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”We’re building value, not just taking it away from someone else.” Bullshit. Meta's whole business is predation on user's attention. If I am scrolling their st

by iammjm 4y ago

”We’re building value, not just taking it away from someone else.” Bullshit. Meta's whole business is predation on user's attention. If I am scrolling their stupid page, then I am not scrolling some other stupid page. This is as zero-sum as it gets.

prepend 4y ago
I think Facebook consumed non-monetized life activities. So instead of doing free things IRL, people started browsing and scrolling. So it was zero sum for attention but not for economic value. I think Zuckerberg was right in that Facebook didn’t take market away from others, they created a new market. At least 12 years ago.
seydor 4y ago
This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.
- balsam 4y ago
  Since the article comes from a “crypto”-related site, perhaps I can make a metaphoric (& mildly schizophrenic) response without getting downvoted. Google is USD and Meta wants to be Gold. The % of businesses that accept mainstream currencies have always been the same. What’s left are businesses that people still find socially unacceptable.
- golergka 4y ago
  > Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    They could always post an ad in a local newspaper. Many people read those things before the proliferation of internet.
    - golergka 4y ago
      They could also use a lot of other advertisement methods, which were much less cost-effective and make their businesses unprofitable overall.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        Most of those ads were free "back in my days" here.. you got a "postcard" in each of those magazines, and could post an ad (limited length, text only) for free... how do you thing people sold cars before the internet? And yes, facebook is more cost effective, because people don't get paid for their data... if people got paid for viewing ads and having their data gathered (like they used to be, market research groups and all that), the cost would be a lot different.
        jasode 4y ago
        >how do you thing people sold cars before the internet? You're not following the particular context of your subthread and inadvertently moving the goalposts. The side conversation you're replying to was niche businesses with niche customers e.g. gp's example of "small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes)" Buying ad space in a local newspaper is a waste of money for _small_ businesses like that because the subset of readers interested in paying for homemade cupcakes is too tiny. There's a threshold where it's just not financially feasible to pay $$$ targeted at a general audience in the hopes of converting the subset of that audience into customer revenue. On the other hand, cars are purchased by everybody and the profit margins are also higher to get a return-on-investment when spending for ads in local newspapers. Mabye a better example than housewife cupcakes is the niche video educational content on Youtube that's supported by advertising. The niche videos from Animagraffs, Practical Engineering, etc with micro-audiences wouldn't be economically viable on traditional network tv or even PBS. It required the long-tail of the internet matching the marketplace of viewers + creators + advertisers.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  I'm no fan of ads, but I would still contest that. The pre-Internet advertising arsenal was all remarkably blunt weapons (newspaper ads, TV, radio, direct mail) that made targeting very difficult and were out of reach or not economic for countless businesses. Now anybody can buy precisely targeted impressions for any keyword under the sun and very closely track their performance, opening up entirely new markets.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    And with that, millions and billions of users get profiled, their private information taken away and processed by those two companies, as ads get embedded into everything (even lockscreens it seems)
  - nulbyte 4y ago
    I'm not a fan of these new markets. We got by just fine with simple, static ads that weren't spying on everyone. It gave rise to local, niche publications that were a heck of a lot more interesting than today's one-size-fits-all social media junk.
  - seydor 4y ago
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publication/315481909/figure/fig1/AS:563549458137088@1511372069345/Advertising-Expenditures-Relative-to-Global-GDP.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publ... There is no such thing as 'blunt' or sharp weapon, the market shows that all advertising has some efficacy (around 1% but nobody knows how much precisely). Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption, thus it is not more effective than the sum of previous media. Anyway the biggest trick BigTech played was not that it hypnotized the masses, but that they convinced advertisers that they are better than everyone
    - lesam 4y ago
      My model is advertising is roughly zero sum - there’s only so much disposable income for advertisers to chase. So it doesn’t seem contradictory that overall consumption stayed constant while the advertising arms race advanced significantly.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> This is as zero-sum as it gets. Given the impact of FaceBook on political and media systems, I think that this a strongly negative sum game. Spreading "junk food news" and other lurid conspiratorial stories is a negative externality, like venting pollution.
Pr0ject217 4y ago
I share your distaste for Meta/FB; however, if their investment to advance the 'meta-verse' leads them to invent technologies that end up being used in different contexts by other companies/industries (charting more of the uncharted map), then all the better.

by iammjm 4y ago

prepend 4y ago

I think Facebook consumed non-monetized life activities. So instead of doing free things IRL, people started browsing and scrolling. So it was zero sum for attention but not for economic value. I think Zuckerberg was right in that Facebook didn’t take market away from others, they created a new market. At least 12 years ago.

seydor 4y ago

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

balsam 4y ago
Since the article comes from a “crypto”-related site, perhaps I can make a metaphoric (& mildly schizophrenic) response without getting downvoted. Google is USD and Meta wants to be Gold. The % of businesses that accept mainstream currencies have always been the same. What’s left are businesses that people still find socially unacceptable.
golergka 4y ago
> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  They could always post an ad in a local newspaper. Many people read those things before the proliferation of internet.
  - golergka 4y ago
    They could also use a lot of other advertisement methods, which were much less cost-effective and make their businesses unprofitable overall.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Most of those ads were free "back in my days" here.. you got a "postcard" in each of those magazines, and could post an ad (limited length, text only) for free... how do you thing people sold cars before the internet? And yes, facebook is more cost effective, because people don't get paid for their data... if people got paid for viewing ads and having their data gathered (like they used to be, market research groups and all that), the cost would be a lot different.
      - jasode 4y ago
        >how do you thing people sold cars before the internet? You're not following the particular context of your subthread and inadvertently moving the goalposts. The side conversation you're replying to was niche businesses with niche customers e.g. gp's example of "small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes)" Buying ad space in a local newspaper is a waste of money for _small_ businesses like that because the subset of readers interested in paying for homemade cupcakes is too tiny. There's a threshold where it's just not financially feasible to pay $$$ targeted at a general audience in the hopes of converting the subset of that audience into customer revenue. On the other hand, cars are purchased by everybody and the profit margins are also higher to get a return-on-investment when spending for ads in local newspapers. Mabye a better example than housewife cupcakes is the niche video educational content on Youtube that's supported by advertising. The niche videos from Animagraffs, Practical Engineering, etc with micro-audiences wouldn't be economically viable on traditional network tv or even PBS. It required the long-tail of the internet matching the marketplace of viewers + creators + advertisers.
thematrixturtle 4y ago
I'm no fan of ads, but I would still contest that. The pre-Internet advertising arsenal was all remarkably blunt weapons (newspaper ads, TV, radio, direct mail) that made targeting very difficult and were out of reach or not economic for countless businesses. Now anybody can buy precisely targeted impressions for any keyword under the sun and very closely track their performance, opening up entirely new markets.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  And with that, millions and billions of users get profiled, their private information taken away and processed by those two companies, as ads get embedded into everything (even lockscreens it seems)
- nulbyte 4y ago
  I'm not a fan of these new markets. We got by just fine with simple, static ads that weren't spying on everyone. It gave rise to local, niche publications that were a heck of a lot more interesting than today's one-size-fits-all social media junk.
- seydor 4y ago
  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publication/315481909/figure/fig1/AS:563549458137088@1511372069345/Advertising-Expenditures-Relative-to-Global-GDP.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publ... There is no such thing as 'blunt' or sharp weapon, the market shows that all advertising has some efficacy (around 1% but nobody knows how much precisely). Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption, thus it is not more effective than the sum of previous media. Anyway the biggest trick BigTech played was not that it hypnotized the masses, but that they convinced advertisers that they are better than everyone
  - lesam 4y ago
    My model is advertising is roughly zero sum - there’s only so much disposable income for advertisers to chase. So it doesn’t seem contradictory that overall consumption stayed constant while the advertising arms race advanced significantly.

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> This is as zero-sum as it gets. Given the impact of FaceBook on political and media systems, I think that this a strongly negative sum game. Spreading "junk food news" and other lurid conspiratorial stories is a negative externality, like venting pollution.

Pr0ject217 4y ago

I share your distaste for Meta/FB; however, if their investment to advance the 'meta-verse' leads them to invent technologies that end up being used in different contexts by other companies/industries (charting more of the uncharted map), then all the better.