[olympus]

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 who brought it into the zeitgeist.

http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/

Edit: Alex3917 posted a similar idea on HN on 6 May 2010, beating blue_beetle by a couple months. Gotta give credit where it's due: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15030959

[subnaught]

That may be the origin of this particular phrasing, but the idea is much older:

In 1973, the artist Richard Serra made a film called Television Delivers People which declares "You are the product of TV" [0]

Key to Noam Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_ (1988) is the idea that advertising-supported media caters to the desires of the advertiser, not the media consumer [1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Delivers_People [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

[LMYahooTFY]

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.

[wuch]

Quote from Conclusions chapter of Manufacturing Consent (from edition published in 2002, but I don't think this part changed at all since first edition published in 1988).

"A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups."

[rhizome]

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.

[cortesoft]

I really don't like that phrase; you are NOT the product that facebook creates.

Facebook creates a product which is a social media network. You PAY for that product with your data and your eyeballs. Facebook takes your payment, turns around, and sells it to advertisers and others interested in the data.

That is not the same as saying you are the product.

[tucif]

"you are NOT the product that facebook creates"

Right, of course.

But I believe the point here is you are, in terms of the sum of your data and your attention, the product facebook sells

You don't explicitly and consciously pay with your data and attention in exchange for a social networking service, you are tricked into a "free" service that you implicitly pay with your data and attention.

[ktRolster]

Advertisers use terminology that matches the user as the product. They talk about "inventory" and that means page views. They talk about "supply side" and that means people who come to gawk. They talk about "demand side" and that means advertisers.

Facebook knows who pays the bills, and they kowtow to those people.

The system is entirely set up to sell users to advertisers. Content is merely there to allow them harvest users. That's how the whole chain operates.

[jeffdavis]

Fisherman don't create fish. They lure them in with bait, trap them, and sell them.

[CalChris]

Most of the fish you eat is farmed fish.

[lloydde]

It's a pithy saying that gets across that you as the user and the proprietor's interests may not align. We are manipulated with low doses of pleasure, nostalgia, etc. This often involves some level of deception. Sophisticated psychology is used in advertisers. When you pay with money the incentives and transactions are more clear. I'm most aware of this through my children's interactions with entertainment where YouTube and "free" mobile games frustrate me the most.

[mseebach]

Yeah, but it's mostly wrong, and it's a sophomoric commercephobic understanding of business (also, it's an arrogant and misanthropic view of Facebooks two billion actual users as ignorant victims of something that sounds almost like a scam).

The exact same argument can be made for supermarkets: they are conduits for putting you in front of goods from suppliers (supermarkets invest a lot more in their relationship with powerful suppliers than they do with individual customers!) - your desire to buy food and go home and make dinner is entirely orthogonal to the supermarket, their interests aren't aligned with yours! Yet, despite this, in more than half a century of supermarkets being wildly popular, serving billions of people, the number of times when the supermarket failed to satisfy the customers actual desire is a rounding error next to the times they did.

Adam Smith saw and understood this 250 years ago: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

And so it is with Facebook. If it does not fundamentally provide some value that you care about, you will stop using it, and in that important aspect their interests are aligned with yours.

[dieterrams]

> If it does not fundamentally provide some value that you care about, you will stop using it

This isn't quite true, where addiction / compulsive usage can be implicated. Still, it's true that FB isn't completely in the pocket of advertisers and such. To the extent that they do make transgressions against their users, they will tend to not be overt.

FB doesn't have to make its users happy (whatever that means) so much as not piss them off.

[insulanus]

It's really great that you present the example of supermarkets. You mention that the group that holds the most power over the supermarkets are the suppliers, not the consumers - a counterpoint to the Facebook situation.

An extreme difference in the situation is that what is being sold by the supermarket is a physical commodity, and in the Facebook case, what is being sold is highly personalized data, the understanding of which could be used to affect the Facebook user far into the future.

Buying lettuce from a store does not bind you as tightly to the store.

What is the same in both cases, is that the larger, more organized entity with more money is being catered to, and the needs of the mass of consumers is being given less weight.

That seems like a natural outcome of how the incentives are set up - the corporations have more at stake, and have more veto power per organization. Therefore, they are going to bargain harder, at a higher level.

One way that you cannot compare the two ("If it does not fundamentally provide some value ..."), is that I can go to any supermarket to get curry ingredients. I may only be able to go to see what a particular person has to say, for example my mom, or the hot person I just met.

A great example. Thank you.

[iak8god]

> it's an arrogant and misanthropic view of Facebooks two billion actual users as ignorant victims of something that sounds almost like a scam)

Do you really think most of Facebook's users have any idea of the value of what they're handing over, or of how it's being used, or of the potential for abuse?

> And so it is with Facebook. If it does not fundamentally provide some value that you care about, you will stop using it, and in that important aspect their interests are aligned with yours.

Yes in the same sense that a heroin dealer's interests are aligned with the addict's.

[lloydde]

I tried to ignore your accusations, ad hominem attacks and attempts to paint me into an extremist corner. Where as I'm being sophomoric, your arguments are not reductionism? Adam Smith's comments do not age well when applied to convoluted multi-party interests in the virtual world.

"Value" is a low bar. Do you have thoughts on Facebook's moral responsibilities to their actual users particularly given the sophisticated psychology experiments it's known to run? Is reduction to engagement and economic value appropriate for what is the social platform monopoly?

I have every confidence that the psychological manipulation used today will be found to be unethical in the decades ahead as we gain understanding of the brain and establish science that supports morality.

[omikun]

I think you are essentially right, but I want to make a distinction. Just because a product or service is perceived as valuable, does not mean they benefit the consumer. Examples include products laced with sugar or other drugs (legal/illegal). Sure consumers want them, but they also hurt consumers (addiction of one type or another).

I guess what I am saying is, sure their interests may align with ours, but are our interested aligned with us to begin with? If our interests leads to self destructive tendencies, is that still ok?

[mseebach]

I think it is indeed a distinction: Facebook is no doubt a bad habit for some portion of its users, just like many other things are. But casting doubt on the legitimacy of their business model by using the "you are the product" trope is really a different matter. The things that are actually worrying about Facebook would still be worrying even if we paid for it, and suddenly weren't "the product" anymore.

"Benefit" is a fraught word. History is littered with those campaigning against presumed vices. I can't find the quote right now, but I'm pretty sure Dr Kellogg, the cornflakes guy, had some things to say about young women reading fiction that IIRC wasn't all that different from what critics have to say about Facebook today.

Whatever is wrong with Facebook is analogues to what's wrong with any number of vices, from sugar to alcohol to weed (and Facebook is probably in the very light end of that spectrum). They all benefit users, but also potentially do harm. The solution isn't moral zealously, it's being responsible, being aware of not letting it get to you and helping a friend before they get in too deep.

[elorant]

So my data are the product but not me? Where's the distinction?

[mbesto]

> sells it to advertisers and others interested in the data

Advertisers don't care about the data, they care about converting you into a customer. Data happens to be the medium in which the exchange happens. Just like I don't buy a whole convenience store - I buy a soda from a convenience store - I am buying customers from Facebook's social media network. So, yes, it's appropriate to say "YOU are the product".

[Miner49er]

You are not _the_ product, but your are _a_ product of theirs.

[Alex3917]

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.

[zamber]

Few days? HN bug?

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

[olympus]

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.

[zamber]

Alex3917 is either a time traveler or he's got superhuman memory. Speculation: 3917 is his mother year.

[Alex3917]

The reason I remember it is because I posted it as a HN comment, and then a few weeks later someone basically rewrote it into a blog post and got tens of millions of page views and tons of mainstream media coverage. Had that not happened, there's no way I'd remember now.

[Splines]

The source of that article was posted 2659 days ago. Maybe Alex3917 is a time traveler? (Welcome to 2017 Alex, sorry about everything).

[guyzero]

As much as I give blue-beetle credit for having one of the earliest print references for that exact turn of phrase, I had definitely heard it before then. I don't think he really brought it into the zeitgeist, but then again I haven't talked to the entire zeitgeist about it yet.

[rditooait]

Sorry - I want to make clear that the point of sharing this article on HN is not to give credit to who came up with this concept. I simply want to start (or continue) discourse on this particular subject.

To be honest, this isn't even just about Facebook, I'm sure you could have the same argument about the majority of today's tech companies who are commoditizing information about users and using that to monetize.

Generally, though, this is a trend that is not slowing down, instead it's rapidly speeding up. In addition to that, the methods have become increasingly worse. I'd like to continue discourse on methods of combating this particular phenomenon.

[zamber]

In essence that's a concept worth spreading. For example see how the Google memo debacle, or how Trumps president run news were formed to fit the particular outlets readership for maximum rage-views and/or confirmation sympathy.

As for combating this - there are no golden bullets. Even Google's search starts to lean towards sources that a given user visits more oft... or actually my search patterns fit to a given scheme that's abused by media outlets in their SEO.

I've had an idea for aggregating time-ordered news headlines for analysis to get a broad comparison of author and company leanings. This could be then shaped to a browser extension informing the user about that. The problem is that then it would be accused of labeling stuff with broad strokes.

(This mainly comes from me not remembering which news site likes which politicians and social issues.)

[njarboe]

A universal system of micro-payments could help change the system or at least provide support to alternative systems. I want to pay for things I use to support the creator and to signal that it is valuable. Unfortunately, all the efforts in creating micro-payments have failed (in the US?). Seems to me this is a place where the controller of the local currency (in the US, the Fed/Federal government) should set up a system. It would only take one nation with a floating exchange rate to set up a working micro-payment system and it could become the defacto global online currency. Many nations would quickly follow. Come on Canada, do this.

[zamber]

It would have to be an opt-out system, like advertising is (blockers), otherwise profit from micropayments wouldn't accumulate to anything sensible.

Arguably it doesn't even matter () because it's more profitable to run advertising along with donations/micropayments to diversify revenue streams. This also doesn't solve the issue of views as currency and the optimizations it drags along.

[olympus]

OP, I didn't mean to imply that you did. This was me shouting stuff out to the HN crowd because I think it's interesting and it's tangentially related to the article.

That, plus there's sure to be a young whipper-snapper on HN that will read the article and think, "what a neat idea that nobody has ever thought of..."

[Torgo]

"Television Delivers People" (1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfnm5XHsHkc

[oneoffaug16]

Adbusters 1999 "the product is you" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAX0HfsBtk