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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-replace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-repl...: > Every business has its
by Slansitartop 9y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-replace.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-repl...:
> Every business has its founding DNA. Real corporate change is rare, especially when the same leaders remain in charge. In Facebook’s case, we are not speaking of a few missteps here and there, the misbehavior of a few aberrant employees. The problems are central and structural, the predicted consequences of its business model. From the day it first sought revenue, Facebook prioritized growth over any other possible goal, maximizing the harvest of data and human attention. Its promises to investors have demanded an ever-improving ability to spy on and manipulate large populations of people. Facebook, at its core, is a surveillance machine, and to expect that to change is misplaced optimism.
This observation also would also likely apply to a hypothetical Facebook that offered user subscriptions:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm:
> One thing I’ve observed with Google over the years is that it is institutionally so used to its ‘customers’ actually being its products that when it gets into businesses where it actually has customers it really has little sense of how to deal with them.
Google's "customer service" is automated and unstaffed. When they're used to doing it that way, why reduce margins to staff a call center for the paying customers? Treat the paying customers and ad-watching users alike. Likewise, when you've built a mechanism to monetize user data, and you're used to running your business off it, why shut it all off for the few that pay you? It's "leaving money on the table." Keep it on, but maybe tone it down a little, and make even more money. To resist these temptations requires a strong culture that Facebook obviously does not have.