The Data Giveaway Is Just a Misunderstanding of the Market and the Way the Market Works

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think there are two distinct things here and the data giveaway is exactly because they weren't thinking about themselves as an advertiser. I'm still concerned much more so with Facebook than with Google that the incentives for the company aren't necessarily aligned with the long-term well-being of users. If these companies if their power in the market rests on users then the greatest danger to them is by extension users growing disgusted disenchanted yeah developing antipathy towards the product. That was the sort of like the tobacco analogy that we made you know a few weeks ago.

Ben and James discuss Facebook’s current crisis, and why almost everyone misunderstands what the company did wrong: the problem isn’t advertising, it was Facebook’s desire to be a platform.

Presented by WordPress.com: Get 15% off on a new site by visiting WordPress.com/Exponent.

Links

James Allworth: What the F*** Was Facebook Thinking — Medium
Ben Thompson: The Facebook Brand — Stratechery
Ben Thompson: Tim Cook’s Unfair and Unrealistic Privacy Speech — Stratechery
Mark Zuckerberg’s Reckoning: ‘This Is a Major Trust Issue’ — The New York Times
Ben Thompson: Mobile Makes Facebook Just an App; That’s Good News — Stratechery
Nicholas Thompson: Mark Zuckerberg Talks to Wired About Facebook’s Privacy Problem — Wired
Ben Thompson: The Voters Decide — Stratechery