This seems like a simplistic take, and I don't think it accurately reflects the view of many people who actually work at Facebook. In online games like League of Legends, we do not say that whales are the customers and the players are the product, even though it's true in much the same way — the whales wouldn't give you money to play with the other users if the other users didn't exist. In both cases, the product is the product, non-paying users bring value to the product, and paying users turn that value into money.

> This seems like a simplistic take, and I don't think it accurately reflects the view of many people who actually work at Facebook.

Well sure. I'm sure thousands of employees have very sophisticated and subtle views. But when you average out all of those views, it winds up that the only thing that really matters is getting eyes on ads.

No one needs to be a villain. The subtle views just cancel each other out, and the huge amount of effort fb puts forth regresses to the mean. Get more eyeballs on ads.

>>In online games like League of Legends, we do not say that whales are the customers and the players are the product

We don't? Seems accurate to me.

No, people don't usually say that, because it is obvious to most people what the product is in that situation, and trying to redefine terms so that it's something else seems like newspeak.

The game is a product — the company produces it. The players are players — they play the game. The whales are a sub-category of players, so if the players are indeed the product, you'd have to say they're buying themselves. In fact, the game is a product that both paying and non-paying customers consume, in some cases with barely differing experiences.