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Facebook – You are the Product

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Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#231

Post by CamperBob2 »

olympus wrote: post #40
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 think it already is. I recently deleted my FB and Twitter accounts. I had to keep my LinkedIn account because a recruiter told me that if I didn't have at least some online persona then I was weird and wouldn't be hired. I guess I'm not rich enough to delete all my social media.

Tell them what I tell them ("You have to climb the mountain to reach the guru. Otherwise you won't appreciate his advice!")

That usually gets the recruiters out of my hair.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#232

Post by rhizome »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #48
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…

One of the main points underpinning the thesis of Manufacturing Consent's Propaganda model is news organizations selling audiences to corporations via their advertising arms. So I would say the notion goes back at least to Chomsky and Herman. Edit: Maybe it needs to be clarified that I'm in agreement with Olympus's comment and trying to expand on it.

This explains Chuck Lorre's career. Touch just enough segments of society and keep them just entertained enough (there have probably been focus groups on optimal laughs per minute), and you will have the widest number of advertisers wanting to buy time. This is a fact of all mainstream media, it's just that in TV you have to keep coming up with new combinations of people for the audientce to relate to, which is hard. "Everybody Loves Raymond" is essentially "I Love Lucy," but also different.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#233

Post by Prefinem »

tedunangst wrote: post #224
Prefinem wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I want to invite you to a party like that, are we not friends Acquaintances or good acquaintances. I think this boils down to each person's definition of friends and friendship along with the amount of social interaction each person needs. I need very little social interaction, so I tend to keep close friends and not much else. I know others who always like to be around someone. They don't care much who it is, a…

> I need very little social interaction Don't let that stop you from telling others how to socialize correctly!

Is friendship a good thing?

Shouldn't we encourage others to have deeper, more meaningful relationships?

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#234

Post by Prefinem »

compiler-guy wrote: post #218
Prefinem wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And even so, why would you put the extra burden on your friends to contact you in a special way? Why wouldn't you make it easy for them to contact you? Texting is just as easy as facebook messaging. Or they can use discord, slack, etc etc. facebook isn't the only way to contact someone that is easy. > But there are plenty of acquaintances, groups, events and whatnot that only get organized or contacted on facebook.…

This is again an argument that the tradeoff is worth it, not that it is easy. Trade that off if you like, not not everyone does.

So what am I trading here?

Facebook vs having acquaintances?

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#235

Post by olympus »

zamber wrote: post #166
Alex3917 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different phrasing, but I had posted basically the exact same idea on HN and gotten tons of upvotes a few weeks earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325103 I only posted it because one of my friends told me about hearing a speaker bringing up the idea at a conference, but it's an idea that's been around for decades.

Few days? HN bug? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325103 > 2659 days ago

He meant that he posted it prior to blue_beetle's comment in 2010. I had claimed that blue_beetle was the first person to put it on the internet, and he posted proof that he had posted a similar idea before blue_beetle did.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#236

Post by EGreg »

michaelmrose wrote: post #202
tedunangst wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or not. Maybe they just decide it's not worth the hassle of tracking down the outliers. I guess we can argue that anybody who's a real friend will message you using your preferred comm, though that cuts both ways. If you are a real friend, you'd message them back with their preferred system.

Email is a system which you can assume virtually 100% of users have and doesn't force users to participate in a social network that has been shown to be harmful for a lot of users. Further email doesn't force you to participate in any particular service at all because it is a federated service. Assuming that someone should get a facebook to talk to you is like assuming someone should switch to sprint to call you. Ima…

I bet most teens do not use email for anything except work stuff.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#238

Post by j_s »

rdruxn wrote: post #147
abyssin wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using the harmful part of Facebook, ie the newsfeed, which is designed to create an addictive behaviour, using the following technique. On every single post in my newsfeed, I tell the application I no longer want to see content from the source. It takes some weeks to dry up, but you end up with an empty page. You still get notifications related to your events, group activities, and you can still use the mes…

There are dozens of browser extensions that just hide the newsfeed. No need to go through all that labor.

Make Hacker News Your Facebook Newsfeed

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14755217

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#239

Post by codingdave »

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 did, too. But I found that the marketing power of Facebook is just too good to ignore. I made an account again, just to have a few Pages dedicated to my projects. I didn't even reconnect with friends. Even without paid ads... just sharing my content on Facebook with related groups, my site traffic increased by 15% and my revenue by 25%.

Re: Facebook – You are the Product

#240

Post by arkh »

parthdesai wrote: post #49
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.

So tell me, how do i replace around 5 different group chats i have on messenger which can have anywhere between 5-10 people in each chat? Music events that i go to are exclusively promoted on facebook. How do you recommend i find out about these events so that i can get a cheaper ticket price? if anyone wants to organize a plan that has more than 8 people, facebook groups make it much much easier. I personally hate f…

> if anyone wants to organize a plan that has more than 8 people, facebook groups make it much much easier.

So, there is this thing which a little old: emails. It is wonderful to organize things. For group chats you also have some old shit like IRC. You get your beloved hashtag too.

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