

Cognitive slavery - fwdbureau
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/09/cognitive-slaves.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+typepad/rzYD+(Global+Guerrillas)&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

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shalmanese
This is a ridiculous assertion because Facebook usage patterns do not follow a
power law. As a simple calculation, Facebook has a 5000 friend limit so all
100,000 "superusers" would all have to be hitting up against this limit and
all have completely mutually non-overlapping friend groups to reach out to the
500M current Facebook users. This is an absurd contention.

In reality, there's approximately 250M regular users and 250M light users
which means each regular user would only "earn" $10 if Facebook brought them
on as employees. That makes this a significantly less compelling argument.

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fwdbureau
The only thing is, he's not advocating the collectivization of FB (that would
be stupid), but merely calling for new companies to enhance the user-
generated-content model by sharing the wealth. Maybe the Diaspora people
should look into this?

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cabalamat
If a company relying on user-generated content did do this, it might well give
them a useful advantage.

Though there would probably be problems with people gaming the system.

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iliketosleep
that's an interesting perspective. but still... although the users are not
receiving any direct monetary benefits, they are still deriving value from
system, by using it as a means of entertainment and social networking. so
facebook is providing a service, and people are using that service for their
own benefit. it doesn't seem like cognitive slavery.

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akadruid
You're right. I'm normally first in the Facebook-bashing line, but suggesting
that Facebook should pay it's users because they provide network effects is
like suggesting the phone companies should pay users for hosting terminals. Or
the post office should pay you for having a letterbox.

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Unseelie
There's an interesting reversal in that statement. Historically, we host our
letterbox or our phone terminal, and we buy equipment and such to do it with.
(mailbox and phone). The post and phone networks provided connectivity, but
not the place. Here, facebook is providing the place, but not the connectivity
(users do that, by buying their internet connection), and the difference
doesn't help the comparison

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kbatten
I'm not entirely convinced that this person knows what slavery is. Not only
that, but he claims that "we all lose", then ends his post with nothing to
support this quite insane claim.

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noonespecial
Absolutely. We should definitely call bullshit on this one. Slavery means that
you don't own any of your productive output and more importantly _you don't
have a choice whether or not to create this output._ There are people in the
world who are still actual slaves. Stuff like this isn't helping. We should
try to keep this word a little more hardcore than this particular frivolous
use.

No one is forced to use Facebook. They do it because it makes their lives
_better_. The users are getting the value. That the company that supplies it
gets some value out of it too is a brilliant... oh wait, no, that's just good
old fashioned business, but on the interwebs.

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nandemo
I agree with you but he's probably using it in the same watered-down sense of
"wage slavery". This is also a contradictory term but it's now in common use.

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robryan
This can be looked at from many angles, the efficiency of communication on
Facebook compared with things like phone calls and text messaging would have
actually collectively saved Facebook users billions.

Sure you could argue it doesn't take Facebook to come in to give us these
communication options but it takes someone to come in and create a common
network which is easy to get started on. Sure we can argue that a distributed
network would be a much better solution but the reality of it currently is
that very few people have the technical inclination to becomes a part of
something like that.

I'd also prefer to look at the benefits and not the downfalls of massive
networks being able to be ran by few people. Giving people a job for the sake
of having a job isn't the answer, we can all benefit from increased
efficiencies.

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Unseelie
The long term problem with such efficiencies is that there aren't enough jobs,
and that causes a great monster of a social issue.

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jyothi
In short: _Author states facebook (for that matter any user centric service)
has grown to be worth few billions because of its users. The users' activity
is critical to fuel the growth. Hence the user should be rewarded else this is
cognitive slavery. And we are encouraging cognitive slavery widely on the
web._

Good to encourage a share with the users for their contribution. There are
blogging platforms like blogspot that share the advertising revenue inspite of
giving a free blogging platform. It is an aligned incentive as users would
write more effectively to get more ad impressions.

Facebook is different. The reward is the free subscription to all the
networking, apps and fun that they get through facebook and not the other way
round. Why should anyone be paid.

Edit: formatting

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pyre
People are providing the 'value' for these networks in the way that watching
television created 'value' for the television networks in most recent decades.
Instead of people just sitting in front of the television being a captive
audience, technology has made things more interactive, and companies have made
the interactivity product added benefits for them (i.e. you bolster their data
by developing a social graph, which can then be sold/rented/etc for added
profit).

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jdietrich
Or the obvious alternative, which is that Facebook's value is simply a product
of Metcalfe's Law - the value is in the connections between users, not the
content the users create. A stranger's Facebook page is worthless to me, none
of the content is relevant. I don't use Facebook, but that's largely
irrelevant. What I see as mattering is the fact that when my mum or your mom
or whoever joins Facebook, they are barraged with opportunities to connect
with people they might not otherwise have kept in touch with. N^2 is a really
big number when N is _nearly everyone in the western world_. Add a decent
portion of lock-in and it's fairly obvious that you've got a multi-billion
dollar company.

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Locke1689
I don't buy it. Facebook isn't marketing the comments or profiles themselves
as content but instead marketing the network _which is capable of storing and
displaying user-generated comments and profiles_. In other words, just like
ISPs don't actually sell the content of the Internet but only participation in
the network itself, Facebook markets the participation in their private
Facebook network.

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cstross
Er, no. Facebook is monetizing user-contributed content by slapping their own
advertising across it with no kickbacks to the contributors. There is an
asymmetry here; FB are creaming a profit off this material, in addition to
covering their running costs.

FB also has the 500lb gorilla of network externalities on its side. For
example, I dislike FB but I can't afford not to have an FB account: because
500 million other folks are on FB, there's an internal email system _that
doesn't interoperate with other networks_ , and some of those folks are (a)
clueless enough not to have a non-FB email account and (b) important enough to
my personal or business life that I need to communicate with them. So perforce
I must use Facebook.

The high-value content-contributing users were a critical part of FB's growth
dynamic insofar as they attracted other users (whether that's so now is
another matter). But they get no monetary or in-kind reward for their
activity.

I _will_ concede that the term "cognitive slavery" is a bit over the top, but
platforms like FB are very carefully designed to hit our reward feedback loops
and make us feel good for coming back and feeding stuff to them, to the point
of fostering addiction-like compulsive behaviour. This is, at best, unethical
and at worst exploitative. And that's what's in play here -- FB make no
pretense at doing this for anyone's benefit but their own.

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jsankey
How does the author propose to start financially rewarding power users in any
case? What sort of perverse incentives would this create? It seems to me that
such rewards would conflict with providing real value, so I'd be interested to
hear how this would be avoided.

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Tichy
Where does the 100000 power users number come from?

