Hacker News Reader

Comment by OliverJones | Hacker News Reader

Repeat after me: "If I don't pay for the product I am the product."

Teaching this to schoolkids is necessary for public mental health.

I'm sure FB, like gouging pharmaceutical companies, employs risk managers who plan just how far they can go with this sort of thing and still get away with "issuing a formal and lengthy apology."

View on HN

This is true. Some on HN call it out as "trite" or not exactly 100% technically correct, but the phrase re-focuses attention on a dangerous situation.

trite (1 week ago; gray): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181650

original/oldest source? (2010) https://twitter.com/andlewis/status/24380177712

updated for machine learning: https://twitter.com/chrisalbon/status/857609299731791872

> “You are the training data.”

Myself, I always recognized it from Chomsky's old quote about the mainstream media (1993):

> Whether they're called 'liberal' or 'conservative,' the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers — that is, other businesses. The product is audiences.

You're often still the product even when you pay for the product.

That's why they didn't say "Iff I don't pay for the product [...]"

I'm experimenting with building a subscription based social network: https://postbelt.com - basically to entirely step over the 'you are the product' problem and offer the type of social network I actually want to exist.

Check it out if it sounds interesting!

Can't you just, like, make it free and just add very dumb ads, and few enough to be worth it ? Nobody (meaning mainstream people) will pay.

The idea I had is to let users monetize their own data, as in by default there are no ads or tracking, but if you choose you can turn them on and get paid to do so (and the site takes a percentage of that money). It could easily grow into a platform for users to monetize and sell other types of content that they create too, like photos, videos, stories, etc.

That's very interesting, but obviously very difficult to bootstrap. As long as it didn't, in any way, impact the UX of anyone else on the platform, it could fit in and be workable. I guess working out those details is the difficult part, and I've chosen to go with a simpler approach.

Isn't that how we got to where we are in the first place? It starts with dumb ads, then advertisers want more value for their $ spent, which becomes targeted ads

Yes, exactly. Any ads at all start sucking the model into a positive (negative?) feedback loop. The best approach to avoid that is the principled one: just say no.

The question is, is that sustainable. Well, that's the experiment. Let's see if it works!

I think the utility of it looks more like a step function than linear - the moment you introduce ads, the incentives start to spiral very quickly against the user's interests and I see no way to offer the best of both.

I've said for years that if something like this existed, I would pay for it, and a few people (not all) have agreed. It's basically a test of that, and if it's completely untrue, that's fine, but I'm also very happy with it not being mainstream or particularly profitable. As long as server costs are covered and I and everyone else is getting the UX they want out of it, it's fulfilled its mission.

I would suggest an idea review - limiting the number of connections for a free account - this won't fly. You are solving the problem, that is well known in the tech world, but you are not solving problems of average users.

I simply see it as the easiest on-ramp to the social network I want to exist, actually getting some momentum. What would fly?

I'm curious if you've looked at some of your predecessors(?):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(social_network)

Edit: Aslo, why not just piggy back on GNUSocial/status/pumpio/etc.? Having a node that can be federated if/when the owner (i.e. you) wants to seems more scalable.

Either invent some non-intrusive advertising method or go after CPM. Paying for the social network in 90% will fail in the current environment. If you want some free counselling from marketing veteran, hit me up.

I wanted to see what it looks like without registering. But I couldn't get an idea of how much activity there is, what functionality there is, etc. without first creating an account.

Thanks for this feedback. Would images on the landing page be enough?

As for activity, it's minimal at the moment :-) But you can invite friends easily by sending them a personalised link that'll connect them to you as soon as they sign up, either just copy-pasted into a chat app or via email straight from the site.

Thanks for this feedback. Would images on the landing page be enough?

Definitely!

Done. Thanks again!

Facebook is the biggest pimp in the world, and the billions of users are prostitutes.

Except it's more about eyeballs and likes than genitals and cash.

Both real pimps and Facebook don't care if their product has cheap viral content (venereal disease/fake news) as long as they make a buck.

Ad blockers are the condoms of the internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com