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Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

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Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#61

Post by jerf »

nealdt wrote: post #52
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #23

Why don't they just come out with a subscription version of Facebook? $40/year for no ads, no data miners or data sharing and a customizable "news" feed (e.g. no shared posts from crazy Uncle, prioritize family, etc.) Some percentage of users will do that. If 1% of 2 billion users choose it, then they get $800 million per year. It seems logical if people don't like being the product, let them pay for the product, rig…

I feel the same and was happy to pay the $1 to WhatsApp, until that changed. I can only imagine that FB values its unfettered access to you and your data as worth more than $40 or double that!

Facebook revenue 2017: 40.7 billion. [1] Facebook 2017 user count: 2.2 billion. [2]

A simple division doesn't tell the whole story, but gets us into ballpark territory, call it $20/user/year. It's probably something power-distribution-ish, with a few whales clicking on the most profitable scams and mesothelioma ads, and a long tail of people who are below average. Much like with what network TV actually makes per eyeball-second, it's actually shockingly easy to outbid advertisers.

One of the reasons I kinda look askance at the whole advertising ecosystem is precisely that it seems like nobody is even trying anything else despite the fact it seems like it ought to be a very swift and huge boost to Facebook's real revenues and stock price if they could convince people to give them $50/year. The obvious offer to me would be some sort of all-inclusive cloud storage service for photos or something, which, I mean, they're already doing. The fact that this seems to be unthinkable is what makes me start giving a bit more credence to the idea that there truly is some sort of ulterior motive at play here. Even just "here's $34.99 for the year, facebook, remove the damned ads! and now that you don't need it, stop tracking me" would probably make them a shitton of cash, even without any other changes like giving you back more control over your feed now that you've removed their incentives to manipulate it for their own advertising gain. Where's all that notorious capitalistic greed?

And suppose we were living in an alternate universe where that was an option... how different would the news stories of the past week look? There's non-monetary reasons for this too.

(Compare with Netflix, for instance. I pay them real money. They get lots of real preference data. It would totally be "monetizable" levels of detail. But there's basically nothing they could possibly do with that data that's worth more than the ~$150/year I give them, and trying to start stuffing ads in my face runs a marginal risk that I'll just leave that is probably not worth it. Maybe when Facebook first came out, subscriptions were out of the question, but they are clearly an option now.)

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-...

[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#63

Post by leereeves »

Splines wrote: post #59
leereeves wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that consenting to allow Facebook to access your contacts is not consenting to allow Facebook to log your phone calls and SMS messages. Of course, some of the blame for that belongs with Google, for failing to accurately describe the permissions being given to apps.

I don't want to be a FB apologist (I uninstalled fb/messenger because of all this), but the text of the prompt seems relatively clear: > Continuously upload info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames, and your call and text history. This lets friends find each other on Facebook and helps us create a better experience for everyone. https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre... Granted,…

That's from Facebook's response to the scandal, right?

Has that prompt always been there? A lot of people seem to be unaware that Facebook has been doing this, and I haven't seen anyone say they saw that prompt in 2015.

I searched Google for the text of that prompt, or any reference to Facebook accessing your SMS history, in 2014 to 2017, and didn't find anything.

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#64

Post by andy_ppp »

This discussion was flagged marked as dead and knocked off the front page within a few minutes, is that normal? It seems strange that it’s no longer flagged or dead but still off the homepage. I find this to be the most damaging Facebook story on there so I worry about why it’s been removed when the discussion on here was interesting.

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#65

Post by 411mrc »

mikro2nd wrote: post #17

I never cared about what Facebook did with the data they collected from their users because I did NOT consent. I chose to remain off their platform. I am, however, reliably informed that they nevertheless /persist/ in gathering data about me -- presumably via friends and family and the FB apps they use, along with backend pattern and facial recognition and so on. Any claim of theirs that I "consented" to them buildin…

Agreed, and in the case of call logs that may exist on me it seems very close to an illegal wiretap for the party never a part of Facebook (me).

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#66

Post by candiodari »

mikro2nd wrote: post #17

I never cared about what Facebook did with the data they collected from their users because I did NOT consent. I chose to remain off their platform. I am, however, reliably informed that they nevertheless /persist/ in gathering data about me -- presumably via friends and family and the FB apps they use, along with backend pattern and facial recognition and so on. Any claim of theirs that I "consented" to them buildin…

I think at this point, given that both Android and IOS make giving apps access to your contact list easy, you are in fact in these sorts of graph databases in a couple dozen organizations by now, courtesy of people you know. Facebook is not going to be the worst of them by a looooooooooooooong shot.

Pokemon Go, Skype (now Microsoft), Whatsapp, Snapchat, Line & WeChat if you live in Asia, Path, Yelp, Twitter, ... all the bigger internet companies [1]

And sadly there's the really cheesy ones like "Fantasy War Tactics" [2]. How many of your friends play that sort of crap ?

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2012/02/14/iphone-address-book/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/42ok29/why_w...

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#67

Post by thisisit »

I have a Facebook account on which I have shared as little as possible. When I downloaded the data off the platform, it was completely empty which was no surprise.

But, as it turned out my friends were not so lucky. All of them had my number saved. Some had my birthday. Quite a few had tagged me at my work location etc.

So, even with efforts on my side to try and not share data, FB still has a profile on me. I find it hard to believe that there are lot of other platforms which can build such a cache of information about me, without me giving them explicit permission.

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#68

Post by paulie_a »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
paulie_a wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense but if you have an NDA that can be broken by using your personal phone you probably shouldn't use your personal phone to make those communications.

> if you have an NDA that can be broken by using your personal phone Almost every NDA, including those standard with employment packages, include in the definition of confidential information the time, date and duration of phone calls with customers and sensitive suppliers. Anyone in a customer-facing role would thus be required to keep those data confidential, i.e. not disclose it without proper authorization to a t…

Then it's probably not a great idea to use a personal phone to make those communications then. Whoever wanted the NDA should provide one.

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#69

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

dfxm12 wrote: post #58
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #23

Why don't they just come out with a subscription version of Facebook? $40/year for no ads, no data miners or data sharing and a customizable "news" feed (e.g. no shared posts from crazy Uncle, prioritize family, etc.) Some percentage of users will do that. If 1% of 2 billion users choose it, then they get $800 million per year. It seems logical if people don't like being the product, let them pay for the product, rig…

$40/year for no ads, no data miners or data sharing... As a point of reference, if you're in the US or Canada, Facebook would be losing money on this model, according to info on their investors' site [0]. 0 - https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_presentations/FB-Q... (search for Average Revenue per User)

Ok those numbers wouldn't work out. I picked $40/yr since it sounded reasonable.

Maybe this is an opportunity for a startup to create a paid social media platform?

Re: Zuckerberg hits users with the hard truth: You agreed to this

#70

Post by JumpCrisscross »

paulie_a wrote: post #68
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you have an NDA that can be broken by using your personal phone Almost every NDA, including those standard with employment packages, include in the definition of confidential information the time, date and duration of phone calls with customers and sensitive suppliers. Anyone in a customer-facing role would thus be required to keep those data confidential, i.e. not disclose it without proper authorization to a t…

Then it's probably not a great idea to use a personal phone to make those communications then. Whoever wanted the NDA should provide one.

> Whoever wanted the NDA should provide one

This might work for an employee defending against their employer. It wouldn’t work for the employer relative to their customers; or a contractor to their clients; or any other situation. In any case, my point is Facebook may have caused many people legal harm.

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