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This article like so many others perpetuates this idea that Facebook and others are selling your data. You can more or less disprove they are doing this with a
by danielrhodes 9y ago
This article like so many others perpetuates this idea that Facebook and others are selling your data. You can more or less disprove they are doing this with a little critical thought.
Facebook has a disincentive to sell data: if they sold user data, they no longer have exclusive control over it and somebody else can profit off their efforts in its collection. The value of Facebook is they have lots of eyeballs and they have lots of data on what those eyeballs like to see. If they simply sold this to an advertiser, why would the advertiser want to come back and pay them in the future? What they actually do is let advertisers target on this data, but the advertisers never actually have direct access - they can only assume that the users they target are ones that have the attributes they requested.
So what is Facebook selling? The same thing any other media platform, from newspapers to TV, is selling: your attention. Are you the product? Kind of. But just like any other marketplace, Facebook knows that if their platform doesn't provide value you're not going to come back and then neither will the advertisers.
Personally I think Google has played this balance far worse, by comparison: their interaction time with their users is so small that they have gotten more and more spammy to wedge into the little bit of your attention they get. Facebook gets a lot of user time and thus can be far more judicious on when and how they show you advertisements.
- specialist 9y agoHow does that distinction changes the OP's thesis?
- sjg007 9y agoWell the advertiser needs to reach the customer so that’s why they would come back to the platform.
- crowbahr 9y agoExcept you're exactly wrong in that Facebook has been directly selling data while Google has not. Cambridge Analytica was crunching specific user data, not just buying aggregate targeted ads. That's what this whole uproar is about: they're allowing wholesale data access, not aggregated targets through their API. Google, whom you criticize, is the one actually only selling aggregates.
- mesozoic 9y agoAre you sure they are not? We only knew for sure Facebook was once there was a whistle blower.
- danielrhodes 9y agoFirst, people gave away their own data and their friends data to apps. Facebook does not just give this data away to whomever can make an API request. It is also against Facebook’s terms of service to sell or misuse that data, and it is now obvious how naive Facebook was in thinking that this would be enough to contain apps from doing so. Nevertheless, I think Facebook’s intentions were in good faith in that they were hoping other apps and their users could benefit (in a non-monetary way) from having limited access to user data. Second, Google grants just as much access to your data via API, if not more, than Facebook. Using Google’s APIs, you can grant full access and control to your email, calendar, contacts, etc. If you think companies aren’t currently abusing that in ways that make Cambridge Analytica look like children, you would be mistaken.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- woodandsteel 9y ago>So what is Facebook selling? The same thing any other media platform, from newspapers to TV, is selling: your attention. But as the article points out, in order to get people's attention it does things like allow fake news to be posted, and allow apps to collect your personal data.