Advertisement
UK markets closed
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     
  • HANG SENG

    16,541.42
    +148.58 (+0.91%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    83.11
    -0.06 (-0.07%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,254.80
    +16.40 (+0.73%)
     
  • DOW

    39,807.37
    +47.29 (+0.12%)
     
  • Bitcoin GBP

    56,171.46
    +1,385.34 (+2.53%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • NASDAQ Composite

    16,379.46
    -20.06 (-0.12%)
     
  • UK FTSE All Share

    4,338.05
    +12.12 (+0.28%)
     

Facebook really, really wants you to believe you’re not the product it’s selling

There's a saying that predates the internet, but is often used to describe the omnipresent and free internet services like Facebook we use on a daily basis: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product."

This criticism has been frequently marched out in the fallout of Facebook's recent Cambridge Analyticia scandal, during which it was revealed that more than 87 million user profiles were improperly shared by academic Aleksandr Kogan to a political consulting firm that helped Donald Trump.

SEE ALSO: Forget data. Free labor is Facebook's lifeblood

ADVERTISEMENT

Now, Facebook is taking major strides to fight back against the tsunami of criticism it's facing over user privacy. In a blog post published Monday, the company tried to address the idea that it's exploiting users for the purposes of mining data. The post says, in part:

This extremely direct response to critics didn't go over well — at least not with journalists. Many believe Facebook comparing itself to a newspaper is particularly rich, because the company has long been criticized for hurting the newspaper industry, and also because Mark Zuckerberg has long claimed that the social network is "not a media company."

So, as to whether Facebook users are actually customers or the product, it depends on how you look at it. The notion that they're the product is actually pretty simple to understand: Free online services usually make money by extracting lots of data from users, then selling that data to clients for targeted advertising. In this sense, advertisers are the clients, and the people enjoying the free content are what's being sold.

You could, of course, believe that Facebook's core product is "reading the news or finding information," as the company states in its new blog post. But that certainly sounds a lot like a media company!

Either way, one thing is certainly clear: Facebook as a service is really hard to define, even for its most senior executives.

WATCH: Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional hearing was all of us trying to explain technology to our grandparents

Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint api production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fvideo uploaders%2fdistribution thumb%2fimage%2f85562%2f45ee35ee f9ef 49da bca6 15f0bfa4b2f8
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint api production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fvideo uploaders%2fdistribution thumb%2fimage%2f85562%2f45ee35ee f9ef 49da bca6 15f0bfa4b2f8