If you don't pay for a product, you ARE the product.

What if the dev doesn’t want to make money (yet)

Am I a product when I use WinRAR?

Um Facebook is free? How can I pay Facebook if it is for free? 🤨

... or a thief.

I am not paying for the majority of products. Simply because I dont use/consume them.

@RantSomeWhere

The software is the product.

I get that we are talking about some other definition of product here, but no-one seems to have written it down. So products can be free.

This rant should prefix: "In a for-profit model"

I'm loving how people suddenly are shocked by these things just because of trump.

@mzeffect

I'm sorry, I didn't see Trump anywhere in this?

Anyone who is naive enough to associate this phenomenon with politics surely should have their access to this site revoked.

@xorith
Well, that's quite aggressive.

@mzeffect
I can see how someone could associate this to politics although I'm not up-to-date on what's happening on US politics.
I would rather connect this topic directly to the Facebook scandal.

@joas

Yes, it was. It's only 2018 and I'm getting rather tired of both sides trying to find the political motivation in everything. You can expect myself and others who feel similarly to become more aggressive as time goes on, or until these unsavory individuals who put politics above logic and reason finally come to their senses.

Also, this isn't just a Facebook issue. Any time you get a service for free, you should ask yourself what they are getting from you. Even paid services are not immune either, which is what makes the original rant a bit of a folly.

I remind everyone of Unroll.me: https://lifehacker.com/unroll-me-th...

@Devnergy you are paying your data

You pay with your data. In return they give you content that you and your friends show, and whatever FB deems appropriate according to their own views.

@xorith Thank you! I use Signal every day and the data is strongly encrypted and they even try to protect metadata as much as possible but they can't get much money from encrypted content...

I don't pay for dildos.... I'm a dildo

@xorith The whole reason all this got publicity in the first place was based on the allegation that it allegedly caused some people to lean towards voting trump. As I see today's mainstream media, they wouldn't report it as vehemently as they did if it had a democrat connection (probably also because they lost, but more importantly because of the political orientation of the large US tech companies). Btw, I don't give a single crap about US politics, just stating the obvious.

@mzeffect

I concede your point on why most non-technical folk paid attention this time around. I admit I didn't consider that.

I saw it as I do every time something like this happens: more evidence that we misplace our trust in companies that run fast and loose with data.

My opinions about the company that supposedly received such data is another story, and not really part of this discussion.

Bullshit cliche is bullshit

I don't pay for sex :O

I'm not paying for Devrant, OBS, Telegram, fabi.me autoclicker, Dolphin emulator, Eclipse, Notepad++, TinyTask and many more products that are free, have no ads on website and in the product, don't track me, ...