On: What “The Social Dilemma” Gets Wrong [pdf]

[082349872349872]

How is "you are the product" incorrect? Facebook's customers buy eyeballs, so how are eyeballs not the product?

Compare the parallel logic of "steers are not the product: this ranch is funded by meat buyers so it remains free for cattle."

Go da we da peyeting. (follow the money)

[tr352 → 082349872349872]

> How is "you are the product" incorrect?

I think the point is not that this statement is incorrect, but rather that it doesn’t accurately convey the severity of the situation. More accurate would be: “manipulation of their audience is their product”.

[082349872349872 → tr352]

One of the nice touches in "Gravy Planet" (1952) are the throwaway sentences that show, via revealed preferences, how the ad-exec protagonist is also a product of the system he helped create.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24576623

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Manipulation of the audience in pre-TV days, ca. fourth century BC:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:19...

> "The emotions are all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgements"

Remember the Maine!

[aaron695 → 082349872349872]

Watch The Social Dilemma.

It will explain it and other concepts for you better than me. It's a good doco to start on.

I'm not my eyeballs. Facebook et al don't care about most of me.

My sex and age is 90% of the metrics they know how to use. The other 10% is stuff I've searched recently.

What they are buying is time.

The product concept is from TV, social media is different - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/