[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.