[______-]

> “Senator, We Run Ads” was the iconic response from Facebook’s CEO

> And that’s how Facebook still manages to stay free of cost today.

I enjoy articles that explain to the layman how the sausage is made. I've always wondered: if enough people know they're the product and know how Facebook makes money, would they delete their account in a fit of rage or continue to use it, knowing that they're victims of surveillance capitalism?

I know for me, I cancelled my account after looking at the 'interests' page and discovered how strangely accurate it was. They really can get to know you on an intimate level. The more you engage with the app, the bigger and more accurate the profiling. More people need to visit that interests page and decide if they want to continue using Facebook.

[parthdesai]

Anecdotal, but I think people on HN tend to care about privacy more than the general population. In my friend group, where no one else works in tech, everyone still actively uses facebook. And I haven't even started to talk about Instagram and Whatsapp. An average person doesn't care about it as much as you think or you would like to think that they do. Heck a part of me is happy that I get relevant ads rather than some random ad.

[alexanderdmitri]

Many people on HN are the ones making the "sausage" grandparent refers to. Maybe the more general public still eats the free food and looks the other way to give the benefit of the doubt, but it's surely a signal that a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it.

[ryandrake]

> a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it.

Yet we continue to make the sausage.

Whenever privacy stuff comes up on HN, the comments go really weird: "Privacy is good, companies should stop spying on users. Targeted ads are intrusive and collect too much data." - said by people whose next JIRA ticket at work is to add another ad tracker to their own product! Point this out, and suddenly it's "Well, a job's a job.. We have no power over what we work on, and just do what management says." - Right next to the other HN article talking about how software engineers have a great deal of market power, company choice, and mobility due to the shortage of engineers. It's just contradiction after contradiction.

[parthdesai]

Is there? Is facebook really having a hard time hiring new engineers? Last time I checked, it still was super hard to get a job at facebook, implying there are a lot of people willing to work at facebook.

[gpm]

From what I've seen Facebook pays better than just about anyone else for the same engineer. So while they're not having trouble doing that, it seems likely that they are paying a premium to overcome people's stomachs.

[alexanderdmitri]

They pay well, are influential in several high-profile and widely-used projects and have lots of really interesting challenges to work on and solve at their scale.

[parthdesai]

> a good deal of people involved with the factory process and its engineering are having a hard time stomaching it

So, at the end of the day, people are willing to look past privacy issues when it comes to walk the walk. It's easy to sit back and criticize something when you don't have anything to lose. You only really know if you actually care about an issue when you're willing to sacrifice for it. And clearly according to you, pay, interesting problems to work on >> privacy. So again, a few people like to think it matters more than it actually does to a lot of people.

[alexanderdmitri]

Of course, it's like many people in American health insurance are making a buck off a system that bankrupts the sick or maybe people who are worried about climate change but still work for a company that disproportionally exacerbates the issue because they have too many other personal priorities to account for. Also like these other issues, there's creeping normalcy and once the effects are apparent, it's very difficult (if not impossible) to rollback. This is more a systemic conversation in that individuals who find themselves having to choose between concrete, personal growth and more nebulous (often controversial) public good can't be expected to be accountable on both levels in many cases. I don't understand the argument that people raising ethical or even general concerns about their work/industry should quit and get replaced, and then point to their replacement as the reason the original concern was unfounded.

[staplers]

Not working in tech means it's unlikely you know how the sausage is made.

Similar to factory farmed meat. I'm sure if you worked there, you'd be more likely to avoid eating it.

[croes]

Because all they hear is that the data is about ads. But it's also about the prices and the payment methods. They don't realize there things they never know about because they are not in the target group for the product, and not because a lack of interest but because they are not considered as a worthy customer.

[mikro2nd]

Funny you should mention that the "Interests" thing... I just happened to take a look, earlier today, at what Twitter thinks I'm interested in, and... it's laughable. I mean, seriously deranged. If this is the state of the art in ML/AI/whateveryouwanttocallit then we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

I'd love to know what FB thinks I'm interested in, but I'm nothing more than a shadow to them - no account, never used their apps - so there's no way for me to know. I think this is one of the more horrible, insidious outcomes of their way of working: If you're signed up for their abuse, you can at least find out something about what they know of you. If you've opted out of their surveillance platform, you have no way of finding out. And that's iniquitous.

[PragmaticPulp]

> if enough people know they're the product and know how Facebook makes money, would they delete their account in a fit of rage or continue to use it, knowing that they're victims of surveillance capitalism?

People know. They just okay with it. If they aren’t, they would have stopped using it by now.

If anything, the general public seems to think that Facebook and Instagram’s tracking is more pervasive than it really is. How many times have you heard people insist that Instagram showed them ads based on a verbal conversation they had where their phone was nearby? The idea that your phone is listening to every word you speak is obviously a myth, yet many people believe it and continue to use those apps anyway.

Outside of privacy centric tech bubbles like HN, targeted advertising isn’t viewed as a violation and free products are understood to come with advertising tradeoffs. HN isn’t uniquely enlightened about the “you’re the product” trope.

[______-]

> How many times have you heard people insist that Instagram showed them ads based on a verbal conversation they had where their phone was nearby

Yeah and most of the time this is recency bias. You know: when you learn a new word and suddenly see it everywhere.