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I don’t think this is a dark pattern per se. You don’t expect to walk into any restaurant and get free food. With meta products, you pay for content by being tr

I don’t think this is a dark pattern per se. You don’t expect to walk into any restaurant and get free food. With meta products, you pay for content by being tracked. If you refuse to sign in, they refuse to show you content. It’s simple.

fuzzy2 3y ago
> If you refuse to sign in, they refuse to show you content. Ah, but this is not what is happening. They do show content! It's just that basically any interaction whatsoever with this content immediately triggers the login prompt.
0x_rs 3y ago
>you pay for content by being tracked Meta likes tracking you even outside their own walled jail-platforms, too. https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tracking_non_users/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tr...
swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
I’d say its more like an art gallery where other people provide the content, but fuck you if you aren’t gonna give your privacy up
- galoisscobi 3y ago
  That has been Meta’s play for a long time. It’s why I don’t use meta products and encourage others to do the same.
sledgehammers 3y ago
Except in a restaurant, the chef gets paid. In this platform, value is extracted from the chef, the waiter, the eater, the eaten, and their interaction, while tearing down societies. Not a fair comparison.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Welcome to shareholder capitalism, extracting rents from all sides of the market perpetually to enrich shareholders. This is why utility tokens were such a big game changer for me. Remember Zuck was an open source bro who turned down M$ for $1M and ended up open sourcing Synapse. He built Wirehog, as a decentralized file sharing network. I was attending TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 in NYC and personally heard Sean Parker speak proudly about how they “put a bullet in that thing” — because it threatened corporate profits and rent extraction. Sean Parker learned not to mess with corporate profits, when his company Napster got sued into oblivion by the other “lock up the IP monopoly” industries — music and movies. MPAA and RIAA. So he started Plaxo and learned to be VC. Then he brought Peter Thiel, the guy who seriously advocates “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”. He gave Mark a lot of good advice and the VC industry turned him from an open source bro into a corporate golden boy who buys up the competition, the founders of which leave in disgust after their golden handcuffs are off (WhatApp, Oculus, and yes Instagram). This isn’t an isolated story. Elon owns Twitter. Bezos owns Amazon. The nicer guys like Ohanian and Jack got out, after selling, though. And they all want decentralization now. Moxie left WhatsApp and started an end-to-end encrypted messenger (Signal).
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Do you have a 401k or do any kind of index fund investing? You almost certainly own some Meta shares. Congrats, you're a shareholder.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      Nope. I don’t. Also, hate the game, not the player. Bernie paying 100% taxes isn’t going to solve anything. Neither is a few people going vegan going to solve what happens on factory farms. We need an actual alternative that is good enough so people will switch. What the Impossible Burger is doing for meat eating, https://qbix.com https://qbix.com can do for Big Tech exodus. It happened 25 years ago, when the World Wide Web appeared, content creators very quickly left AOL, Compuserve and all those other walled gardens. In fact, FB, Google and Amazon could only come to exist because the Web was permissionless and didn’t extract rents! We need that again.
EGreg 3y ago
“They refuse to show you content” It’s other people’s content and they should make it available in places other than Meta. All these Big Tech platforms should be DEMOTED to hosting trailers and teasers that link back to people’s sites where they host their own videos and community. Why do you think people don’t just do that? Oh because the Big Tech companies have the infrastructure and no one stuck around long enough to build a good enough open source alternative, that’s why! Until now … https://qbix.com/communities https://qbix.com/communities
alpaca128 3y ago
> you pay for content by being tracked No, the user doesn't know the price and isn't ever informed in clear terms about the consequences of using the site. Going with your analogy it's not payment, it's theft. We all know why Meta and others bury all the details in legalese somewhere in their terms of service - they know most users don't know how comprehensive and invasive the tracking is, and hope it stays that way.
squirtlebonflow 3y ago
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fuzzy2 3y ago

> If you refuse to sign in, they refuse to show you content. Ah, but this is not what is happening. They do show content! It's just that basically any interaction whatsoever with this content immediately triggers the login prompt.

0x_rs 3y ago

>you pay for content by being tracked Meta likes tracking you even outside their own walled jail-platforms, too. https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tracking_non_users/ https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tr...

swagasaurus-rex 3y ago

I’d say its more like an art gallery where other people provide the content, but fuck you if you aren’t gonna give your privacy up

galoisscobi 3y ago
That has been Meta’s play for a long time. It’s why I don’t use meta products and encourage others to do the same.

sledgehammers 3y ago

Except in a restaurant, the chef gets paid. In this platform, value is extracted from the chef, the waiter, the eater, the eaten, and their interaction, while tearing down societies. Not a fair comparison.

EGreg 3y ago
Welcome to shareholder capitalism, extracting rents from all sides of the market perpetually to enrich shareholders. This is why utility tokens were such a big game changer for me. Remember Zuck was an open source bro who turned down M$ for $1M and ended up open sourcing Synapse. He built Wirehog, as a decentralized file sharing network. I was attending TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 in NYC and personally heard Sean Parker speak proudly about how they “put a bullet in that thing” — because it threatened corporate profits and rent extraction. Sean Parker learned not to mess with corporate profits, when his company Napster got sued into oblivion by the other “lock up the IP monopoly” industries — music and movies. MPAA and RIAA. So he started Plaxo and learned to be VC. Then he brought Peter Thiel, the guy who seriously advocates “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”. He gave Mark a lot of good advice and the VC industry turned him from an open source bro into a corporate golden boy who buys up the competition, the founders of which leave in disgust after their golden handcuffs are off (WhatApp, Oculus, and yes Instagram). This isn’t an isolated story. Elon owns Twitter. Bezos owns Amazon. The nicer guys like Ohanian and Jack got out, after selling, though. And they all want decentralization now. Moxie left WhatsApp and started an end-to-end encrypted messenger (Signal).
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Do you have a 401k or do any kind of index fund investing? You almost certainly own some Meta shares. Congrats, you're a shareholder.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Nope. I don’t. Also, hate the game, not the player. Bernie paying 100% taxes isn’t going to solve anything. Neither is a few people going vegan going to solve what happens on factory farms. We need an actual alternative that is good enough so people will switch. What the Impossible Burger is doing for meat eating, https://qbix.com https://qbix.com can do for Big Tech exodus. It happened 25 years ago, when the World Wide Web appeared, content creators very quickly left AOL, Compuserve and all those other walled gardens. In fact, FB, Google and Amazon could only come to exist because the Web was permissionless and didn’t extract rents! We need that again.

EGreg 3y ago

“They refuse to show you content” It’s other people’s content and they should make it available in places other than Meta. All these Big Tech platforms should be DEMOTED to hosting trailers and teasers that link back to people’s sites where they host their own videos and community. Why do you think people don’t just do that? Oh because the Big Tech companies have the infrastructure and no one stuck around long enough to build a good enough open source alternative, that’s why! Until now … https://qbix.com/communities https://qbix.com/communities

alpaca128 3y ago

> you pay for content by being tracked No, the user doesn't know the price and isn't ever informed in clear terms about the consequences of using the site. Going with your analogy it's not payment, it's theft. We all know why Meta and others bury all the details in legalese somewhere in their terms of service - they know most users don't know how comprehensive and invasive the tracking is, and hope it stays that way.

squirtlebonflow 3y ago

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