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I think there are some parallels between "just leave (insert technology provider here)" and "just leave the country you call home". > most websites have custom

I think there are some parallels between "just leave (insert technology provider here)" and "just leave the country you call home". > most websites have customers, we have users. Interesting thought: Do Facebook, Google, etc have "users" and not "customers" for their consumer products? For many people, leaving digitally can have bad effects on their social life. It's arguably not as bad as moving out of the country, but it's still a practically impossible hurdle for a lot of people.

rossdavidh 8y ago
For at least some (perhaps many) businesses (especially small ones), leaving Facebook is not an option. Perhaps even more so for Google.
masklinn 8y ago
> Interesting thought: Do Facebook, Google, etc have "users" and not "customers" for their consumer products? Advertisers are the customers. Non-advertisers are the product. The goal is not to provide a good service to the product, it's to drive engagement of the product up so customers are happy.
- augbog 8y ago
  Damn... this hit me hard and makes me realize why corporations can be pretty evil :/... in the back of their minds, they're always thinking of how to please their "true" customers.
  - tskaiser 8y ago
    Corporations, at least the for-profit ones, are principally amoral legal constructs, which I find all the more terrifying than the notion that they could be evil. Insomuch as they can be anthropomorphized they don't even truly care about whatever their 'customers' are or their well-being, so long as the bottom line is optimized across time. The rank and file humans that make up the functions of a corporation might be moral and may influence the corporation to make 'irrational' choices due to human morality, but that is not the rule.
    - lgregg 8y ago
      > Corporations, at least the for-profit ones, are principally amoral legal constructs, which I find all the more terrifying than the notion that they could be evil. I had a pretty spirited argument that was ongoing for about a week with my friend, who was my co-founder at the time, where my position was similar to yours. (Note: this is all in the context of U.S. Law and Government) His argument was that it's impossible for any entity to be amoral because whether a corporation or person, both are treated as persons or entities meaning that they can provide their will. So, once a corporation reaches a point it indeed can be moral because it goes beyond a legal instrument and is dictated by a collective staff, leadership, and/or stakeholders. He would have said that in the case of a solo entrepreneur's company, it would just be an abstracted will of the entrepreneur. I eventually got to the point where I couldn't argue against the legal precedence of Corporate personhood. [0] I think there is a point when a corporation outgrows their founder and becomes self-sustaining where it's corporate culture dictates it's "morals". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
      - tskaiser 8y ago
        I agree that a corporation can make what would be perceived as moral actions, exactly due to the human staff running it, but that does not erase that morals does not factor into the objective function that a corporation is meant to optimize. This is exacerbated as the morals of its actions become difficult to analyze for the individual and the moral actions of employees becomes less individually significant. The concerted effort, on which the fitness of the corporation is ultimately measured, will still amount to the optimization of the bottom line. This is especially true when the corporation outgrows the control of its original founders who may have had a moral vision. In the end the analogy I am making is that a corporation has reins, and as it grows it becomes increasingly unwieldy for the handlers (= staff) to direct it where it does not want to go (away from profit). It is of course easy to have a corporation act moral when this objective overlaps with optimization of its objective function. I don't consider such a happy occurrence to qualify as truly moral, however.
        8y ago
- hrktb 8y ago
  Both are customers though. As long as there is paying tier on the end user side, it is also a customer who has a presence in the decision that are made. To Google’s credit, Youtube Red for instance goes in that direction. Same for Google Suite customers, Google Play users etc. Of course the power balance is tipped toward the companies who are willing to pay more, but that’s a balance, and not a one sided relation. For facebook I think the picture is darker, but then that’s facebook afterall.
  - darth_mastah 8y ago
    The paying tier are customers (sort of). All the rest are product. It's quite a specific product, because it has to be seduced and tempted by perceived benefits to forfeit its privacy, but still a product it is.
- da_chicken 8y ago
  Non-advertisers are consumers. That's the term the television industry adopted to differentiate between the two groups.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  > Advertisers are the customers. Non-advertisers are the product. The goal is not to provide a good service to the product, it's to drive engagement of the product up so customers are happy. No. Advertisers are the customers of the Facebook Ad product line (Business manager, boost, campaign, pixel facebook). Users of Facebook Social Networking services are prospects tracked by Facebook. 2 products: - the tracking and targeting tools - the social network Users aren't the product. Interfaces to target segments based on users's data is one of the two products Facebook offers.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bobthepanda 8y ago
There is consumer choice. If there's anything the Internet has taught us, seemingly unstoppable companies usually have the most spectacular explosions.
jlarocco 8y ago
> For many people, leaving digitally can have bad effects on their social life. It's arguably not as bad as moving out of the country, but it's still a practically impossible hurdle for a lot of people. That's nonsense. It is absolutely not "practically impossible" to leave Facebook, and anybody saying so is exaggerating its importance and being melodramatic. On the other hand, it can be literally impossible for a person to legally leave their country.
- basica 8y ago
  I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it does have a non negligible impact on your social life. It would be rather dismissive to wave away the impact of removing your social media accounts if you have by any stretch of the imagination a social life.
  - dylan604 8y ago
    I think this is an age thing. For that group of people that have not known life without the internet, having a social life not attached to being online seems unfathomable. For those of us old farts that had a life before the internet, having a social life without the facebook is just another day. For those that think not having social media is the end of the world, I'd suggest you're just not very imaginative.
    - RugnirViking 8y ago
      I think rather that it's not the person themselves but their peers and aquaintances. For example, I had never used facebook before moving to my current town, but now living here I practically had to create an account and use it semi-regularly because everything from finding a house to advertising a music concert was done within facebook. Now that I am settled in, my usage has wound down a lot. I have found a comfortable rythmn with the activities and things I need, but should I ever want to discover new experiences or join social gatherings I would have to bring it up once again.
    - basica 8y ago
      As someone who's experienced life prior to the internet, it's not that one can't live without social media but it does affect how easy it is to organize things when everyone else does. As another comment pointed out, social events are organised as a part of facebook events, or through group chat. Buying and selling things locally are done through facebook groups rather than a newspaper or even eBay or CraigsList. Photos and the like are shared on social media for key important events in people's lives that you mightn't have the opportunity to see all that often. All of these things can be worked around, but the alternatives are slower paced and less efficient and leave you ultimately out of the loop. So it's not a problem of imagination, it's a problem of wanting to be able to keep up with what's going on.
kajmagnusmobile 8y ago
Facebook has users who don't know about anywhere else to go. Hence no need for fb to fix bugs and imo FB is ridden by bugs and poor UX that would have killed a startup.

rossdavidh 8y ago

For at least some (perhaps many) businesses (especially small ones), leaving Facebook is not an option. Perhaps even more so for Google.

masklinn 8y ago

> Interesting thought: Do Facebook, Google, etc have "users" and not "customers" for their consumer products? Advertisers are the customers. Non-advertisers are the product. The goal is not to provide a good service to the product, it's to drive engagement of the product up so customers are happy.

augbog 8y ago
Damn... this hit me hard and makes me realize why corporations can be pretty evil :/... in the back of their minds, they're always thinking of how to please their "true" customers.
- tskaiser 8y ago
  Corporations, at least the for-profit ones, are principally amoral legal constructs, which I find all the more terrifying than the notion that they could be evil. Insomuch as they can be anthropomorphized they don't even truly care about whatever their 'customers' are or their well-being, so long as the bottom line is optimized across time. The rank and file humans that make up the functions of a corporation might be moral and may influence the corporation to make 'irrational' choices due to human morality, but that is not the rule.
  - lgregg 8y ago
    > Corporations, at least the for-profit ones, are principally amoral legal constructs, which I find all the more terrifying than the notion that they could be evil. I had a pretty spirited argument that was ongoing for about a week with my friend, who was my co-founder at the time, where my position was similar to yours. (Note: this is all in the context of U.S. Law and Government) His argument was that it's impossible for any entity to be amoral because whether a corporation or person, both are treated as persons or entities meaning that they can provide their will. So, once a corporation reaches a point it indeed can be moral because it goes beyond a legal instrument and is dictated by a collective staff, leadership, and/or stakeholders. He would have said that in the case of a solo entrepreneur's company, it would just be an abstracted will of the entrepreneur. I eventually got to the point where I couldn't argue against the legal precedence of Corporate personhood. [0] I think there is a point when a corporation outgrows their founder and becomes self-sustaining where it's corporate culture dictates it's "morals". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
    - tskaiser 8y ago
      I agree that a corporation can make what would be perceived as moral actions, exactly due to the human staff running it, but that does not erase that morals does not factor into the objective function that a corporation is meant to optimize. This is exacerbated as the morals of its actions become difficult to analyze for the individual and the moral actions of employees becomes less individually significant. The concerted effort, on which the fitness of the corporation is ultimately measured, will still amount to the optimization of the bottom line. This is especially true when the corporation outgrows the control of its original founders who may have had a moral vision. In the end the analogy I am making is that a corporation has reins, and as it grows it becomes increasingly unwieldy for the handlers (= staff) to direct it where it does not want to go (away from profit). It is of course easy to have a corporation act moral when this objective overlaps with optimization of its objective function. I don't consider such a happy occurrence to qualify as truly moral, however.
      - 8y ago
hrktb 8y ago
Both are customers though. As long as there is paying tier on the end user side, it is also a customer who has a presence in the decision that are made. To Google’s credit, Youtube Red for instance goes in that direction. Same for Google Suite customers, Google Play users etc. Of course the power balance is tipped toward the companies who are willing to pay more, but that’s a balance, and not a one sided relation. For facebook I think the picture is darker, but then that’s facebook afterall.
- darth_mastah 8y ago
  The paying tier are customers (sort of). All the rest are product. It's quite a specific product, because it has to be seduced and tempted by perceived benefits to forfeit its privacy, but still a product it is.
da_chicken 8y ago
Non-advertisers are consumers. That's the term the television industry adopted to differentiate between the two groups.
johnchristopher 8y ago
> Advertisers are the customers. Non-advertisers are the product. The goal is not to provide a good service to the product, it's to drive engagement of the product up so customers are happy. No. Advertisers are the customers of the Facebook Ad product line (Business manager, boost, campaign, pixel facebook). Users of Facebook Social Networking services are prospects tracked by Facebook. 2 products: - the tracking and targeting tools - the social network Users aren't the product. Interfaces to target segments based on users's data is one of the two products Facebook offers.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

bobthepanda 8y ago

There is consumer choice. If there's anything the Internet has taught us, seemingly unstoppable companies usually have the most spectacular explosions.

jlarocco 8y ago

> For many people, leaving digitally can have bad effects on their social life. It's arguably not as bad as moving out of the country, but it's still a practically impossible hurdle for a lot of people. That's nonsense. It is absolutely not "practically impossible" to leave Facebook, and anybody saying so is exaggerating its importance and being melodramatic. On the other hand, it can be literally impossible for a person to legally leave their country.

basica 8y ago
I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it does have a non negligible impact on your social life. It would be rather dismissive to wave away the impact of removing your social media accounts if you have by any stretch of the imagination a social life.
- dylan604 8y ago
  I think this is an age thing. For that group of people that have not known life without the internet, having a social life not attached to being online seems unfathomable. For those of us old farts that had a life before the internet, having a social life without the facebook is just another day. For those that think not having social media is the end of the world, I'd suggest you're just not very imaginative.
  - RugnirViking 8y ago
    I think rather that it's not the person themselves but their peers and aquaintances. For example, I had never used facebook before moving to my current town, but now living here I practically had to create an account and use it semi-regularly because everything from finding a house to advertising a music concert was done within facebook. Now that I am settled in, my usage has wound down a lot. I have found a comfortable rythmn with the activities and things I need, but should I ever want to discover new experiences or join social gatherings I would have to bring it up once again.
  - basica 8y ago
    As someone who's experienced life prior to the internet, it's not that one can't live without social media but it does affect how easy it is to organize things when everyone else does. As another comment pointed out, social events are organised as a part of facebook events, or through group chat. Buying and selling things locally are done through facebook groups rather than a newspaper or even eBay or CraigsList. Photos and the like are shared on social media for key important events in people's lives that you mightn't have the opportunity to see all that often. All of these things can be worked around, but the alternatives are slower paced and less efficient and leave you ultimately out of the loop. So it's not a problem of imagination, it's a problem of wanting to be able to keep up with what's going on.

kajmagnusmobile 8y ago

Facebook has users who don't know about anywhere else to go. Hence no need for fb to fix bugs and imo FB is ridden by bugs and poor UX that would have killed a startup.