News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Thousands of Facebook internal documents and emails published online. Parent comment

Re:Thousands of Facebook internal documents and emails publi... by JacobSeated on Thursday November 07, 2019 @06:29PM (#21478488)
That is part of the false narrative promoted by the anti-ads crowd. If you understand the history of the internet, then you can only disagree strongly with that kind of thinking. It is basically just sawing off the branch we are all sitting on.

The user does not become a product because Facebook run ads, and they are also not entitled to part of the profit. It would be minuscule anyway.

No, actually, there is no real product, except the reach and engagement Facebook is able to create through the ads.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Thousands of Facebook internal documents and emails publi... by autoexec on Thursday November 07, 2019 @07:09PM (#21478835)
> The user does not become a product because Facebook run ads

they become a product because Facebook collects their personal information and uses it to manipulate them for profit. Facebook could show ads without mining user data, without buying information from data brokers, and without creating shadow profiles for people who choose not to interact with their service. They do all of those things though because the user is 100% the product as far as Facebook is concerned.

[ Parent | on HN ]