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Comment by Haul4ss | Hacker News Reader

This. Seriously, you're not paying for the service. You are the product being sold. Don't like it? Go somewhere else.

>you're not paying for the service. You are the product being sold.

This line bothers me because the relationship is more complex than that. You are receiving services from Facebook and in return you are giving them your information. Facebook does not sell your information to anyone - instead they sell the ability to advertise to different groups of users (who you are one of). To say that you are the product implies that companies are getting "you," but they are only getting ads displayed on Facebook. They do not have any idea about you or your specific information.

If you don't give Facebook information, it directly hurts Facebook. If you don't browse Facebook, it directly hurts Facebook. Their revenue absolutely depends on users enjoying their service.

Broadcast television uses a similar model, but no one accuses them of "selling" their users.

Thank you for putting into words something I've wanted to say for a long time. "You're being sold!!!1" is the belabored rallying cry of the social media hater (and often the tinfoil worthy privacy nutter on a level that would make even rms reconsider).

I'd take it a step further though and say the entire "you're being sold!!!eleven" isn't contingent on the level of information an advertiser gets about you (of which, like you said, they simply don't have), it's a pithy saying with zero basis in reality used by those with a hipster mindset, who feel somehow superior for not using that damn money grubbing Zuck's advertising site.

If you (the general you, not you you) don't want to use Facebook because it's a timesink, or because you don't have friends on it, or because it could cause you negative real life consequences, or whatever else fine - just do me a huge favor and spare me the breathless moralizing and predictions of dystopian "papers please" futures. You don't have to justify yourself to some random on the internet, and I kind of wish you wouldn't besides.

You use a false premise, that in order to create a social network, it has to be set up to profit from users information through advertisement. Who said it has to be so in the first place?

I didn't say anything about social networks in general, just about Facebook's relationship with their users. I didn't mean to imply anything more than that.

I see. Well, I don't think there is a real way to "fix" Facebook in this regard. The problem should be approached on the deeper level - i.e. the whole network should be built differently. So other alternatives have a chance to be better.

Is this really all that can be said? Because it's brought up in every single FB-policy thread.

What else do you want said? Regulate facebook?

Yes, they're scummy. But they didn't force you to put your personal info or photos on there. Don't want the internet to know something? Don't post it on facebook.

Also make sure nobody else posts it on Facebook.

That's not a new problem, right? Anyone can publish anything about anyone else, pretty much. That's the foundation of about 99% of celebrity magazines.

For non-celebrities, it very much is a new problem. Facebook, cheap digital cameras and widespread internet use have turned average people into paparazzi. You can be a regular Joe Schmoe, go to a party, and have everyone you know looking at pics the next day (or the same night). That didn't happen 10 years ago if you weren't famous.

I don't know, but Anil Dash is the one bringing it up. Why aren't those who write as if there is something else going on subject to criticism in these threads if it's so obvious? From these responses to posts on the topic you'd think that "control and FB" stories would exist in the same thoughtspace as "One Weird Trick..." ads.

Google's umbrella.

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