The Guardian writes how tech insiders give their own products a wide berth. The reason is in the design of these services.
I am a compulsive social media user. I have sent about 140,000 tweets since I joined Twitter in April 2007 – six Jacks' worth. I use Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit daily. I have accounts on Ello, Peach and Mastodon (remember them? No? Don't worry). Three years ago, I managed to quit Facebook. I went cold turkey, deleting my account in a moment of lucidity about how it made me feel and act. I have never regretted it, but I haven't been able to pull the same stunt twice.
I used to look at the heads of the social networks and get annoyed that they didn't understand their own sites. Regular users encounter bugs, abuse or bad design decisions that the executives could never understand without using the sites themselves. How, I would wonder, could they build the best service possible if they didn't use their networks like normal people?
Now, I wonder something else: what do they know that we don't?
Apparently what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:42AM (4 children)
"Now, I wonder something else: what do they know that we don't?"
They know -exactly- what information they're scraping up about you and what they're using it for. At that point it becomes a no-brainer not to use their own service.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:28PM (3 children)
You missed the (to me) more obvious thing that they know: social media is addicting. It's the "likes" and upmods that do it. Everyone has a need to feel like they are approved of by their peers. A person gets a tiny jolt of feel-good every time they get a like. More likes make for more feel-good. It is psychologically addictive. The allusion to addiction is right up there in TFS, as well as the title.
To lazy to search, but Facebook and Zuckerberg have been in the news recently, and Zuck alludes to that addictive quality of being liked.
The data gathered is the goal - the addiction is the means by which the goal is reached.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:10PM (1 child)
It's more than an allusion to addiction. Many studies and quite a few former insiders flat out say the social media interfaces are designed for addictiveness. I've had the same opinion first about the user interfaces for M$ operating systems and some of their products for ten years or so. I don't use them, I find them way too unproductive. They struck me as designed to be soothing or mesmirizing to poke at pointlessly for hours at a time rather than get things done. At one place, staff that spent a long, unbroken, stretch of time on M$ ended up with a blank, dazed look on their faces. You could see from day to day who was spending time in front of an M$ box. I eventually started asking people with the look and sometimes a follow up on the next day when they no longer had the dazed look. It was not a scientific study but I'm rather convinced. The concern I have now is that various groups of clowns and jokers *cough*GNOME*cough* *cough*KDE*cough* copy those problems into FOSS.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Monday February 05 2018, @06:48PM
For example: http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8afrom-a-magician-and-googles-design-ethicist/ [tristanharris.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Lester on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:14PM
"Likes" are addictive because we care other's opinion. Psycopaths don't care other's opinion unless it is useful. They care about their public image, but they don't feel any special satisfaction because of "likes", they look social networks from a practical point of view. They are inmune to such addiction.
(Score: 5, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:15AM
They're not fair to everyone. But they've been fair to me. So many of my friends, their tweets were deleted. Or their accounts were suspended. Because the administrators don't agree with their message. It's never been a problem for me. But I go on Facebook, I always remember who's running it. A guy who went to Harvard. But I went to UPenn. A guy who may be running against me in 2020. He's been very fair to me. But it feels weird. And I see what happened to my friends. And maybe if I keep tweeting on Facebook the same will happen to me. But until it happens I'm staying on both. And Instagram and YouTube. Not many people know, Instagram is part of Facebook now. And Snapchat for the booty snaps. Somebody on SoylentNews doesn't know what a booty snap is. I don't think he knows. It's very sad.
We live in the age of Social Media, folks. The big Social Media sites are a great way to get your unfiltered message out. To get past the Fake News gatekeepers. They can take you a long way, believe me. A very long way.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:52AM (6 children)
The surprise is not that they don't use it themselves or don't allow their kids (or grandkids) to use it -- how they check tho is beyond me cause I'm fairly sure little Johnny can setup a fake facebook account etc if he wanted to cause all the kids do it.
The thing that is bothering is that normal users don't seem to care or note how the creators don't want to use it, their own product. They clearly know something about their product that you don't and they wouldn't apparently be caught dead using it. Yet normal people keep doing it. There is something quite horrid in the idea of "not getting high on your own supply" or in this case not using your own product. What does it really say about your product -- it's good enough for other people but not for me? If the creator won't use it then why would or should I. If a car manufacturer doesn't drive his own car or a cook won't eat at his own restaurant those would be massive warning signs -- but a techmogul not using his own product is fine?
Suckerberg has a staff that manages his account, write his little posts and professional photographers to take his "casual" pictures. Which probably isn't that odd, most celebs etc probably don't write their own stuff - it's a PR tool to sell themselves to all their devoted fans not an actual communication tool to talk to friends and people. But still could it be any more clear how alien and distant they are to their common users.
It sort of reminds me of that line from the first Judge Dredd movie, with Sly Stallone, where the food machine tells Fergie to eat recycled food -- it's good for the environment and okay for you. Facebook is great for Zuckerbergs wallet and okay (at best) for you ...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:42PM (4 children)
Actually - I can make a case for the cook who doesn't want to eat at his own restaurant. Let's go overboard first. You get a job at a chocolate factory, and you're told straight up that you can eat all the chocolate you want - provided you observe sanitation guidelines. So, you pig out on the stuff for a week or two. Maybe if you're a real glutton, you pig out for a couple months. Eventually, you just get sick of the stuff. Consequently, you rarely eat chocolate for the rest of your employment, and possibly for the rest of your life. I've heard anecdotes about chocolate. Move on to chicken. Chicken is one of the more disgusting foods that food handlers have to handle. Get a job in a chicken processing plant, and you'll rapidly lose your appetite for chicken. Especially with big-agri pumping those birds full of hormones and antibiotics. A large percentage of commercial chickens arrive at the plant with tumors and deformities - you quickly get disgusted with the stuff.
So, a typical cook or chef? He isn't necessarily so immersed in a single product as the chocolate worker, or the chicken plucker. But, he IS immersed in food all day long. At the end of the day, he/she may be sick of the smell of his food. He just wants to get the hell off of work, go home, drink something to wash away the flavor/smell of his work, and eat something that doesn't remind him of - - pork, or chicken, or Italian, or Mexican - whatever he's been in all day.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:02PM
Which is why you want to date a slut but not a whore.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:34PM
This is what happened to me with ramen. Back when I was a kid and my family was poor, it was Maruchan Top-ramen (and government cheese with crackers) all day every day. Now that ramen is getting big with hipsters I hear a lot about it and even rejected some from a nice restaurant that was offered to me for free. People don't understand why I'm not interested.
Anyway, Anthony Bourdain went over your point in Kitchen Confidential. He stated that he loves eating lumpy mashed potatoes and clumsily thrown-together casseroles when he's not out looking for ideas to steal.
(Score: 2) by beckett on Sunday February 04 2018, @09:05PM
Although they exist on the same spectrum, there's a world of difference between a gourmet and a gourmond.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @05:35AM
So, that's why I keep seeing McDonald's employees eating at DelTaco!
(Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Monday February 05 2018, @07:01PM
But to go full circle here, the product is designed to be addictive. The more you look, the more ads you see, the more money they make. So if Facebook or Twitter have to spend $700 million to get users to use the site an extra 30 seconds per day, the investment pays off.
I have to admit, I knew all this and I still had a hell of a time quitting those sites.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:12PM (5 children)
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:41PM (4 children)
No. Zuckerberg does not use Faecebook himself. He has a whole team dedicated to the task [nymag.com], that includes deleting comments, and never has to go near it.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:29PM (3 children)
That's an odd way to say "Yes, he does use Facebook." It's a standard way celebrities and businesses use Facebook.
The story is rather bizarre. This still counts as "use" even though executives don't use their social media products either in a way or frequency that this journalist thinks they should (and which, let us note the journalist has already heavily implied is harmful!).
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:46PM (2 children)
"using Facebook" and "hiring a team to exploit Facebook" aren't quite the same thing. Trump is an exception, I think, among household names. He actually "uses" Facebook, pretty much in the manner it was designed to be used. A team of public relations and/or some psyche people exploiting other users wasn't exactly the intended purpose when this crap all started. Trump uses, Zuck doesn't.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:31PM (1 child)
Sure, the latter is a proper subset of the former.
So what? Facebook is not the same service it was more than a decade ago.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:44PM
The "product" changes though. Most "users" are the product. Zuck isn't the product, he is the proprietor. The entire exploitation chain is switched around here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:48PM (7 children)
I live a happy and contented life without Facepalm or Twotter. My digital soul is not for sale.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @02:39PM (3 children)
Yet here you are.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:35PM (2 children)
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:12PM
Monetize it, hell, figure out a way to hook it up to a dynamo...we'll make MEEEEEELLIONS!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:48PM
Thanks for coming up to see me! Hopefully you don't view my comments as smarm. Maybe I'll create an account. I know I'll refuse to moderate, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:44PM (2 children)
My digital soul is not for sale.
Sure it is... Nobody offered the right price yet. Besides, what you don't give, Facebook/Twitter takes. Anybody can throw your name and picture up any time. I don't have Facebook, but people have seen or put my name and pix up there. You can't hide. The cameras and microphones are everywhere. That whole "privacy" thing doesn't exist. Let it go...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 04 2018, @04:35PM
And if nobody can offer the right price, then it's not for sale, by definition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @06:22AM
You can't convince me to become a digital whore. Not even a great try.
Besides, it's not your name and picture social media really wants but your interaction. And that nobody can give them except you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:34PM (1 child)
You don't go to to the gay bar next door to your house either
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:36PM
Hey man, gay bars have good deals on drinks, and those gays know how to party. There's none of the stuck-up bullshit you see with hipsters. They're also a good place to meet straight women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)
A lot of people have down time and social media is their choice. SN and other web browsing are not so different. Addiction means they are giving up basic things like taking showers to spend more time on social media. Is anyone doing that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @06:24AM
Yes, the answer to that question is always yes. If you can think of it, then somebody will be doing it. This is the superset of rule 34.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:31PM
In every environment there are consumers and producers. Don't be a consumer. You'll spend your life earning money to spend on consuming worthless stuff.
On social media, how many times do you have an original thought that you post versus re-tweeting or liking a funny meme that you didn't use any brainpower to invent?
That's ok though. You're a sheep. And you're quite simply being controlled and manipulated by artificial intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo [youtube.com]