You Are the Product (2017)

Social media is a tricky one because it&#x27;s got such a bus factor wrt. usage, however I&#x27;m pleasantly surprised at the abundance of products coming out where you (your data, that is) are _not_ the product.<p>Analytics - Fathom (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com</a>), Plausible (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io</a>)<p>Project Management - Portabella (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portabella.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;portabella.io</a>) (disclaimer: I&#x27;m behind this one)<p>Chat - Signal (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;signal.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a>), Matrix (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matrix.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matrix.org&#x2F;</a>)<p>I could absolutely go on and on, because I see new privacy focused products popping up in all sorts of industries every day.<p>The key is that these services are usually paid, which offsets the need for your data becoming the product.<p>More and more these days I have less trust in free lunches

I like the update to this from the “Social Dilemma”: <i>”Your manipulation is the product”</i>.<p>Ad blockers do not protect you from the algorithms that make you more extreme to your side of social or political topic. People are paying and using social media to manipulate your opinion and that do not come just from ads.

You are not even the product, you are a resource that is being harvested, processed, and packaged as a product.<p>Another way to think about it, a product is an output from the system, and you are just one of the inputs.

There is a big sentiment in the comments that ads are per se a bad thing. I want to make a counter argument: ads drive innovation because they make expensive services possible for the masses. I have watched endless YouTube videos and learned a great many things. I haven’t paid a dime for it yet. Newspaper adoption in mass was achieved by the same mechanism. Ads drove the price for newspaper significantly down so the general could afford buying them. Ads are not evil. People are.

I&#x27;ve been contemplating performing an experiment where I use a new device without creating any accounts, then, seeing how useful the Internet is. (Rhetorically...)<p>Can I use maps to navigate?<p>Can I browse the Twitter feeds of a few favorite accounts?<p>Can I consume free video content on YouTube, or any free movies?<p>Can I make a reservation at a restaurant?<p>Then, for those activities that I cannot do, is there still a real-world analog method? I used to look up stock prices in the newspaper and buy and sell stocks by phoning by brokerage. Is that still possible?<p>As the activities of daily life have moved online, our ability to participate in society has attenuated. Has that attenuation yet reached a pathological state? If so, policy needs to provide a way any such activities that cannot be performed without paying with privacy still have a non-Internet method.

(2017)<p>Also, paywall: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;TCa90" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;TCa90</a>

&quot;No human enterprise, no new technology or utility or service, has ever been adopted so widely so quickly. &quot;<p>Smartphones, Android, Google, and well, I don&#x27;t know about services&#x2F;product used in China, all of them disagree with this statement.

Discussed at the time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15029960" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15029960</a>

It&#x27;s tiring having a finger waved at you for blocking advertisements. When we all know that our data of who we are and our actions is just as valuable as the ads we are forced to watch.<p>The Internet has become an ad machine that throws a tantrum if anyone dares to block advertising or tracking (of yourself).<p>YouTube was meant for sharing videos but now &quot;influencers&quot;, many channel owners, and YouTube itself balk at any attempt to block ads. The actual content of videos is now secondary to the ads which were heavily ramped-up recently with mid-roll ads. YouTube should create 100% advertisement videos and see how popular that is.

The key thrust of this is that at Facebook specifically, the company is agnostic and amoral about the uses or effects of facebook, and the only goal is maximizing attention to be sold by any means necessary.<p>I don&#x27;t know anyone who works at Facebook at high enough of a level to know if this checks out, but I&#x27;m curious if it does.

Quote: &quot;Plenty of companies, indeed entire industries, base their business model on being evil. The insurance business, for instance, depends on the fact that insurers charge customers more than their insurance is worth.&quot;<p>No, it is not.<p>The insurance business depends on getting money mass to hedge risks and invest into something else. Basically, this is what any semi good government does with taxes - hedges risks (healthcare, unemployment benefits, etc) and invests in projects that would boost the economy.<p>Insurance business model is evil if good government modus operandi is evil.<p>Now I will continue reading and will thoroughly watch my Gell-Mann amnesia.