
A note on losing 89,000 customers in 33 hours - jayzalowitz
https://hackernoon.com/a-note-on-losing-89-000-readers-in-33-hours-423861897748
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minimaxir
Calling blog readers "customers" is clickbait.

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jayzalowitz
Fair. What would you call facebook users? Medium users?

~~~
nickpsecurity
They're just users. People reading content are just readers. Customers are
people who _pay_ for goods. For sites like Facebook and Google Search, the
customers are the advertisers. The users are the product that's improved for
advertisers. Or others that are scarier who get access to same user
profiles/data. Why do you think they're always being more invasive of privacy
and showing more ads even if people don't want that? They make more profit off
their actual customers by selling them a chance to analyze and manipulate
users. That simple.

Bruce Schneier was first I read on this although I can't find original
writeup. Here's one:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/11/surveillance_as_1.html)

Here's one meant to be slightly entertaining that's specific to Google's end
of things:

[http://www.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php...](http://www.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3801006/Googles-
Business-Model-YOU-Are-the-Product.htm)

Note: They did consolidate their privacy policies for various services to
start linking things like author predicts. I found that news piece before this
one.

Note 2: The "If it's free, then you're the product" meme obviously doesn't
always apply to free goods. You must assume it does in U.S., though, since you
have no legal protections in practice on that sort of thing. They might sell
you out behind your back.

