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I see the same engagement issues everywhere on the internet, including this site where discussions constantly veer off into the same old fights. I realize it's
by unishark 5y ago
I see the same engagement issues everywhere on the internet, including this site where discussions constantly veer off into the same old fights. I realize it's tempting to focus more blame and hate on facebook (I don't like it either, and Zuckerberg especially seems like a first-rate snake). But this idea that they "infect people with mind-viruses", or whatever, is just too reductionist and misses how they actually operate, which is simply "fill a need people have so those people will use the product and you can sell ads". It just happens to be a baser need we'd rather people not go fill. I have read that in the past everyone just drank alcohol constantly to escape, so maybe it's progress.
As for this person's specific complaint of hypocrisy or whatever, I don't actually think the imposition of "silicon valley values" or whatever into their operation is at all beneficial to IT companies' finances. I'd place it under the category of hackers, who are abusing/corrupting the automated moderation systems and forcing the company to waste money trying to actually be fair and not alienate half their potential customers, not earn more money by it.
- specialist 5y ago> "fill a need people have so those people will use the product and you can sell ads" What need does Facebook fulfill?
- unishark 5y agoinstinctive needs to connect and interact with other people, to gain new experiences/information and be entertained, that kind of things. People will just seek it out elsewhere if not on Facebook.
- soco 5y agoBy this logic, we should be fine with shutting down Facebook. We'll simply go somewhere else. Fine with me, maybe it'll also serve as a lesson in greed.
- unishark 5y agoWell I mean it's no more of a defense of Facebook than of a liquor store or whatever. But I don't follow your logic. If you shut down the restaurant on the corner here I will go somewhere else too. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily fine with people granting themselves the right to shut places down.
- specialist 5y agoThe users are not the customers.
- unishark 5y agoThe subject of this story is both a user and a customer. But apart from cases (like this one) where the advertising is for political campaigns, the goal of advertisers is to sell products to facebook's users. So instead of being customers of Facebook, they are customers of Facebook's customers. The money trail simply has an extra step in the middle. There are surely be some nuanced differences in that more-complex relationship, but overall the motivation for facebook is the same as if they were trying to sell their own products directly to users, which presumably they do sometimes also. Though they probably have to deal with a higher risk of antitrust accusations when they operate that way.