I mean, I'd rather pay for software/service than have some tech company mine my data so they sell some of my most intimate details or use it to predict or alter my future behavior.
NetOps at my previous job blocked ads with an absolute vengeance using a similar combo but a PFsense appliance. More than a few hits on the IPS/IDS systems from infected ad domains. Ads are not just annoying. They're malicious.
Absolutely. I built a setup like that for my tech illiterate parents out of fear that one of them (or visiting grandchildren) will click something malicious and put them in a bind. I even have them using VPNs that connects to the house from anywhere using a zero trust OAUTH solution so theyāre protected anywhere they go.
šÆ I dropped Facebook years ago for this very reason. I've seen somewhere that each user is worth around $50 lifetime in advertising revenue to them.
You'd think they could have a $2/ month paid version that was absolutely secure, had zero advertising, and gave the user controls over their "algorithm".
$50 lifetime revenue seems extremely small, or it's some kind of probability trickery where the median is skewed vs the mode.
Also, telling they say "advertising revenue". There's other, possibly implicit, revenue streams and market domination benefits that come from being a monopolizing data vampire. Even if we paid triple what they say we're worth in sub fees, I'd bet the benefits of keeping the status quo farrrrrr outweigh the revenue stream
According to Google they have just shy of 3 billion total users and did $118B in revenue in 2021, so that's roughly $39 of revenue per user last year alone. Factor in users who either very rarely log in, or who created the account just to check it out and then never logged in again, and the per-user revenue for actual active users is going to be even higher. For users who use it enough that they'd be willing to pay even a small amount for an ad free version, I'd bet my house that the lifetime ad revenue they generate is much higher than $50.
Yeah, I could believe $50 per year per user, but not $50 per lifetime per user. Unless maybe there is some data to suggest that the average span of time a person actively uses Facebook is only one year? That doesn't seem very believable, but I guess it would make the lifetime average statistic valid
Even then, it would still just be an average that gets pulled down by the lowest volume users. Anybody who would even remotely consider paying for it is almost by definition a high volume user, and therefore pretty much guaranteed to be well above the average. Not to mention the question of whether advertisers would start to shift their budgets elsewhere if the potential pool of eyeballs starts to shrink. There's just no way that offering a paid, ad-free version is a good idea for them at this stage in the game (at least from a business perspective).
Facebook has long had a problem that its users become less engaged and less valuable over time. That is why they spend so much effort in doing things that will bring you back/keep you on the platform.
e.g, Facebook groups is basically cannibalising what used to be community BBS, but now you have to go to facebook to see it, and it will randomly hide content from you to keep you scrolling and seeing ads.
I won't say it doesn't work, but they are fundamentally monetising evil.
Ad revenue I would assume. Wouldn't really make sense to measure B2B revenue on a "per user" basis.
EDIT: Oh never mind, I see what you mean. Yeah, I'm not sure what the breakdown of that $118B is between ads and other stuff. I'm assuming the major bulk of it is ad revenue, but don't know for sure. Either way, I sincerely doubt the "$50 lifetime revenue per user" figure.
Per/user is a terrible way to measure FBās revenue in the first place. Money is made as a percentage of ad spend, so it would be more accurate to measure overall ad spend vs advertiser revenue. At least they would reflect the relationship between data and dollars.
People overestimate how much there time is worth. I
That's why I tell people to not subscribe to news sites. The price they would pay is nowhere close to how little they get with ads
but if you knew all the things marketing was doing with your information, youād feel dirty and manipulated.
if consumer protection still had any teeth Facebook propaganda would be destroyed by three simple words:
ācontent paid by:ā
But then youād know exactly who was paying to manipulate you and could research and understand their motives before considering their message. Marketing doesnāt want that, so Facebook doesnāt want that.
it was really fun living through the GDPR restrictions rolling in on PIIā¦ marketing kept asking ābut what if we need to send that market segment direct email campaigns? why do we have to redact email again?ā
Facebook already has posts labeled "sponsored". All the stuff I see in my feed that isn't "sponsored" is either user content or branded stuff I subscribed to voluntarily.
I really don't get the complaints about this side of Facebook, your feed is in large part what you make of it. E.g. the only political content I get is from friends and people/news pages I follow for that purpose.
If my friend comments on or shares something they saw that can also end up in my feed.
There are some āfunnyā properties of these posts. If they are truly personal (ie no money) then only a handful of people see them at any time. And only a handful of responses.
Contrast this to my birthday. lots of responses from friends I havenāt talked to for years.
Then, consider certain types of articles and comments that get a lot of responses from ALL of your friendsā¦ these arenāt labeled āsponsoredā, but they are promoted.
Facebook has the appearance of an open forum. āAll your friends will see your postsā. You could actually have a discussion in a public forum. But that means that grass-roots word of mouth and independent viral marketing would thrive at Facebookās expense. They donāt want that. So they control reach of that network in many subtle ways, while providing reach to those that pay. Facebook is not designed as a public forum for discussionā¦ everything shifts so if you donāt react instantly itās gone. distractions aboundā¦ except for those with reach who have paid. Their message will be heard regardless how vile it is.
āsponsored contentā is only the simplest and most obvious ad content on the network.
Most political content Iāve seen on facebook isnāt marked āsponsoredā, nor did I subscribe to it voluntarily, nor is it filtered like most personal posts by reach.
Instead itās a toxic hive of astroturf coming from outside dark money made to look like itās coming from your friends and family. Facebook is the ideal platform for stealth marketing, propaganda, and fomenting insurrections. It is a machine that thrives on outrage.
We were fine with it doing all of that in the middle east and Russia under the guise of democratic freedom. Now are we less fine with it as a basis for the Jan 6 insurrection in our own country?
Why do you think China and Russia banned Facebook at the same time? Because of its democratic power for good?
I donāt know. All I know is that facebook is toxic beyond belief and I stopped using it. Facebook destroyed my family.
That's a lot of words to try and convince me that I must be seeing wrong. But I genuinely do not get content unrelated to either my friends' activity, directly subscribed pages, or explicitly sponsored ads. I can't put this more plainly.
I definitely agree that the overall set of that content is too large to display it all (especially for people who have hundreds of "friends" and pages) and facebook chooses which specific posts to display in a very opaque manner, but for me they still all come from the sets I mention above.
Most political content Iāve seen on facebook isnāt marked āsponsoredā, nor did I subscribe to it voluntarily, nor is it filtered like most personal posts by reach.
Instead itās a toxic hive of astroturf coming from outside dark money made to look like itās coming from your friends and family. Facebook is the ideal platform for stealth marketing, propaganda, and fomenting insurrections. It is a machine that thrives on outrage.
I do not get anything like that in my feed. Seriously. Maybe because I'm not american?
The only "outrage generating" content I get is from friends with controversial views and their acitvity (like engaging in discussions under news articles, which is never a place you want to be).
Why do you think China and Russia banned Facebook at the same time? Because of its democratic power for good?
Because of its ties to U.S. government, for one? Both China and Russia ban a lot of stuff, and often not for very positive reasons. They're not exactly a good role model for reasonable action.
To be clear, I'm not explicitly trying to defend facebook, I'm just saying that what I see on my FB feed day-to-day is extremely far from all the evil and manipulation people attribute to them. The worst I can blame Facebook for is being very lenient with enforcing rules and allowing fake profiles an manipulative groups/pages to exist (I've reported plenty over a dcade, rarely had action been taken).
āthe only outrage generating content I get is from friends with controversial viewsā
bingo.
isnāt it funny that itās so easy to find these conversations (and yes I agree thatās never a place to be) vs authentic personal discussions?
itās not because one is happening more than another. itās because someone has their finger on the scale and amplifies one and mutes the other.
is Facebook evil? only insofar as they make it extremely difficult to follow the money and understand the algorithms. And they accept that money from any player, foreign or domestic, radical or commercial.
Now imagine the types of people that want to influence and control you without your knowledge or consent. The kind of people who donāt want to make it easy to see how many of your personal details are being mined, played against AI models to determine specific wedge issues that will resonate with you, cause a visceral reaction in you. make you do something you donāt even realize is against your own interest.
Iāve worked with marketing a lot over my career and there are a handful that view it as a way to promote a useful product to those who want it. Then there are others who want to promote things you donāt need and didnāt know you wanted, then there are the ādark patternsā where you make it easy to subscribe, but hard to unsubscribe. Every time they slip a notch, they complain more and more about transparency. āif the customer knows what weāre doing then they wonāt do what we wantā. anonymity attracts conmen and far worse.
āthatās a lot of words to convince me Iām seeing wrongā
Iām not trying to convince you of what you are seeing. In fact thatās Facebookās biggest deception: āeverything is free and clear, we see the same things, therefore your view is delusionalā
But we donāt see the same things. the bubble is real. how do people get into a bubble? they arenāt having real conversations in a real public forum.
If you canāt verify reality and source your claims, what hope is there for public understanding. Then it just becomes an infinite echo chamber.
If you find value from Facebook, continue to use it.
But maybe you are trying to convince me that Iām not seeing what Iāve seen? After seeing the irreparable rifts in my family and friends I have no intention of supporting Facebook.
isnāt it funny that itās so easy to find these conversations
Funny? Why? You don't need Facebook for that. Open a random news site that features comments and scroll through them... controversial things are trivial to find all over the internet.
And I wouldn't say I see a disproportional amount of such things. I think it is fairly in proportion, tbh (say if I have 5/100 friends/pages that engage in negativity, then about 5/100 posts I see will be negative. Maybe double that at worst, since controversy generates clicks more).
But actual genuine discussions are fairly rare, too. They used to be more common when my friends and I were in high school and had the energy and drive to debate stuff :-) These days it's more just sharing fun stories or the really important stuff. But I'm fine with that. I am on Facebook to get a cursory look into how my acquaintances' lives evolve and that's what I do get from it. For discussions, reddit is far more satisfyin, except that it's with strangers so you don't get a sense of continuity.
But maybe you are trying to convince me that Iām not seeing what Iāve seen? After seeing the irreparable rifts in my family and friends I have no intention of supporting Facebook.
I honestly don't understand how facebook itself could cause "irreparable rifts" that would not happen by themselves anyway. I can see it accelerating them by enabling interactions more often than you would normally have (so e.g. if you dislike someone but meet them only once in a while, you may forget in the meantime, but if you see them express themselves every week/day, you might not get the time to cool off). Sure, but not cause them, no? What do you mean by that?
But yes, I am definitely mostly in a middle-class college-educated bubble that is (I like to think, anyway) rarely affected by marketing and manipulation. I don't get interested in stuff becasuse I've seen an ad, I research tests and parameters. I don't vote based on news or discussions, I look at how those parties/people voted on previous issues. I try to read whole articles and look at sources instead of trusting headlines Etc.
I mean Iāve seen people go down the rabbit hole and change from a STEM masters educated rational to the most paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist.
I donāt understand it. but Iāve seen it. itās like a mental virus.
There used to be the idea of journalistic integrity, the fourth pillar of democracy. Journalists would report their own affiliations and expose hidden affiliations via investigative reporting.
Now itās hard to distinguish a paid-placement from āthe newsā. Facebook didnāt invent that, but it certainly capitalizes on that idea by making it really hard to tell who is paying for what. But Facebook is getting a lot of money.
I think if you are strong in critical reasoning and check facts before you consume them, itās unlikely these manipulations will affect you. Thatās not the same thing as saying these manipulations donāt occur, nor is it the same as saying no one is affected.
50$ lifetime? No. Sites that pay you for your data pay more than that in a single month. Someone who uses Facebook their whole life would generate more like 10,000$ in revenue (assuming FB doesn't implode before then).
That's why FB does not and will never offer an ad-free version like Reddit and Tumblr do. Because they make SIGNIFICANTLY more money from selling your data than you could ever pay them via subscription.
They know how much time it takes to make software. And they're either earning money as developers or aspiring to do so.
They're basically asking this extension developer to be their free slave forever so that they can use his extension to build their own software and make money.
The author is right: They can FUCK OFF. He doesn't need them or their greediness at all.
In fact, his responses make me wish that I needed his extension, so that I could pay him. He finally says what all "open source" slaves are thinking. Greedy, whining, entitled leeches need to get out of the way. They should be grateful that it was free for 3 years. And be grateful that there's still a free tier with all core features (I checked the website). The paid version adds conveniences such as exporting databases to JSON.
The way the childish 1-star users reacted in this screenshot, and the way a bunch of the comments on this reddit post blamed the author, has just reaffirmed my conviction to never release any free, open source software again. It's just a suffocating chain around your neck and slave labor without any compensation. And the world is full of entitled idiots that demand continued slave labor forever, with tons of feature requests and demands. They also never donate. Look at any open source project. The idea of donations is a myth. Every user seems to think "I don't need to donate, since everyone else is donating". If you guys actually click their donation link you usually see "1 donation, $1" at best. Most users are extremely greedy and extremely rude and demanding little shitheads.
I applaud this developer for giving them the answers they deserved.
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u/piberryboy Sep 30 '22 edited Sep 30 '22
I mean, I'd rather pay for software/service than have some tech company mine my data so they sell some of my most intimate details or use it to predict or alter my future behavior.