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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

> The problem is this: if we aren’t paying for the product, we are the product.

This quote keeps living on endlessly. It's based on a naive and terribly over-simplified view of the internet, 'free' products, and capitalism in general. TLDR: Consumers aren't the product if the product would not exist without customers, and customers wouldn't be on the product unless it provides them value.

Not to mention publisher web analytics, such as this, are rarely being used to target ads. That is a completely different .js file (still) being embedded alongside the analytics.

I'm all for privacy but it's important to be accurate about this stuff. No major newspaper or free site is going to stop 'making their visitors the product' by switching to a privacy-first web analytics product. FB has accomplished equally as much as Google Analytics without providing any analytics service.

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I don't think it's naive or oversimplified. If you don't pay for the product, then someone is paying for the product - either it's taking a loss (venture capital burn, self hosting), another person is paying for it (donations, freemiums) or your data is being used for profit.

If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product.

Whether that's a bad thing depends on your view, but to me it means the product I use is skewed towards the needs of the people who pay, which often have demands that aren' in my best interest.

>If your data is used for profit, you and your data is what the company sells to other people. By definition you are the product.

The reason this is naive and oversimplified is that, say, Google, does not sell your data. Your data is their competitive advantage and they have every reason to not sell it. There is no service Google provides where someone can go in and request your data or access it.

Advertisers are generally not buying you, or your data, they are buying access to your attention based on the data a third party has about you, but not the data itself.

Selling your information is a different business model (think insurance, credit reports, LexisNexis and so on) and is usually not what's under discussion when this thought-terminating cliché gets used.

does not sell your data

Depends on how you define sell.

Advertisers pay to use the Google's collected data about people in order to better target their ads. This happens through Google's advertising channels (Doubleclick, AdWords, etc...)

Money changes hands. Personal data is involved. Sounds like selling to me.

Perhaps you should say "Google does not directly sell copies of your data," instead. But there is indeed a transaction involving personal data.

It's still a dishonest and reductive thought-terminating cliche, because it intentionally misrepresents the nature of the transaction.

Your data never leaves Google, nor can third parties acces it. Google is not selling your data. QED.

If my attention is the product, let's just simplify that to "I am the product".

If I use an adblock on desktop platforms, have YouTube premium to block ads, do I really have attention being focused on ads more than a passing glance as I scroll through the internet on my phone?

I just repeated the parent comment's premise. If that premise doesn't hold, congratulations. You are paying for YT premium: that makes you the customer.

I agree that it's simplistic, but it captures the fact that organizations need money to survive. Yes, companies offering "free" products have to serve two masters: the ones who use the product, and the ones who pay the bills. For many, the temptation will be strong to maximize profits as far as possible without completely losing the users. Facebook has been in the news a lot because of this very thing.

I think the core of this statement really is that if the users and funders of a product are the same, their interests are much better aligned.

jarod lanier and ezra klein talk about this in a recent episode of klein's show: companies can become more durable and much more aligned with the needs of their customers if they get paid directly by those customers (instead of selling those customers and making money off a third party, like advertisers).

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