The organizers of a free jazz festival don't record your attendance, what you bought, how often you went to the bathroom or who you went with.
The analogy for the jazz festival is that the hungry & thirsty attendees in a "walled-garden" of the park are offered up as so-called "products" to the vendors to be sold food & drink. Hence, "You Are The Product".
If we want to dismantle the analogy in the direction of Facebook, we could complain that "Facebook doesn't sell food & drink to the web surfer so I don't see how the jazz festival applies."
Well, that's how analogies work. You have to look for the commonalities instead of the differences.
I never said Facebook isn't harmful. My analogy was not an apologetic defense of Facebook. It's unfortunate that I can't even discuss Facebook in an intellectual and detached manner without first prefacing it with the "Facebook-is-my-enemy" street credentials first.[1][2] I've never had a Facebook account and I never will.[3]
My analogy is specifically about "product" being a label that (unintentionally) makes people dumber, not smarter, about the economics of multi-sided markets. I found it fascinating that attendees to music festivals were not hammered with the pejorative label "you are the product" -- even though that's what they were. The analogy points out that to "get something for free" in a multi-sided market, an indirect payment has to be made to make that happen -- and it happens in other businesses besides Facebook.
[1] Previously wrote that Facebook is a "devolves into a worthless waste of time": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360609
[2] Previously wrote that Facebook drives people apart instead of bringing them together: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15676544
In fact... now that I think about it, that’s a good way to describe the whole place, it’s like if Disney and Facebook made a city/state.
Also, as someone who actually lives in Singapore, I can tell you for certain that SlowRobotAhead is spouting complete nonsense.
Don’t get me wrong I was fascinated by SG, but it’s not real. Not real in the same way say NYC or Tokyo are real. It’s beautiful, but it’s the air conditioned city top to bottom inside and out.
I’ve spent enough time there and around the world to know what I was looking at. Beautiful though.
The police here don’t wear body armor, by the way. Where did you hallucinate that from?
$80k permits — have you seen the goddamn traffic in Novena on a weekend? Oh, never mind, you’ve “spent enough time” here. Obviously.
Air conditioned city — is that supposed to be a jab? It’s as if you’ve forgotten that we’re right at the equator. Look up a map sometime.