Over the last decade, few platforms have declined quite as rapidly and visibly as Facebook and Instagram. What used to be apps for catching up with your friends and family are now algorithmic nightmares that constantly interrupt you with suggested content and advertisements that consistently outweigh the content of people
it doesn’t make sense, just say they’re exploiting customers. Saying “you are product” just make people take it literally and think Facebook is wrapping people up and selling them whole package, organ and brain included, which is nonsense
Only if you don’t think about it.
First you should stop and think: What is a customer?
A customer is someone that a company makes money from.
Then you think: What money have I given Facebook?
None (or extremely little)
Then you think: But Facebook makes billions. How do they do this?
They have loads of very targeted adverts.
So we who are Facebook’s customers?
Advertising companies.
What makes ad space on Facebook valuable?
Their ability to target those ads to the right people based off of the data they have about them and to get you (the product) to see those ads.
Only if you are insanely literal. You are most definitely the product.
They should take it literally, because it is meant literally!
They’re not exploiting customers, they are exploiting people. Those people are NOT their customers.
Facebook is literally selling people in data form. Everything you post, everyone you interact with, everything you look at across most of the web (not just facebook.com) is all catalogued and used to create a fingerprint that is a digital representation of you, and that is their product! “Essence of /u/Melt for sale here”
Their customers are advertisers.
ETA: Link
Facebook is a cookbook! It was there in the name the whole time!!!
Facebook is made from people!
You’re the only person I’ve ever seen who has taken this expression literally.