Senator: How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?
Zuckerberg (in a disdainful tone): Senator, we run ads.
Edit: I directly transcribed the exchange
Think of it as like when you're on the witness stand and the attorney asks you a question. It's not because he doesn't know the answer. It's because he wants you to say the answer, to make it part of the public record and to have the jury hear it.
Speaking of juries, the arrogance of Zuckerberg's answer wouldn't win any points with a jury, either. He walked into a trap right there.
It's fun to bust on our parents & politicos but I'm pretty sure anybody who managed to raise you, or especially get into the Senate, has a much more extensive and nuanced understanding of life (and politics) than you think.
This has never been secret and has been "on record" for a very long time. I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress rather than any arrogance by Facebook as they too get fed up with these aimless questions.
Questions like this are really just asking Zuckerberg to introduce his business in a controlled way.
Been a secret to "whom"? Not secret to technical people, no. There are plenty of non-technical people who still don't understand the "you are the product not a customer" trope. They see this free "talk to your family" service which sometimes shows ads which they ignore. They might answer the "how FB makes money question?" with "I don't know, maybe some people pay for it. Or maybe they are just nice and give it away for free".
Other questions might have been stupid but that particular one was typical of how a police investigator might start questioning or how a lawyer might cross examine a witness.
> I think most people will see the absolutely dismal lack of technical understanding by Congress
Back in the day I used to think of lawyers asking witness questions on the stand the same way: "Why do you ask him if he knows the victim, of course he does, these lawyers are sure not very bright..."
You really think most people have more technical understanding than these senators?
Also yes, based on their questions and age, I do think most people have a better understanding. Just the expressions of the other audience members and staff in the room shows the frustration.
When Google first showed up and just tossed some ads at the top of your search results based solely on the search terms, that was actually helpful. It wasn't something that people were creeped out by until they were tracking you everywhere to sell even more targeted ads.
Since newspapers and TV don't have that tracking capability, the advertisements are annoying but not unsettling, I think.
You say that, but I'd just like to remind you that Louie Gohmert (my home state fwiw) was a judge. And is now in the house.
I think a lot of these questions have been like that, but ultimately the senators couldn't figure out how to phrase what they were getting at and both sides floundered to understand what was going on.
edit: as an example was another senator, "mr funny guy", who was trying to ask if facebook tracks how people use other apps or devices, I'm still not sure, even when they aren't logged in or something. I saw 3 possible questions that he was trying to ask and they all would have been good but I don't think either of them understood what he was asking so they went back and forth uselessly. Could have been some hard hitting commentary on the bundling of permissions, or the bundling of fb with a phone, or the ability for fb to track other app usage, or the ability of fb to track users on websites even when not logged in. oh well.
Just in case, FB ARPU in US in Q4 2017 was $27. People who talk about "i ready to pay 10$ per year if im not tracked and not exposed to ads" _seriously_ underestimate FB money-printing ability.
Think about it, FB makes almost as much as NFLX per US user (admittedly in Q4, the hottest quarter in advertising), but you dont need to enter your credit card. At all.
There is no large audience in any developed market willing to pay $15+ per month for Facebook just to remove ads.
The problem is getting from zero to critical mass with that model. Though I guess that doesn't stop a lot of other companies with less plausible revenue sources from getting seemingly endless money thrown at them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would ever work, because I may value my privacy at more than a few bucks a month, but it's a near certainty that the vast majority of the population disagrees with me. They don't see the cost there, so they ignore it. By the time they ever realize what it was they gave up and for how little, it's too late.
But you just said you just need your family and some friends. That doesn't sound like critical mass is needed. Just convince your family and some friends to join with you, and enjoy the service together. Then your friends can invite their friends and family, and so on and so forth.
Yeah I understand the goal of capitalist companies is to endlessly print more money for the shareholders and the promise of ever better advertising enables FB to keep pulling in the dough. But maybe something like social media shouldn't operate in that context.
Maybe there needs to be an old-lawyer to SME translator doing the talking too. This person questions a SME on behalf of the senators and they can speak up or seek clarification when needed. Proofread questions and competent speech.
And right there is where your plan fails.
Absolutely! Github, Dropbox, etc, that's how tons of "freemium" companies work.
That's how WhatsApp started to fund itself, I remember there being a nominal annual charge ( £1 ) for some users but not for all. There didn't seem to be any obvious rule as to who was pinged to pay-up, perhaps it really was random.
But that was discontinued after they were acquired.
Maybe but that particular quote "Zuckerberg (in a disdainful tone): Senator, we run ads." is not an example of it. Sometimes they ask really basic questions, not because they don't know the answer to it, but to enter it into the record. It's how a police or how cross examination starts, get them to admit basic stuff then later make them contradict themselves. Another reason for basic "stupid" questions is to provide information for others who many not be aware. We all know how FB makes money, but that might not extend to people who aren't proficient technically (think grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles...).
Zuckerberg: "WhatsApp messages are fully encrypted."
S: "But can it spit out some algorithmic thing that will affect ads?"
Z: "Facebook's systems don't see the content of your messages."
S: "But could they talk to each other, even if no human ever sees the content?"
The way they scoped that question to WhatsApp and not Messenger seemed quite deliberate.
WhatsApp is sold as an E2E encrypted service, and an admission that WhatsApp message data (or even metadata) is somehow used for advertising as well would be a huge admission.
> Him admitting they serve ads based on Messenger content means nothing, we already know that they do.
I don't think that has been confirmed (source if so?), and I think that's what the question should have attempted to confirm.
But they're probably doing so much more with Messenger and their 'shadow profiles'.
WW2 generals were very arguably some of the greatest military minds the world has ever seen. They rapidly adopted what was radically new military technology at the time and figured out how to use it extraordinarily effectively through understanding it.
Eisenhower, Montgomery, Rommel, MacArthur, Patton, Bradley would immediately understand drone strikes.
I guarantee their questions would be vastly superior in every regard to what I just watched at the hearing today.