering the title, it did feel quite ironic to hit ctrl-w to close tab after the paywall appeared.

kubernetes 9y ago
Paywall posts should be removed
adjkant 9y ago
https://outline.com/ https://outline.com/ is a great tool for this.

mdekkers 9y ago

The whole article is essentially a long moan about how things have changed, and how the beancounters would like things to go back to normal because right now they no longer understand how to add stuff up. Example: "tiny payments for digital contributions might correct yet another problem, a misallocation of labour. If companies paid people for useful data, rather than mopping up what they leave behind as they use online services, then prices could nudge people towards more productive online activity." Correct a problem? A problem for who? Neither the consumer nor the provider appear to be in any kind of trouble. The use of "mopping up" implies that the acquisition of data is somehow accidental, and simple an act of unwanted stuff discarded by the visitor, whilst in truth it is an aggressive and intelligent machine that flenses data from the visitor. Finally "productive online activity" is completely fucking meaningless in this context. productive how? for whom? Yet another faux-intellectual bullshit piece by the Economist.

ForHackernews 9y ago
> Correct a problem? A problem for who? A problem for users' whose privacy is violated without their understanding, and for content providers, who have to cater to lowest-common-denominator clickbait nonsense.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  That isn't what the article said though, that is your own spin - the article doesn't talk about privacy violations at all in this context.
peterhartree 9y ago
> Correct a problem? A problem for who? Neither the consumer nor the provider appear to be in any kind of trouble. In a recent lecture at the RSA [1], James Williams (former Googler who worked on metrics and strategy for search advertising) makes the case that: - The ‘distractions’ produced by digital technologies are much more profound than minor ‘annoyances’ - So-called ‘persuasive’ design is undermining the human will and ‘militating against the possibility of all forms of self-determination’ - Beginning to ‘assert and defend our freedom of attention’ is an urgent moral and political task I'd recommend giving it a listen. Tristan Harris' recent TED talk offers a more popular primer [2]. [1] https://soundcloud.com/the_rsa/are-digital-technologies-making-politics-impossible https://soundcloud.com/the_rsa/are-digital-technologies-maki... [2] https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tr...

ailideex 9y ago

archive.is link so you can get past paywall: https://archive.is/8hBlt https://archive.is/8hBlt

gogopuppygogo 9y ago
The most appropriate way possible to load the link criticizing the free economy.

l5870uoo9y 9y ago

Thought for a second that The Economist was criticizing free trade in general.

Endy 9y ago
That would be nice.
etplayer 9y ago
It would be nice if they did so, but I know better than to expect such a profound criticism from a bourgeois paper.
- andreime 9y ago
  What's wrong with free trade?
  - etplayer 9y ago
    I think there should be a distinction made between "Free trade" and "free trade", the former being what can be seen in a capitalist economy - not the free association of people, but the requirement of some people (workers) to sell labour-power to landowners (capitalists). This systematic requirement is anything but free[0]. However the latter is the actual equal freedom for all to trade what they want to, in what quantity, which they can do without fear of poverty, destitution and death if they do so. This is what Communists mean when they say they are opposed to Free trade. Because the sale of labour-power for wage is an unequal relationship from the outset, in a similar way to how the feudal serf producing his quit-rent-corn for the feudal lord - yes, he may refuse to hand it over (he has the freedom of choice), but should he take that freedom, which is human-created, structural, he is liable to poverty, destitution and death. Edit: I must also note that it also works the other way. The capitalist is not free from capital either, within a capitalist economy - he must employ wage labour, make it his only concern, in order to survive, without which he will either be forced to become a worker, or if he cannot find work then become destitute. As such, Property itself is a restrictive force, acquiring a mind of its own. It is in the self-interest of the workers and the capitalist to counter this system which restricts them so. [0] Kropotkin wrote in The Conquest of Bread: "We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger. The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets."

Eridrus 9y ago

This meme that you pay for things with your data needs to die. You pay for it with your eyeballs on advertising. Data is not payment, it's sewage that people are finding a use for.

Tade0 9y ago
My computer science teacher in high school who was pretty well off(and did this mostly as a favor to the school headmaster) used to say: "The best and easiest money is made by using something somebody else threw away." I can't say he wasn't right about this one.
privong 9y ago
> You pay for it with your eyeballs on advertising. Data is not payment, it's sewage that people are finding a use for. Advertising that is targeted using said data. One might be able to argue that it once was true (10 years ago?) that data was just a byproduct that people found a use for. But now it's more explicitly a goal for companies to collect. I don't think anyone can argue that the data google and facebook collect is incidental and they're just trying to find some use for it. Collecting users' data is a core part of their business model.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  > Collecting users' data is a core part of their business model. Collecting data is part of product strategy, it's not a business model unless you're actually selling it - which none of the companies people wring their hands over do. I worked at a startup where part of the pitch to investors is that we would get in early and collect all this data that would be expensive and maybe even impossible to replicate. Well, we collected all the data during the course of actually providing our service, it just turned out there wasn't a whole tonne of value in large volumes of unlabeled data. Every product person hopes that data will make their product better, but not all data is created equal. If it's not signalling what you want somehow, it's basically worthless.
syshum 9y ago
That is simply not true. It may have been true a few years ago, but now the actual data is very valuable. It can be used in all kinds of ways not just for advertising. It is actually very dystopian and scary to think about sometimes.

raulk 9y ago

Certain features of social networks like likes, reactions, recommendations, etc. trigger micro-dopamine releases in the brain, which in turn keep the individual craving for more. The infinity scrolling appeals to our hunger for more and more stimuli, which in turn has us spend more time browsing the network. That longer exposure allows FB to monetise even further. One thing that worries me – and it's not discussed in the article – is the loss of productivity, as well as cost of the opportunity for the individual. In fact, individuals who become addicted to social networks may carry a psychological cost as well, which in turn reflects on the productivity of the individual inside the global economy system. You could argue that time spent on Facebook would've been spent on other leisure activities anyway. But is it true? Much of this time is now spent due to compulsive behaviour, every 5 minutes, 10 minutes, as soon as you wake up, before going to bed, etc.

Clubber 9y ago
An individual does not owe the world 100% productivity. An individual doesn't owe the world any productivity. The only time an individual owes productivity is when there is an agreement for services in exchange for money or something else of value. People commonly use productivity to try to quantify something in dollars, but it's always struck a nerve. It seems like when using that argument, the arguer assumes the world is owed any type of productivity by nature. In your argument, you say you are worried that Facebook use results in a loss of productivity, as if the world is owed productivity. It is not. I'm not criticizing you, it's a common argument, but it is based on a misconception. If a person wants to spend almost all their time reading Facebook, or reading literature, as long as they are neutral with the system (pay for themselves in some way), that's perfectly fine.
- rrmm 9y ago
  Depending on how you define productivity, holding a job causes a huge loss in productivity.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    You're absolutely right, that's a great point.