
Facebook Isn’t Sorry, It Just Wants Your Data - minimaxir
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/facebook-isnt-sorry-it-just-wants-your-data
======
fermienrico
It’s very simple: As a consumer, we cannot trust any advertisement company.
Their goals are in direct conflict with user privacy. In fact it’s not a
wishful goal, it _is_ their business model.

Our attention is very expensive and everything is designed around us to grab
us by the neck so to speak. Flashing ads, stories and feeds.

I cannot, absolutely cannot, trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook,
Visa, Amex, MasterCard, etc. These businesses bullshit their way through with
“We want to make the world a better place by connecting people.” Yes, that’s
great. So charge us for your service and stop forcing me to view ads, selling
off my privacy into a giant bidding war of advertisers. Fuck advertisement.

Apple is an exception and I hope they continue to charge premium for their
products. I’m happy to shell out money for privacy. But you never know when a
multi billion dollar company all of a sudden decides to take a different
route. Tim Cook has great personal ethics but we don’t know about the next
CEO.

Mark my words: The next big successful companies will be around user privacy.
Apple has started to market themselves as such already in their keynotes.
Duckduckgo is selling it as their main value proposition.

Edit from comments below: Amazon, Walmart, Sears, Netflix, Visa, Amex, MC.

~~~
lozaning
Curious as to how you lump Adobe in with that group. Last I checked they just
wanted everyone to buy photoshop, did something change?

EDIT: Damn, F Adobe

~~~
s3r3nity
Adobe has a massive DMP ("Data Management Platform.")

I recommend taking some time to research DMPs and their place ad-tech
ecosystem, if you're not aware about them, and be prepared to shit your pants
at what they know about you.

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Animats
Maybe there's an opportunity here for someone to do to Facebook what
Craigslist did to print newspapers. What people want is a way to keep in touch
with their friends. But that's not a big revenue generator. So the "social
networks" put in ads, "sponsored tweets", and other crap. Then users get fed
up and leave. (Doubling down on ads as the number of users drops is called
"pulling a Myspace").

A basic friends-only system isn't that expensive to run. A low-budget
operation like Craigslist could do it with a modest staff. A low fee or
infrequent ads could bring in enough revenue to keep it running.

~~~
jasode
_> A basic friends-only system isn't that expensive to run. _

The expense depends on what the baseline for "basic" is.

I believe today's average consumer would want _basic_ features to include
photos and video sharing. (This consumer expectation having been conditioned
by previous $0/month social networks like Facebook.) Needless to say, this
requires expensive datacenters with petabytes of harddrives. Rising storage
infrastructure costs and was the #1 driver of Facebook costs in 2006. It may
still be today. I don't know. I believe storage is still Snapchat's biggest
cost component of Google Cloud payments.

So either run a text version of a social network or put storage limits to keep
the social network "cheap" to run. My guess is that the _typical_ non-HN type
of user would prefer the ads so it's still $0 per month with the ability to
share lots of baby photos.

~~~
Animats
Good point.

Now a "Freemium" app might work. Text is free. Pictures up to a limit are
free. A few seconds of video with an expiration time is free. More pictures,
longer video, and long term storage all cost.

Fortnite is "freemium", and bringing in over $1BN a year without ads.

~~~
dabockster
I've been thinking about this myself. Small bits of text is free. The
occasional photo is free. Maybe not video.

You could also treat brand pages as what they really are: advertising. Charge
them a weekly/yearly fee to have the ability to run such a page.

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dabockster
I only largely use Facebook for the events calendar anymore. Big brands and
community groups use that part of the site heavily for event promotion. If we
want Facebook to become obsolete, we would need to create a comparable event
promotion experience elsewhere. So far, though, I've only seen inroads into
discovering events already being promoted. The real money is disrupting how
events are promoted so the customer doesn't have to do any "discovery" what so
ever.

~~~
Zelphyr
My apologies for the accusatory tone but aren't you kind-of proving the point
of the article? Keeping your Facebook account because of the events calendar
means you place more value in convenience than you do privacy, Facebook knows
it, and they're not going to change.

~~~
codyb
Wouldn't facebook already have his data anyways even if he deleted his
account? I thought they were even making shadow profiles of people who didn't
exist?

So if he's not adding new information the only info he's giving them is by
what events he clicks which is still valuable.

And then of course if he browses the web with the facebook cookie that
probably gives them a significant amount of browser habits, no? Which i feel
like really doesn't get enough attention.

~~~
Zelphyr
I don't think the answer is to just give up. Sure they have shadow accounts.
But that data gets stale after you delete your account. And you can hasten
that by blocking Facebook domains so that they can't track your movements
around the web.

~~~
codyb
I wasn't saying it was, I was saying maybe said person has figured to himself
his event clicking patterns are worth giving up in exchange for the service fb
provides that they clearly find of value.

If they add nothing to their profile, and don't browse the web with facebook
cookies aren't they not really losing much of worth? If they've made the
conscientious decision that event data is worth the events calendar?

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crunchlibrarian
Facebook is the most consistent company I've ever encountered. They have never
really changed and have always hit the same notes over and over.

Remember the beacon fiasco? That was the start of the pattern, the fact that
they were so baffled by everyone's reaction was so amazing to me that was the
month I deleted my account and never looked back. But they haven't changed one
bit since 2007.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon)

------
ddtaylor
It appears the Facebook Apology Tour continues.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-mark-
zuckerber...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-
apology-reporter-interview_us_5ac53e06e4b0aacd15b80dc4)

------
shmerl
Don't use Facebook, as simple as that. Prefer decentralized social networks if
you need them, ones that aren't built around profiting on your profile.

~~~
seppin
> decentralized social networks

I'm sorry but what would the point of this be? A social network is only as
useful as it's centralization.

~~~
shmerl
Nope, decentralized doesn't mean disconnected. It means it's not owned or
controlled by any one entity and runs on many independent but connected nodes.

~~~
dawid-s
Some examples?

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GrumpyGrandpa
There are many people who will still use all the stuff Facebook releases, even
though they will know about the data collection things. The world is becoming
a creepy place to live, with zero anonymity

------
dumbfounder
But it comes with a camera cover so it doesn't invade your privacy!

------
metalrain
So what would be next great wave of internet companys, that doesn't profit on
your data? Actually just data storage with strong private encryption?

~~~
elvinyung
What about something like Patreon? There probably needs to be a social and
cultural shift (i.e. not just technology) to make micropayment "marketplaces"
for creators and content actually viable, but I would actually reasonably bet
that this is one probable way forward.

~~~
jermaustin1
I look at Patreon profiles for pretty popular YouTube channels, and rarely do
I see them pulling in more than a few hundred bucks a month.

I can only assume they earn most of their money via YT Monetization or with
their own ads in video.

~~~
jonny_eh
The few channels I contribute to earn enough to live on. Here's a couple:

[https://www.patreon.com/CaptainDisillusion/overview](https://www.patreon.com/CaptainDisillusion/overview)
($11,471/month)

[https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit/overview](https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit/overview)
($9,882/month)

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noncoml
Is it your data that it wants or your attention?

~~~
metalrain
Data can be used to get attention. So data first, then however they can
monetize that.

~~~
zamalek
Attention is then, in-turn, used to get data. It's a lucrative feedback loop.

------
0x54D5
I deleted my Instagram and Facebook two weeks ago after being a member since
Facebook's .EDU only days.

I urge men and women of good conscious to do the same.

------
moocowtruck
$COMPANY Isn't Sorry, it Just wants your Money; whats the difference?

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fortythirteen
While the general conclusion is correct, this angst-ridden blog post posing as
a news article wouldn't get past the most generous editor a few decades ago.
It's sad that Buzzfeed News is considered a legitimate source by some.

~~~
truculent
> It's sad that Buzzfeed News is considered a legitimate source by some. I
> think it's fine to differentiate between their fluff and opinion pieces, and
> some genuinely excellent investigative reporting. Why do we need to simplify
> to "legitimate" or "not legitimate"?

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tempodox
This headline really says it all, there's not much more to add. George
Orwell's Big Brother looks quaint in comparison, besides the fact that the
populace consists mainly of believers and fans.

If there has ever been a case for the existence of Free Will, FB membership
only supports it. Human freedom is not proven by the great and lofty choices
we make, but by the truly shitty and questionable ones.

