I read somewhere last week, among the Facebook rants on Reddit, I think: “If you don’t pay for a product, you are a product”. You are being sold. It also must include all ad supported media like the good old TV, generally MSM, certainly Google and the majority of the Internet. The tremendous influence on the design, the content and even the “spirit” is obvious. It doesn’t mean that everything that is free makes the consumer himself a product. Naturally the exchange of ideas is the most primal form of human interaction. Yet when the presumed “free” exchange is deliberately staged and “orchestrated”, it turns an actor into a product. It’s a rather different ballgame. I shun being a product as much as possible.
Further reading:If you don’t pay for a product, you are a product
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I’ve read variations of that quote as well, Ben. We live in an age when many people use Google or Facebook and I bet most fail to realize that they’re the product. There is nothing inherently with being a product, so long as you are aware of it.
Greg, I disagree. It shapes a platform to extract value from the “production” and then in turn it shapes the conversation. Even when you aware of it.
I must ask: do you use such services like Google or Facebook? If so, how do you justify it? If not, would you be more inclined to use them if you paid for them upfront in financial terms?
Greg, I have ambassadorial accounts in the social media but I don’t use it. I use Google tools extensively ( most of the Google tools like Docs, Voice, Blogger, Feedburner, even Analytics were created in the acquired, outside of Google companies, the exception being gmail among others, etc). This does detract from my argument about the detriment of the platform and the model. Not paying for things in the long run is far more expensive.