[kbenson]

It's trite at this point that someone will respond that the users aren't the customers, they're the product, but it's trite because it's often correct, and deserves to be said, so I guess I'll be the one to say it this time.

The sad thing is that this person actually is a customer because they bought a product and pay for things on it, but Facebook still doesn't realize that, or more likely these customers are such a small amount of their revenue they just don't care (and don't think it matters for growth of this area or don't care about that growth).

[ballenf]

> this person actually is a customer

That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction.

It totally misses the point that Facebook doesn't have customers any more than any other first world power has. Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them.

FTC actions are like one country taking another to the WTO -- not something to ignore, but not really threatening either.

[kbenson]

> That's the reason the "you're not the customer" line is just a distraction.

I don't think it is. If Facebook wasn't coming from a place such as that, then we wouldn't necessarily see them act like this. It's not just about size.

> Facebook has treaties with governments and follow laws when it's less costly than breaking them.

So do most large companies, but they don't all act the same to their customers. Apple may be guilty of other ways of mistreating their customers, but to my knowledge they're mostly innocent of this specific brand of it, and anything you want to attribute to Facebook's size that you can't attribute to any of the other tech big 5[1] should be examined for whether that's really the relevant underlying cause.

1: https://www.fastcompany.com/90651160/facebook-is-now-the-fif...

[novok]

The guy is a customer in the traditional FB way (pays for ads) and the new oculus way (buys oculus games & hardware).

FB is super annoying when you want to separate the business from any form of a personal account. Eventually you need to have some sort of personal FB account linked to a business to manage some key ad buy things AFAIK, at the small business scale at the very least.

[shkkmo]

The problem is that "if you aren't a customer you are the product" is that frequently you are still a product even if you are a customer.