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That's correct but you're not playing along with the analogy. Analogies are not meant to be exactly the same. The analogy for the jazz festival is that the hu
by jasode 9y ago
That's correct but you're not playing along with the analogy. Analogies are not meant to be exactly the same.
The analogy for the jazz festival is that the hungry & thirsty attendees in a "walled-garden" of the park are offered up as so-called "products" to the vendors to be sold food & drink. Hence, "You Are The Product".
If we want to dismantle the analogy in the direction of Facebook, we could complain that "Facebook doesn't sell food & drink to the web surfer so I don't see how the jazz festival applies."
Well, that's how analogies work. You have to look for the commonalities instead of the differences.
- adamconroy 9y agoAnalogies are good at explaining difficult to understand concepts but shouldn't be used to arrive at decisions or axioms. Each situation or argument should be evaluated on its own. In other words, whilst the jazz festival and facebook models are analogously similar, just because you accept one as harmless doesn't mean the other isn't harmful.
- jasode 9y ago>, just because you accept one as harmless doesn't mean the other isn't harmful. I never said Facebook isn't harmful. My analogy was not an apologetic defense of Facebook. It's unfortunate that I can't even discuss Facebook in an intellectual and detached manner without first prefacing it with the "Facebook-is-my-enemy" street credentials first.[1][2] I've never had a Facebook account and I never will.[3] My analogy is specifically about "product" being a label that (unintentionally) makes people dumber, not smarter, about the economics of multi-sided markets. I found it fascinating that attendees to music festivals were not hammered with the pejorative label "you are the product" -- even though that's what they were. The analogy points out that to "get something for free" in a multi-sided market, an indirect payment has to be made to make that happen -- and it happens in other businesses besides Facebook. [1] Previously wrote that Facebook is a "devolves into a worthless waste of time": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360609 [2] Previously wrote that Facebook drives people apart instead of bringing them together: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15676544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15676544 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14397109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14397109