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> There is no excuse for not being able to come up with a viable business model without productizing users and making them subject to social and political manip

> There is no excuse for not being able to come up with a viable business model without productizing users and making them subject to social and political manipulation. How so? TV and media have been doing it since forever - not as efficient but still. It's a valid model if you want open, pluralistic services.

starbugs 8y ago
If old media advertising is so great, then why is it necessary to collect more and more data about individuals, up to the point where you can target them personally? Would you call TV advertising a productization of the consumer? Why do e.g. FB not offer a level of service that is viable without personally identifiable information being used for targeting? There seems to be a BIG difference in the effectiveness and mechanisms of statistical target groups vs. individual targeting. If you've followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, you know to what degree this information can be abused.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  I agree that there have to be limits , but it's not an 0/1 question. Facebook should even be treated as a special case because it's a monopoly, but again it's not 0/1. I doubt they can offer the same service without targetting - facebook makes $100+ from each user in US or western europe. If they made 10% of that they couldn't offer to e.g. store all your photos and vids for free. And lets not kid ourselves, very few people would pay $100+ for facebook, even though it would be interesting to see them offer that option.
  - starbugs 8y ago
    But people already pay that money (on average), just not directly to FB. If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going, then that just underlines my point of a non-viable business model.
    - zerostar07 8y ago
      > If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going You just described every startup in SV, but in any case facebook did not have ads platform in its growth phase.

starbugs 8y ago

If old media advertising is so great, then why is it necessary to collect more and more data about individuals, up to the point where you can target them personally? Would you call TV advertising a productization of the consumer? Why do e.g. FB not offer a level of service that is viable without personally identifiable information being used for targeting? There seems to be a BIG difference in the effectiveness and mechanisms of statistical target groups vs. individual targeting. If you've followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, you know to what degree this information can be abused.

zerostar07 8y ago
I agree that there have to be limits , but it's not an 0/1 question. Facebook should even be treated as a special case because it's a monopoly, but again it's not 0/1. I doubt they can offer the same service without targetting - facebook makes $100+ from each user in US or western europe. If they made 10% of that they couldn't offer to e.g. store all your photos and vids for free. And lets not kid ourselves, very few people would pay $100+ for facebook, even though it would be interesting to see them offer that option.
- starbugs 8y ago
  But people already pay that money (on average), just not directly to FB. If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going, then that just underlines my point of a non-viable business model.
  - zerostar07 8y ago
    > If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going You just described every startup in SV, but in any case facebook did not have ads platform in its growth phase.