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Facebook – You are the Product

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Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#51

Post by DarkTree »

ProAm wrote: post #32
notadoc wrote: post #5

I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.

> call or text them There is no difference between a call or text and a message on FB, the medium doesn't change the context.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I believe you meant, "the medium doesn't change the message". I disagree that everyone feels this way, based on evidence of how I feel when receiving a text message vs. a phone call.

Maybe it's because it personally takes me more effort to make a phone call, or the added tone of voice, or maybe it's just the instant dialogue that the call creates. Calls will always be more special to me than a facebook message. Just as a handwritten birthday letter in the mail is more special than the same message in a text.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#52

Post by steaknsteak »

hk__2 wrote: post #26
sidcool wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people I know dislike FB. But there are hundreds of millions out there for whom FB had become an addiction. B

Research shows that most people use FB to keep in touch with their close friends and family. I don’t think it’s bad to be addicted to that. Edit: Some references for the people who downvoted: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397308000701 (also talks about how FB is a good help for people with low self-esteem) http://www.cairn.info/revue-sociologie-2017-1-p-57.htm (French) http://www.cairn.info/re…

That's my experience. I use it to keep in touch with friends and family, and to keep on top of events being held in my community and by my friends. I'm not sure what I would do without the Event and Group parts of facebook, as many of my friends and communities I'm a part of use those to plan/organize social activities and it works pretty well. One of my close friends who never checks his facebook is constantly out of the loop on that stuff.

In my experience most people idly browse through the news feed for a couple minutes a few times a day. I doubt that a large portion are actually addicted to it.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#53

Post by turc1656 »

ProAm wrote: post #41
d-sc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A call or text is a different interaction than scrolling through an infinite newsfeed designed to keep you addicted.

A facebook message doesn't force you to scroll forever. It's a message, just like a text message.

yeah but only the NSA will be tracking it if you use text, not some multinational conglomerate that is using it to continually build its profile about you while simultaneously selling that information to other parties.

And if you do it right (meaning using the right app), your messages can be fully end-to-end encrypted so that no one can read them but the intended recipients.

EDIT: it is widely known that the NSA has direct lines into places like Google and Facebook so using Facebook Messenger still routes your messages through the NSA indirectly. The only logical course of action, if someone cares about that sort of thing, is to not use Facebook Messenger and limit the amount of eyes that can see your communications.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#54

Post by marpstar »

noonshine wrote: post #47
notadoc wrote: post #5

I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.

I had been off facebook for 5 years. Now my kid started school and there's info in private facebook groups that is not shared any other way. I hate it but decided to rejoin.

So wait...the school uses Facebook for communication? Gross. My kids' school uses something called ClassDojo, which is exactly like Facebook, but geared towards classroom settings. It works well enough.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#55

Post by ageitgey »

ProAm wrote: post #32
notadoc wrote: post #5

I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.

> call or text them There is no difference between a call or text and a message on FB, the medium doesn't change the context.

Of course the medium changes the context. It has a huge effect!

Phone calls are typically person-to-person communication where you can hear the tone of voice of the person you are talking to, so you can better read their meaning. Also, you typically call people you already know well enough to disturb. It's a very personal form of communication.

Facebook is different in all those areas. You are thrown into meaningless conversations with people you don't know where you can't hear anyone's one of voice. Some parts of facebook seem to be designed specifically to encourage more conversation instead of meaningful conversation - things like how you really have to dig to read earlier comments in a thread. They just want you to keep posting instead of following the actual discussion in a coherent way.

Likewise, posting on this site is different than having a conversation in person. You can't tell that I'm writing all this in a friendly tone. Instead, it might come across as an angry argument when I don't mean it that way. That's a disadvantage of this medium and a way in which it changes communication.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#56

Post by olympus »

rditooait wrote: post #42
olympus wrote: post #31

I'm here to fix some ignorance, since the source of the "you are the product" idea is not these books. Metafilter user blue_beetle first put this idea online when he said "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold" in response to the Digg revolt of 2010. The idea apparently existed for a few decades prior regarding TV advertising. I prefer to think blue_beetle was the one wh…

Sorry - I want to make clear that the point of sharing this article on HN is not to give credit to who came up with this concept. I simply want to start (or continue) discourse on this particular subject. To be honest, this isn't even just about Facebook, I'm sure you could have the same argument about the majority of today's tech companies who are commoditizing information about users and using that to monetize. Gen…

OP, I didn't mean to imply that you did. This was me shouting stuff out to the HN crowd because I think it's interesting and it's tangentially related to the article.

That, plus there's sure to be a young whipper-snapper on HN that will read the article and think, "what a neat idea that nobody has ever thought of..."

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#57

Post by hk__2 »

noncoml wrote: post #50
hk__2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research shows that most people use FB to keep in touch with their close friends and family. I don’t think it’s bad to be addicted to that. Edit: Some references for the people who downvoted: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397308000701 (also talks about how FB is a good help for people with low self-esteem) http://www.cairn.info/revue-sociologie-2017-1-p-57.htm (French) http://www.cairn.info/re…

That's what it was supposed to be for me, at least in the beginning. Then I realized that I keep in touch with the people who I want to keep in touch using direct messages, phone calls, email, etc.

Yes; I wonder how the separation of Messenger and FB itself has changed the general user’s FB usage.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#58

Post by yawz »

notadoc wrote: post #5

I stopped using Facebook years ago and I could not recommend it more. I found it to be mental pollution at best and and a total waste of time. If you want to 'keep in touch' with people, call or text them. Make an effort to actually interact with the people who matter to you.

Well... As someone who has moved to various countries and across continents a few times over the last three decades, I can hardly find another medium that allows me to keep up with friends and family across many countries and time zones easily.

Before Facebook I created and/or used e-mail aliases, e-mail groups, forums, file hosting services, etc. to share our story with friends and family. Facebook makes it much simpler.

I don't use it extensively. I don't play games on it. I don't even connect to it every day. And I would stop using it if I had a good alternative.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#59

Post by wepple »

adrianlmm wrote: post #44
adrianlmm wrote: post #20

I've been using Facebook for years, awesome tool, I'm in contact with friends, relatives and parters, it is awesome.

Why the mod downs? It makes you angry that I find Facebook useful?

Perhaps your comment didn't add anything useful to the discussion other than a lightweight opinion?

However, HN downvotes do seem to be trending toward "I disagree" recently too, in my experience.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#60

Post by drieddust »

fosco wrote: post #21
akeck wrote: post #6

I wonder if, in the future, being able not to be on any social media will be an higher class privilege.

I wondered this awhile back. albeit I took it in a different direction... I think that social media already gives you opportunities to do things when you login with your social media account. I think in the future (and probably already happening) you get discounts for sharing your social media data and that higher classes (or wealthier people) can afford to not share that information which is why they will not use it…

This is already happening. I have seen one media company pitching the same idea. They argue data is already sold. They want to make the process transparent and two way so when you share you get credits like things like streaming music etc.

Edit: minor grammar

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