Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by vdaniuk 4222 days ago
>I often tell people that if you are not a paying customer, you are the product.

You should stop doing that because it is a harmful oversimplifation. A thought terminating truism.

Is Wikipedia user a product? Is Creative Commons user a product? Is non-paying Github user a product? Is PBS website user a product? Is rubygems, npm or crate user a product?

Is user paying for Google Drive not a product? Is user paying App Store not a product? Is user paying for her ads FB not a product?

This "you are the product" is a bad model to describe power dynamics for multi-sided market platforms.

> I enjoy being a customer, not the product

Do you not understand that here, on HN, by your definition, you are the product enabling activities to push YC and YC funded startups?

>Ads suck, anyway, and they are now the number one vector for malware.

Citation please.