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Steve Wozniak Drops Facebook: 'The Profits Are All Based On the User's Info' (arstechnica.com)
Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has formally deactivated his Facebook account. In an email interview with USA Today, Wozniak wrote that he was no longer satisfied with Facebook, knowing that it makes money off of user data. "The profits are all based on the user's info, but the users get none of the profits back," he wrote. "Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you. As they say, with Facebook, you are the product." Ars Technica reports: His Sunday announcement to his Facebook followers came just ahead of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's scheduled testimony before Congress on Tuesday. The CEO is also reportedly set to meet with members of Congress privately on Monday. Wozniak wrote that Facebook had "brought me more negatives than positives." Still, when Wozniak tried to change some of his privacy settings in the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica, he said he was "surprised" to find out how many categories for ads he had to remove. "I did not feel that this is what people want done to them," added Wozniak. "Ads and spam are bad things these days and there are no controls over them. Or transparency."
Welcome to 2007!
My facebook page is under a ficticious name and I was born in 1901 and I work at Initech. Have fun scraping useful data from me.
He's hip enough to realize you'll never get a First Post on Facebook
Wozniak wrote that he was no longer satisfied with Facebook, knowing that it makes money off of user data.
Are you just figuring that out Steve or were you once okay with that arrangement and have since soured on it?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I've been a fan of Woz's ever since I bought my first Apple ][, but, really? Only now are you realising that FB makes its money from your data?
For a super-bright guy, he seems a bit slow on the up-take...
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Did he announce this via twitter?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not just profits but the entire revenue stream, it's definitely benefited from stupid narcissistic fucks.
That is all.
is this the same click-bait article I saw posted on Reddit where it was titled Woz "leaving Facebook" (like he was an employee there), only to have the article explain they meant closing his account, and then at the end of the article reveal he didn't even delete the profile in the end, because he didn't want someone else taking his username?
First he was going to use "courage" as the reason for dropping his account but...oh...wait...
"Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you. As they say, with Facebook, you are the product."
In my [small] circle of friends, it appears many have *gained* from being affiliated with Facebook.
Can someone really tell us what the disadvantages of Facebook are?
Disclaimer: I do not have a Facebook account because no body has been able to convince me to get one.
Facebook sells data. That's how it makes money. That's their business. Facebook gives people an easy way to blog and then they monetize the shit out of your data.
Did people think Facebook did this out of the goodness of their hearts?
I'm the product coz I had to watch all them damn superbowl ads whilst getting nothing in return.
Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you.
I'm pretty sure I have to pay (directly or indirectly) money to Apple to get an iPhone. What is he blabbing about?
Dropping Facebook because you've *finally* clued in to their business model and it bothers you, or being just another grandstander whose virtue signalling his moral indignation with Facebook. Either way, you've just shot yourself in the foot. As the old saying goes: it's better to remain silent and have others think you are a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
The Facebook users don't get financial compensation, but they do get value from the service that Facebook provides.
I wonder though, is Google in a different category? Is it fine to make all your money off of advertising, which is selling your users' eyeballs? If Facebook had ads on every page, would it still count as 'the users being the product?' Oh wait, it says in the Summary that he doesn't like ads or spam. (Not a Facebook user...didn't know how many ads were there.)
So that means Google is exactly the same? They provide a free service, (or dozens of free services) as they sell your eyeballs and clicks to various advertisers. Is he dropping Google as well? Or are Google services worth it while Facebook isn't?
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
So I guess its time to Drop Google also since.... Google uses your data to sell Ads... Oh My.. Or the Internet...
What I'd really like to know is how much of the ghost profile they have built on me was made available through these wonderful API's? I would hope they mostly use that internally, but really what is the hope that's true?
For all of its faults, facebook has merit in being an all-in-one solution for keeping in touch with people you know and following people and groups that serve particular interests.
Of course one alternative is to go outside and meet real people, but the point of using facebook was, at least in my view, to connect with people that you wouldn't otherwise ever meet in real life. As people who I have genuine interests in are leaving facebook, I see no obvious alternative to it anywhere on the horizon.
So.... serious question. Deactivate facebook and go where, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I believe that most people would consider Steve Wozniak to be a bright individual. So why has it taken him this long to realize that Facebook makes its profit by selling its user's data?
I figured Facebook would go the way of AOL eventually. But not this way.
AOL suffered a long, painful, pathetic death. Looks like FaceBook will be put down pretty soon compared to AOL.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Sure, it was a surprise to Steve. Not because now the whole "we care about your data" is gathering momentum, and companies left and right jump on it, pretending to be nice, to get publicity brownie points. What's next, google execs deactivating facebook accounts and claiming to care about our data/privacy?. Mind you, the faster FB falls, the better.
This is not actually true. Facebook sells advertising in the main, it is the over targeting of that which is the problem. They have just copied from google in a bit more not bothering to protect the user. The actual selling of user data is for advertising or targeting ads as core business. When it comes to politically targeted ads it is the same thing.
What are they doing wrong? It is not that the core business is broken it is that they have let the cat out of the bag and there is lots of "customers" expecting a lot of disclosure about users to help target the advertising. It may seem wrong but this is not just facebook it is a combination of them and others and particularly the advertisers. I have run ads on facebook and youtube and the main advantage was not demographics but geography for me as you are able to target a particular zone. Such as around your school, saying there is a fair on. In your street saying come get a coffee. These are great and part of the game. Perhaps FB should offer a paid version that is ad free and all your data is locked but simply letting people choose everything that is disclosed would help a lot.
The problem with leaving FB is people are grandstanding in saying it but FB does offer some great stuff and is a useful tool.
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
Everyone knew Facebook was selling User Data, that was never up for debate.
Apple is behind in the AI race, and wants FB's engineers. That's the puzzle piece that makes this coordinated (and incredulous) attack by Woz & Cook make sense.
Fuck Zuck!
Better sell your Facebook stock now, while it's still worth something! Facebook is DOOMED.
If Woz if claiming that Apple isn't making it's money off of you, he is confused about how walled gardens work. Facebook collects users' data, walls it off, and sells access. Apple collects users, walls them off, and sells access.
There is a difference there, in that a person can choose to forgo anything that they've invested in Apple products and leave. Facebook allows you no such option to leave. So I'm not claiming that the two are equivalent, but you are still the product in Apple's model.
How the fuck is it possible that people did not FULLY know this from the moment Facebook started monetizing, over 10 years ago?
It's not new or secret information. They've been clicking I agree to this for years and then INTENTIONALLY sharing their personal information to the world, including fucking pictures of their meals!
I simply do not understand how/why it is NOW, in 2018, suddenly a topic of concern and discussion.
... anytime you like, but you can never leave.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Did people think Facebook did this out of the goodness of their hearts?
So how is Slashdot free again? Hmmm....
News Flash!
Selling your name, address, phone, answers to survey questions and such were standard operating procedures for magazines and other membership organizations for centuries. Yes, literally.
You didn't really think your paltry magazine subscription price paid for the magazine did you? Even the ads weren't enough. Magazines have traditionally made money by selling your information. This is exactly what Facebook does - but FB does it far better.
You're not paying for the service in cash so you pay another way.
Relax and lie a little. Don't give out your details if you don't want to or give misleading information. They'll still glean info but what's the real deal?
But perhaps the Apple Board of Directors should give Wozniak a job again. Chief Culture Officer. Reporting directly to the Board and Woz's only role/power is he can veto anything Apple management does that he deems inconsistent with the company's core principles. Think of it like an internal auditor, if you will.
What are they doing wrong?
In my opinion, not a thing. It's a bartering system. "You publish my data and link it for me and you can monetize it." That's why I support Moviepass "tracking" their customers directly before and after a movie. You give me free tickets & I give you some info. Perfectly acceptable.
People are losing their minds because some of them found out that Trump may have used some of the data. Those same people completely ignored that Facebook & google gave multiples of that data away for free to politicians the aforementioned companies supported. I intentionally left my initial message apolitical, but going over why people are losing their shit means politics.
He just found a cure for dementia and hearing loss, he can now hear pennies drop and know what it means!
Facebook business model has been obvious fore years, how could it take so long to realize?
it has been common knowledge that all social networks not just Facebook is selling your information
get your head out of the soil - you have one of the largest organizations not charging money for their services, come on !
I fully agree! We knew all this about facebook long ago, I have seen videos explaining what they are doing and how. Suddenly it is bad because a political campaign targeted adds and that political campaign was for Trump. That is just getting best bang for advertising buck. Exactly what you would want from someone who might be managing national spending. (Not that I am saying that a 1.3Trillion spending bill is good.)
You can't handle the truth! - Because I don't post left all my comments get modded down, bye bye Karma.
WE KNEW THIS FOR NEARLY A DECADE.
You either don't really care and just keep using it, being selective with what you put on there, OR you ditch it.
This sudden revelation is hardly new. I'm not even being an elitist nerd "oh how passe *WE* knew all along" it's common knowledge, it's been in the paper before, multiple times, we KNOW this, everyone knows this, christ there's 2 movies about the site for goodness sakes.
This sudden revelation is insane, fad, metoo, zeitgeist bullshit.
I'm not closing my account, but there's barely anything on there, I use it to speak to less technically inclined friends and family.
I call BS. Facebook sells a fortune in ads. Every 5th item you see while scrolling is a "sponsored" post (aka Advertisement). They fetch between $7 and $10 CPM just to promote a page (that is paying to promote a *page* that is already part of their system). Maybe they make some additional profit selling "user data", but you'd better believe most of the profit is directly from ads.
Better known as 318230.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bash Face Book and maybe the residual check gets larger.
Serious Question.
Where did the idea that it is okay to 'hoover' up somebody's personal contacts and data come from?
...ease off of the Cheetos there too, guy.
Rock on.
I'm not going to say if Facebook is good or bad or if you should stick with it or not, but Wozniak's take is an insanely stupid one:
It was always apparent, from the beginning, that profits were based off of user data. This was a mostly non-controversial admission until the past few years when it's taken a more sinister veneer. But in any case, the other part is that the model Wozniak complains about is the same one that brings us *all* forms of entertainment. TV, Radio, Media Outlets. What Wozniak is ignoring is that users find Facebook to have inherent value, for entertainment, communications, or whatever else.
"it makes money off of user data", wow steve, you're a real scherlock
Deactivated 2 years ago. I missed it for about 4 minutes. I've found out that i still keep in touch with the people i care about. I know how they are doing, what's going on in their lives. I just don't know what they had for lunch. Plus I'm much happier not reading the political BS of people who shouldn't be in the business of running their own lives let alone anyone else's. (Yes FB calls them "Friends". Where's the "Acquaintances" designation when you really want it?)
If you want geographically limited ads - put up a billboard. If you want it on the internet, use geolocation based on ip address. No need for facebook.
So, is he going to strictly use duckduckgo and CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service?
Google would never use you as a product
Maybe if we started putting it that way, the masses will actually bat an eye.
And at Apple, profits are based off of overcharging for hardware.
You seem unfamiliar with the concepts of zoning and height restriction which generally restricts billboards to highway roadsides and other undesirable locations.
It's called a phone contact list. If you're not on the list, you're really not that important to me.
You just replaced one info-technocrat with another. Every search on DDG gets sent to Comrade Putin's Party HQ in Stalingrad for Russian strongman to review at his leisure.
He's a smart guy.... SO did he only just find this out, or is he bandwagoning?
The right to free speech refers to the right to be free from government/state prohibition of your speech. It doesn't refer to the right to say anything, anywhere, at any time.
If you go to someone's house and start spouting profanities at his wife, that is not free speech. You have no right to do it. He has the right to kick you out of his house as a property owner.
Likewise, private forums/websites/networks are private property. Property owners have the right to restrict what is said on their property. Even Bruce Schneier agrees:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/03/commenting_poli.html
Free speech only means the GOVERNMENT has no right to stifle your free expression.
I like DuckDuckGo in a lot of ways. It's fast. The results are mediocre at best, though, and they should use POST requests by default rather than GET (this setting can be changed but it is not default).
StartPage still returns much better results, almost certainly because it is pulling them from Google. It also has more robust security features. But it's a lot slower than DuckDuckGo.
http://securityspread.com/2016/10/24/duckduckgo-startpage-2016-update/
Unfortunately, these two companies still only represent a tiny drop in the bucket of search volume; maybe 30 million queries a day combined. Even the vast supermajority of IT pros, security wonks, politicos and journalists don't use them. The marketing has just been bad. There should be hundreds of millions of queries a day on these engines by now. It's primarily a MARKETING problem and they need to dump money into an aggressive marketing budget, potentially raising capital from investors to fund it.
The election cycles of 2008 and 2012, with Ron Paul up against all those cartoonishly-evil bozos in both the Republican and Democratic parties, AND the mainstream media, AND the corporate and political establishment, was truly a sight to behold. It was like a Saturday morning cartoon comic where you have the obviously good guy against a rotating lineup of obviously evil clowns.
Here's to you, Ron Paul: a man of whom the American voter was not worthy.
So, you're telling me he's just figuring this out?
Either he's as dumb as a bag of rocks and just got lucky in starting Apple or, it's just a stunt to try to drum up support for Apple at the expense of Facebook. Either way, pretty disgusting.
Silicon Valley really sucks, anymore.
The thing about Facebook is it doesnt respect the spirit of your privacy settings. You could set the privacy to the max only to find out a month later that a new form of privacy has been created that Facebook has set to their desired default.
"Every time I use my bank card or credit card, someone is getting a part of my data"
http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-adds-store-visits-measurement-tools/304493/
https://consumerist.com/2017/05/23/google-following-your-offline-credit-card-spending-to-tell-advertisers-if-their-ads-work/
He's such a fake, Apple always whitewash everything that might dim their brand, the only reason he is saying this now is because FB might be held accountable of what the do, also Apple sells user's data.
I've never signed up for FB. Do they gather info on me? Years ago a friend signed and told me he was amazed (happily) about how his account the moment he signed on had all sorts of people from his past contacting him.
Does FB sell info on me? I have no membership and therefore no relationship (using the term in a legal sense) and therefore never agreed to letting them gather or sell or aggregate info on me. I think they have said in the past that they only gather public information, which anyone has a right to do.
But, the basic is, what does FB do in terms of gathering info on non-members.
(Hmm. Maybe FB is a top secret section of the NSA?)
Come on. He was on TechTV with Leo Laporte...hmm, 2003? 2005? When did TechTV get bimbos and then morphed into a gaming channel? ...and, he had guest appearance on The Bing Bang Theory. IIRC he was on before Stephen Hawkings, and Bill Gates didn't even get on until a week or two ago.
So, he's been doing something.
Is he going to stop using Google-anything too...?
I've never signed up for FB. Do they gather info on me?
Yes. If any of your friends have allowed Facebook access to their contacts, then they will have put you in a social graph. If you don't clear or block Facebook tracking cookies, they will record your web browsing.
Does FB sell info on me? I have no membership and therefore no relationship (using the term in a legal sense) and therefore never agreed to letting them gather or sell or aggregate info on me. I think they have said in the past that they only gather public information, which anyone has a right to do.
That's a good question and it's going to be interesting to see how the GDPR changes the answer.
Maybe FB is a top secret section of the NSA?
A big chunk of their startup capital came from a fund that is allegedly a CIA front, not NSA. It's Google that has a revolving door for employees with the NSA.
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His conversation on Facebook about Steve Jobs (after the release of one of Job's biopics) was very enlightening. Before that conversation, I had a really negative image of Steve Jobs, but not anymore.