
We All Work for Facebook - axiomdata316
https://longreads.com/2019/04/26/we-all-work-for-facebook/
======
trpc
Not only that, Facebook is designed to lock users inside their services as
long as possible. The web, to billions of users now, is simply Facebook. The
only way to make people leave Facebook and visit your website or app is to PAY
Facebook to promote your page and posts so that users visit your services.
It's the biggest carefully designed theft of time and effort of all time.
Facebook must be destroyed or at least weakened by the power of governments
now or never.

Also most social websites were designed on free labor by users like Quora and
Reddit (at least the new corporatist reddit)

~~~
grey-area
Just stop using it then. I’ve never used it as they are amoral, and don’t feel
I missed much. Facebook will fade away in time, like MySpace,yahoo,aol,etc.

Various companies from AOL to Apple tried this in the 90’s (e.g. eWorld) -
it’s the natural tendency for large corporations to corral their users.
Arguably the windows attenpt to kill the web, and later mobile app stores are
a continuation of this trend.

They all failed in the end, as the open web is more attractive, but there will
always be gatekeepers, because most people don’t want to build their own
platforms, they just want to read and share their stuff.

~~~
GreeniFi
The analogy to this is saying, “if you don’t like climate change, just stop
using fossil fuels”. Great as far as it goes, but the problem still exists
beyond the bubble of my own consumer preference. We’re moving towards big FB
regulation in Europe - I hope - which would set a precedent for it globally.
Although my choice would be the Chinese solution...

~~~
0x445442
Choosing not to use Facebook is in no way analogous to choosing not to use
gasoline or electricity.

~~~
GreeniFi
It’s analogous in that the problems associated with its use don’t disappear if
only you stop using it.

~~~
ddingus
That is what advocacy is for.

I stopped using it based on advocacy by others.

You can too.

~~~
itronitron
you can stop using Facebook, but Facebook is still using you by way of its
trackers on company websites.

~~~
ddingus
So?

Let them. In fact, let them continue to escalate all that means.

It is all on a path to greater regulation.

And, once it gets there, I will very gladly point out they got what they
deserve.

~~~
JohnFen
> Let them

No.

I'm not going to do nothing while people hit me in the face just because the
law might, at some point, give them what they deserve for it.

I'm going to do what I can to make the face-punching stop first.

~~~
ddingus
Such as?

~~~
JohnFen
Your question underlines the problem.

I don't use these services, and put up as many security barriers against the
data collection they engage in as I can, through the use of VPNs, firewalls,
avoiding the execution of Javascript, etc. But I can't stop everything.

Even so, I'm going to stop as much as I can. I refuse to just lay down and
surrender.

~~~
ddingus
Great! I do similar things.

In my view, it all counts. Surround the problem.

------
lone_haxx0r
I would have wholeheartedly agreed with this post had its thesis been "Don't
use Facebook, Twiter, Youtube, etc.", but instead I got "Use Facebook,
Twitter, Youtube, but complain to your govt. because they make too much
money".

You don't like how they make money( _X_ )? Don't use it. No one is forcing
you.

> but if I don't use them I'm at a disadvantage

Then they are useful for you, use them.

I don't use fb, twitter, reddit, etc. I only use Google search, Youtube and
Hacker news, and do so voluntarily. I'm happy with the value I get, I take
measures to diminish the amount of data they get (use fake names, use VPN,
etc.)

Living in a system based on freedom means that if someone succeeds through
their own effort, they are entitled to that success. You can't just come and
take it away because you don't like that person, or how much money they make.

( _X_ ) If your copyrighted content is being used without your permission,
there are legal mechanisms to stop it. But I doubt reddit users posting in a
humor sub care about their joke being used in a Youtube video.

~~~
AlexandrB
> You don't like how they make money(X)? Don't use it. No one is forcing you.

This narrative would be compelling if there was a way to stop Facebook from
collecting data on me and using it anyways. There is not. Facebook trackers,
pixels, and plugins exist on a huge number of popular sites and apps. The
legislative gap is that Facebook is allowed to collect data from me _even if I
explicitly don’t want them to_ through dark patterns and their myriad
partnerships. Not to mention that they may, at any moment, acquire whatever
alternative to Facebook’s products I choose to use and drag me in again (see
WhatsApp).

Edit: by the way, I’ve been using computers for ~25 years and would describe
myself as “extremely online”. If I feel helpless in the face of Facebook’s and
Google’s tracking technology I have no idea how the average user must feel.

~~~
bo1024
Pragmatically you have a good point, but technically it's wrong. There are
technical solutions to almost all of these issues, and if not, or you can
avoid using these sites and apps.

I'm not arguing for one course of action or another, just saying, technical
solutions exist. For example, an alternative to government regulation could be
government funding of libre software and tools that block ads, trackers,
third-party cookies, etc.

~~~
AlexandrB
> ...tools that block ads, trackers, third-party cookies, etc.

This is an arms race that I’ve watched privacy advocates slowly lose for the
last 15 years. Between dom randomization, browser fingerprinting, and the
extremely popular reCaptcha Google’s tracking feels especially inescapable by
technological means. On phones the situation is often even worse[1] because of
a more opaque and restricted OS environment.

[1] [https://www.ibtimes.com/these-apps-send-data-facebook-
withou...](https://www.ibtimes.com/these-apps-send-data-facebook-without-you-
knowing-it-2747688)

~~~
JonathanMerklin
Aside: can you (or someone) elaborate on or describe "DOM randomization" as it
pertains to tracking? Googling that phrase seems to only take me in the
direction of Javascript Math.random() documentation and other generic
information on randomness as a whole.

~~~
krageon
It means they set the page up in such a way that all the classes/ID's are
hashes are unique on every page load. This means you cannot have display
filtering rules for these things (at least, not easily).

Truly top-tier malice also puts tracking logic behind a reverse proxy that
delivers randomised URLs, so you also cannot filter network requests.

------
paulpauper
I don't work for them.

 _The production of the shows my kids enjoy goes something like this: Unpaid
redditors post original material to amuse their online friends. Unpaid
moderators keep the subreddit functioning by cleaning out spam and abuse.
Reddit gets a little money from ads posted on the subreddit. Then a YouTube
channel called Sorrow TV—apparently a one-man operation run by a 20-something
guy—harvests the best posts and creates the video. YouTube, which is part of
Google, runs more ads, while collecting valuable data about the viewing
patterns of users like my kids. YouTube shares some of the money it makes with
SorrowTV, based on a formula that Google controls and can alter at any time._

Except that:

The barriers to entry to breaking-out in the screen writing or acting biz are
much higher than it is to upload YouTube videos. Anyone can post to Facebook
or Reddit, so why should the pay be higher than more selective and prestigious
jobs that have a more rigorous screening processes?

YouTube allows content creators to profit from their work through ad revenue
sharing, premium subscriptions, and super-chats.

Facebook allows content creators to post external links to their websites,
such as stores.

Reddit moderators, especially for popular subs, have an enormous amount of
power and influence, and such postilions are highly sought after. If being a
Reddit mod is so bad, why is there so much competition for mod spots? They are
not the victims at all. The users are much more likely to be victims by having
to adhere to arbitrary rules and censorship imposed by mods.

------
annadane
I think what pisses me off the most about FB is they used to be legitimately
good, then over time slowly boiled the frog, less and less privacy, more
features people don't want, so people begrudgingly put up with it now rather
than truly enjoy it. They can't leave, not that everyone they know is on FB
due to the first mover phenomenon. And if they were honest with themselves or
us, they'd admit that. And even if people get sick of FB and migrate to
another platform, guess what, they own Instagram and Whatsapp.

 _Someone_ in Facebook at a high level is a psychopath, or maybe multiple
people

~~~
snarf21
I would argue they were never good. He called people who gave FB data "...
dumb f#@$s" back when he was 19. It was just that in the beginning they
weren't pushing the monetization yet. Now that is all it is about and people
are starting to understand how they are being exploited. The only thing that
has changed is that you are aware. I _still_ don't think any of the people in
my family give a crap. They are more than happy in their echo chamber and free
service.

~~~
ravenstine
Facebook was indeed always like that, and it even became apparent as time went
on. Yet people did not care until the media decided that Facebook was bad
(instead of acting like their minds were blown by it 24/7), and even at that
most people continue to use it. Facebook could be spying on people in the
shower and they'd continue using it because their platform is one of a
plethora of distractions that allow people to not have to think about the
truth while practicing both apathy and recreational outrage.

~~~
daniel-cussen
A friend tried getting off Facebook back in 2011. It was basically impossible,
it took a lot of deliberate effort and even then it merely interrupted your
account activity.

~~~
JohnFen
That was about when I cancelled my Facebook account. I wouldn't describe the
process as "basically impossible" at all.

------
mindgam3
“Facebook makes just a hair under $635,000 in profit for each of its 25,000
employees. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, makes about $158,000 per worker.
(At Walmart, it’s $4,288.) These calculations often get spun as representing a
victory for automation and algorithms—machines, rather than humans, creating
value. But the truth is, these media companies have billions of people working
for them—they’re just not on staff.”

~~~
trpc
At least Google's main revenue, Adsense, is shared with other people.
Publishers, websites and apps that voluntarily choose their Ad service.

~~~
anticensor
Facebook also has an ad service. Social network users contribute voluntarily
too.

~~~
trpc
The difference is that the vast majority of users are unaware that their
content is making other users stay within Facebook as long as possible and
feed it with more data to make money for Facebook alone.

------
1sttimeposter
If you want to know why people use Facebook it is for all of the positive it
brings, rather than the negative which is portrayed consistently on HN. Check
out this FB page where FB accumulates stories that show FB making a meaningful
and positive impact on people’s lives.

[https://wwww.facebook.com/CommunityVoices/](https://wwww.facebook.com/CommunityVoices/)

~~~
cribbles
Why are your only comments on this site rebutting negative stories about
Facebook?

As a follow-up question, what are your thoughts on this longitudinal study
from 2017[1], which found that "the use of Facebook was negatively associated
with well-being", such that any form of engagement with Facebook was
negatively correlated with a wide range of self-reported mental, emotional,
and physical health indicators? Does the Facebook PR page you linked
contradict that somehow?

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386)

~~~
dymk
The study you linked does nothing to imply a causal relationship.

Do you think it’s a good strategy to try to undermine somebody’s position by
“just asking questions” about why they hold an unpopular opinion on HN? Why
not address their position directly rather than just sic a downvote mob on
them?

Disclaimer because you’ll undoubtably go through my comment history: I used to
work at Facebook.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>Disclaimer because you’ll undoubtably go through my comment history

I have never understood why this is considered to be bad form.

Going through someone's comment history often provides useful context and is
often one of the quickest ways to try and find out if they are discussing
something in bad faith or not.

Plus it can often just be interesting.

To try and assert that it is impolite for people to read what you have chosen
to post on a public forum, purely because it happens to be from a previous
discussion, is to attempt to enforce a social stigma on base curiosity.

Luckily it has about as much sway as farting into a thunderstorm, but why try
it in the first place?

Nobody would take an author seriously if they tried to insist that people
reviewing their new book aren't allowed to read the old ones and I feel the
same logic applies here.

~~~
dymk
"Just asking questions" in the form of "So, why are your comments all <about
this>" isn't impolite; it's engaging in bad-faith tactics to silence a point
of view, and an implication that the user is a shill.

It's not even a reasonable accusation; the comments from the user supposedly
supporting facebook is actually just three fairly thought out, nuanced
comments.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Looking through, seeing as you are now amusingly encouraging me to analyse
another person's post history; Only 3 posts, posted over the course of a year,
all only in support of facebook. I wouldn't confidently mark the account as
subtle astroturfing, could be an extremely lazy but also seemingly enthusiasic
facebook fan, but it raises an eyebrow now you draw my attention to it. I
mean, shilling does exist. As to your closing point, the existence of some
nuance to an argument doesn't have any real bearing on the possibility of a
given account indulging in shilling. It may be unreasonable, but if it is, it
is not because of that.

~~~
dymk
I never said it was bad form to just look at comment history. What’s bad form
is the users tactic to sic a downvote mob on them for having an unpopular
opinion.

~~~
inflatableDodo
So it's bad because by mentioning someone's comment history it somehow
deprives another entirely seperate group of people from having personal agency
and tricks them into downvoting? Does this make sense?

edit - also, where is this downvote mob? Are you saying that the comment in
question should have far more ego points than it does? The comment is not
greyed out. And if so, how do you know?

------
thih9
Facebook and other social media rely on that heavily and make their users do
as much work for them as possible.

The constant stream of notifications makes it easier. Instructions can be
presented as „tips”: upload a new photo, greet new users on your fanpage,
reply to this message.

Some users are getting paid in just likes, but an increasing number receives
very tangible business opportunities or direct compensation.

This is getting very close to employment territory. But unlike real
employment, social media get to set the rules.

------
avip
This is completely backwards. I get free, undisturbed, superb quality
communication with all my friends and family via WhatsApp. I used to pay a
fortune for that and now it's FREE. So OP suggests I should be paid for the
suffering of using a 100% free super useful service?

~~~
username223
What? WhatsApp was $1/yr before Facebook bought it, which is hardly a
"fortune." A lifetime of WhatsApp would have cost you less than one month's
internet bill.

~~~
skinnymuch
No it wasn’t. Almost no one paid that amount. And this isn’t about Whatsapp
before FB. It is about before Whatsapp existing at all.

~~~
username223
Did most people pay more than $1/yr plus data rates? My point was that
WhatsApp was apparently a legitimate, independent business where people paid a
small fee for the equivalent of international SMS.

~~~
skinnymuch
But no one was happy with that. So that was never how it was going to stay.
The people making Whatsapp were mostly much happier getting millions and
billions for the app.

There’s no point in talking about Whatsapp as a tiny company charging $1 to a
small percent of its user base. No one had any intention of keeping it that
way.

I also don’t think billionaires like the founders saying they regret stuff
after they’ve become billionaires from Whatsapp’s sale should count as a
counter argument. I doubt they’d be fine giving back their billions for a few
million a year salary while being worried about what their future will hold.

------
throwaway_9168
I would certainly like Facebook the company to completely fail, but the
WagesforFacebook website is probably the most idiotic thing I have seen in a
long time.

It is like turning into a penniless bum by spending all your money partying,
and then blaming all the party hosts for your predicament and asking them to
pay you money for each visit so you can keep partying forever into the future.

Why not stop attending the parties?

Why not a) remove the mobile app and use it only on a desktop/laptop to reduce
the amount of time you spend on Facebook b) monitor how much time you spend on
FB and slowly cut it down c) pick up the phone and pay a few damn dollars to
talk to close friends - in case you don't have a way to call for free d) meet
people in real life and put your mobile phone away and actually pay attention
to the other person e) spend your time educating everyone you know about the
problem of FB addiction f) volunteer for some community service where you
actually get to meet your friends and neighbors?

But NO! "I want to bum around on Facebook, I want my minute-by-minute dopamine
hit, and I want to distort the issue so no one figures out that my FB
addiction is actually my fault in the first place"

~~~
microcolonel
This is HN, where it is presumed that people who absolutely have the willpower
to exert personal responsibility instead convince themselves that they don't,
so that they can play the victim.

If you don't like Facebook, don't use Facebook, try not to run their code, try
not to connect to their hosts, and don't send data to their partners. Most
importantly, live the life that makes the people around you not want to use
Facebook either.

~~~
RugnirViking
What makes you think that everyone has this mythical willpower? Is it the same
belief as belief in rational market actors, or that eveyone makes decisions
after carefully considering all of the concequences?

Face it, humans (you, me, bigshot CEOs) all act primarily based on simple
emotional wants and desires, _most of the time_. I can guarantee you that
there are a great deal of CEOs, maybe even some of whom you look up to, that
spend too much time on facebook/linkedin/playing golf etc, know it, and yet do
nothing about it.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Face it, humans (you, me, bigshot CEOs) all act primarily based on simple
> emotional wants and desires, most of the time._

Some people are mentally disabled and can not regulate a desire to use
Facebook, but if you tell all the able people that they're incapable of
reasoning themselves out of it, they will become less able.

Facebook works on network effects, if people still healthy enough to quit can
do so, Facebook becomes inherently less attractive. If you tell people that
they are inevitably ruled by their passions, many will just take the faustian
bargain and hope somebody swoops in to save them from themselves.

I don't think this is a good strategy, especially if you're not proposing any
actual solution (and no, swift legislation is not a practical way to deal with
this situation, given how divisive that is).

~~~
mercer
Focusing on willpower and self-empowerment is a great strategy when applied to
oneself. When applied to others it's often 1) shitty 2) self-congratulatory,
3) lacking in empathy and ignorant of the particulars of another's situation,
and 4) useless, because clearly these others seem to not find themselves able
to do that thing that you are able to do.

Generally speaking, being shamed or otherwise punished is counter-effective
when it comes to changing something, especially when it comes to addictions of
various kinds.

There's a huge difference between on the one hand a friend telling you that
you can do it, and offering help and strategies, and on the other hand a
shitty internet commenter telling you that you're simply not trying hard
enough.

Tough love has its time and place, but usually it mostly benefits the giver of
it.

------
jdofaz
I used to post photos on google maps, sometimes at the prompting of the Maps
app. It was cool to get emails saying a 100,000 people had seen my photo. But
I quit “contributing” when it finally occurred to me that I was doing free
work for a billion dollar company.

I think Facebook is toxic for some people I know personally. I decided that by
posting on Facebook I’m helping create reasons for those people to keep
checking Facebook. A while back I deleted everything from my profile except my
phone number and email address. In the rare occasions I look at the news feed
I never like or interact with posts. I miss the good things about Facebook but
it just isn’t worth the cost.

------
sascha_sl
I don't.

I still do however work for Google because their "solve 10 machine learning
challenges or be well tracked" service is integrated by so many fucking
idiotic services.

I just call it the Google tax.

~~~
JohnFen
> I still do however work for Google because their "solve 10 machine learning
> challenges or be well tracked" service is integrated by so many fucking
> idiotic services.

I don't, for the most part. If I have to solve a captcha for something, I
usually don't use that thing. I will make the occasional exception for
captchas that are part of signing up for a service if it's important enough to
me, as long as the captcha never appears again.

------
CM30
Yep, all these services basically exist off the back of their userbases, and
practically all their value comes from the content submitted by the people
that use them for free.

And this makes it rather interesting to hear complaints about working for
exposure or free or what not. Yes, that's a bad deal, but it's really also the
same deal you're agreeing to when you heavily use these 'social media' sites
and platforms. You're saying you'll provide a ton of content for free on the
assumption that just maybe, some of those millions/billions of users will
check it out on your own site and help you make money.

And YouTube and other sites with monetisation requirements may actually be
worse in some extent. Think about it, YouTube's basically like a bad
internship; work for free for a few months, then if you're good enough maybe
we'll decide to pay you.

But hey, I guess those millions/billions of users are too tempting for many.

------
Kiro
Every post about Facebook comes with the same lynch mob in the comments and
it's getting tiresome.

Yes, you all hate Facebook and want Mark Zuckerberg's head on a pole
(literally). You also want every single employee to be executed for treason
against humanity. HN has really lost any chance of sensible discussions around
this.

~~~
JohnFen
I want none of those things. I just want some effective way of getting
Facebook and the like to leave me alone.

------
arendtio
Well, the problem is not the millions of unpaid post writers... The problem is
the number of unpaid ad receivers.

~~~
dymk
The ad viewer is receiving free use of the website they’re browsing. That’s
the value exchange.

------
ausjke
At least not me, as I don't use facebook at all, life is good without it.

I have to use google for daily searching, along with gmail, I now migrate my
primary email to outlook and my goal is to use google only for searching under
anonymous mode, i.e. not all eggs in one basket, to mitigate privacy concerns

------
kripy
This reminds me of Matt Webb's piece titled "Instagram as an island
economy"[1] where he writes about the concept of encoded labour: "Every "user"
of Instagram is a worker. There are some people who produce photos -- this is
valuable, it means there is something for people to look it. There are some
people who only produce comments or "likes," the virtual society equivalent of
apes picking lice off other apes."

[1]
[http://interconnected.org/home/2012/04/11/instagram_as_an_is...](http://interconnected.org/home/2012/04/11/instagram_as_an_island_economy)

------
orkon
I feel the entire post is missing the two main points:

1) No one would bother creating these free services if they could not draw
massive revenue streams out of it. If the returns disappear, it'd all be shut
down.

2) If you create content on an online platform, you get paid in emotions you
feel, the popularity you might get or the money you get through your own
advertising if you are popular. If you contribute the data, you also benefit
from a better service which is free.

P.S. I am thinking of building an RSS reader app with the built-in
discussions. If it sounds interesting, please fill out a survey
[https://forms.gle/9V85Eb8PZnBXKaFr6](https://forms.gle/9V85Eb8PZnBXKaFr6)

~~~
lazyjones
> _1) No one would bother creating these free services if they could not draw
> massive revenue streams out of it. If the returns disappear, it 'd all be
> shut down._

You may have missed all the free forums on the Internet, financed by hobbyists
or a few unobtrusive banner ads. It used to be the norm. Surely most of the
development efforts of FB go into maximizing revenue through use(misuse?) of
private data, but this is a "free service" nobody asked for.

~~~
chillacy
> unobtrusive banner ads

Oh boy I don’t miss the flash animated pop up ads, but that has less to do
with forums vs social media and more to do with how the tech has evolved.

That said fb and google ads are pretty unobtrusive because they exert so many
restrictions on businesses. If you’ve ever tried to run ads you’d find user
friendly restrictions like “no all caps text” or “limit to text in an image”.

~~~
JohnFen
> That said fb and google ads are pretty unobtrusive

That depends on how you count. "Unobtrusive", maybe, but those ads are
intolerably _intrusive_ , because of the tracking.

Between the two, I'd rather have those old "spank the monkey" banners any day
of the week. But I also fondly remember a time before even those existed.

In many ways, advertising has really ruined vast swaths of the internet.

------
magwa101
At the end of the day, your contribution to a site, any site, any contribution
has a finite limited time value to you, but has a much longer, and
multidimensional value to the receiving site. The value shared is asymmetric.

~~~
chillacy
I’m hoping people can come to an agreement over the degree of asymmetry.

This reminds me of a parallel discussion of how much businesses leaders should
benefit vs employees, the spectrum ranging from full socialist worker control
to naked capitalism.

Maybe a hint lies in the ranges of accepted offers in the ultimatum game

------
goodrubyist
Whether Facebook should be paying people to work or not, the decision should
be made by Facebook and those people voluntarily, not imposed on them by the
government. If some people think they should be paid for the work, they should
refuse to do it for free...the fact that in such a case other people might do
the same work for free instead doesn't still entitle the government to dictate
the terms of a voluntary relationship.

~~~
chillacy
That sounds fair but nothing the government does works that way. If you asked
us all we would pay zero taxes ourselves and enjoy social benefits paid by
others.

~~~
JohnFen
> If you asked us all we would pay zero taxes ourselves and enjoy social
> benefits paid by others.

Most, maybe, but certainly not all.

------
sys_64738
FB's biggest problems are about market saturation and maintaining that
position. If they lose the youngest generation then they will gradually
decrease in value as their legacy userbase ages. This is why FB constantly has
to buy up and coming social media style tech so that they can constantly
reinvigorate the youth demographic into the fold. It's a constant battle for
FB to avoid becoming obsolete.

------
JohnFen
Not all of us. Some of us avoid the products and services of surveillance-
based companies like Facebook, Google, etc., and block traffic to them to the
greatest degree possible.

------
zhte415
While obviously people use facebook, I just don't get it. Had a profile and
deleted it years ago. What does it add? I see no value in it.

~~~
jonp888
You might as well say

"While obviously people use HackerNews, I just don't get it. Had a account and
deleted it years ago. What does it add? I see no value in it."

The same reason anyone does anything social. To discuss with friends and
others topics of mutual interest, to find out about things that have happened
to people and orgsnisations I care about. And sometimes to get validation by
publicising things relevant to you personally and seeing the reaction.

Quite why HN seems to have such a collective hatred of Facebook specifically,
far above all other organisations running social/content sharing platforms I
don't understand. It's worse than /. and MS back in the day.

~~~
JohnFen
> Quite why HN seems to have such a collective hatred of Facebook
> specifically, far above all other organisations running social/content
> sharing platforms I don't understand

I cant' speak for anybody but me, but my personal animosity towards these
organization is purely because they work so hard to spy on me.

------
yeahitslikethat
I said basically exactly this yesterday in a comment on a story and got down
voted.

This place is jacked up. Even hackers don't think right anymore.

------
touristtam
If you haven't read it, I would recommend Matt Mason's "The Pirate's Dilemma:
How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism" (goodread
link:[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2286633.The_Pirate_s_Dil...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2286633.The_Pirate_s_Dilemma)),
which is arguably still very relevant.

------
orkon
If spending time on Facebook is work, why is my employer not happy?

~~~
aabbcc1241
because it's not working for your original employeer

------
3xblah
"Whenever you post a photo on Instagram, write an Amazon review, or skim
through complaints about potholes on your neighborhood's Facebook group,
you're helping generate profit for the world's richest corporations. A growing
movement is making the case that you ought to get paid for it."

The value is in the traffic, not necessarily the content. The traffic is what
allows them to sell advertising.

They could have billions of submitted photos, reviews and comments about
potholes, but if they failed to get enough daily traffic, the business would
fail.

Imagine if web users retrieving each others' content were each visiting
different websites controlled by different people (different domain name
owners); the traffic would be more evenly distributed. Advertisers would be
faced with different choices. They could not all choose to advertise with a
small number of disproportionately high traffic websites. One website could
not so easily generate billions in revenue from ad sales.

When so many web users all visit the same website, they create a highly
valuable entity to advertisers. Why do they all visit the same website? They
do so because that is the only source of the content. Exclusivity. "Walled
garden."

What if a web user could retrieve those same photos, reviews and comments from
many different websites, instead of just one? What if it was the author that
mattered and not necessarily the source? What if we reimagined the way content
was distributed?

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

If users are the ones generating this "content", and they retain ownership,
then it stands to reason that if provided with the technical means, they can
choose make it available on any website they choose. It is their choice.

Open source operating systems use mirrors to make software available to users
from multiple websites. The goal in that case is to distribute traffic more
evenly across multiple websites, not to send all users to one controlled by a
single owner.

When traffic is distributed across disparate websites it reduces the
likelihood that web advertisers will fund the creation of monopolistic web-
based companies like the ones that are causing so many unnecessary problems
today.

Is there a technical barrier that prevents user-generated content from being
mirrored at many different sites, with servers located around the globe?
Perhaps it already is? Is there a technical requirement that all these sites
be controlled by the same entity?

The disproportionate _traffic_ to a single domain name is what allows one
owner to monopolise and generate disproportionate wealth. What if we could
distribute the traffic to other owners? After all, it is the user's content.
Whether it is exclusively available from one website or available from
multiple mirrors should be the user's decision.

Of course the author here may see no problems with the existence of these
monopolies. Maybe all he really wants is a piece of the enormous ad revenue.
He wants a multi billion dollar enterprise to pay him. Absent a lawsuit, what
are the chances of that? Websites will not pay for content. Howeverthey will
pay for traffic.

------
areejs
There's always a catch. Nothing is ever free

~~~
colejohnson66
Open source software?

~~~
onefuncman
you pay for open source through adopting the risk of running it, the cost of
hosting it, and the time to understand how to maintain and use it.

------
return1
Facebook should have a revenue sharing program for its users. Google and
youtube have kinda bern doing that and it helped create some kind of synnergy.

~~~
skinnymuch
How? Google makes the majority of its money from its own properties.

~~~
return1
adsense and youtube revenue are big incentives to create content

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah that makes sense for Facebook.

YouTube is a money losing enterprise. Or at least not profitable one. So going
that far is probably too much.

The Adsense argument is better but that’s for stuff not on Google’s
properties. It might be a good idea for Facebook to do revenue sharing. But
they’re a public company now. They can’t do something too big. They need their
profits. Just like Google.

