"I think the ‘you are not the user, you are the product’ meme should die. It does a dis-service to the complexity of the situation and it masks some much more serious issues with online monetization models, and online privacy in general."

http://jacquesmattheij.com/you-are-not-the-customer-you-are-...

Meta: I went googling for this article, know I'd read it, but not where. I found the coincidence of the author quite amusing.

I never expected to see that make the jump from 'end user of a service' (say twitter, facebook, google) to 'end user of a plug-in' or SAAS product.

Silly me, I guess I should have seen it coming.

You don't think Disqus is offering a service? Do you know what the last S in SaaS stands for? This comment makes no sense.

Of course you are right, and that is exactly why I was wrong not to see it coming. How often does one have to admit being wrong about something? Apparently it is wrong to trust any service that embeds itself on your webpage over the longer term, lesson learned. 3rd party javascript is now on my list of 'things to avoid', now I have to wonder whether I want those social media bits & pieces on there and what could be the impact of leaving them there.

I'd be very surprised if a twitter button suddenly turned into an advertisement but apparently that would be business as usual.

@jacquesm, in the case of a twitter button, or FB like button, those can usually be removed without significant impact to the overall user experience. A Disqus commenting engine is not as easily removed/replaced, especially given the potential loss of previously generated content. I guess it comes down whether the third party service is a core feature of your site/product.

I didn't post it to taunt you, I posted it as a response to the GP. I think that your point about the meme still stands fine, regardless of having to throw out some services that misuse your trust.

That said, I think you're overreacting. Fair enough that you feel screwed by Discus, but making the leap that you can never have any third party javascript because they might screw you in the future is a bit much, I think. At some point you'll have to trust someone.

I think it's a wholly useful meme. And I think the intention is not for it to educate those of us who understand the complexities of this business; rather, those who don't understand how companies can squeeze non-monetary value from users in exchange for a "free" service.

My feeling is that the HN community tends to try and focus on unique and specific details.

This quote has become a cliche and doesn't add that much to the conversation.

Like many cliches it is proving itself as being true again and again.

So one reason that it (maybe) doesn't add much is that everyone knows it is tue, but doesn't want to think about it.

You can be the product whether you pay or not, and you can not pay and still not be the product (e.g. Wikipedia).

It's a thought-terminating cliché.

Logically, if the converse is false, then the original statement is false, correct?

"If you are the customer, then you are not the product."

This is false (many contradictory examples show that you can be both customer and product), and so the original quote itself is false.

Here's a Venn diagram:

http://imgur.com/532xPbd

Note that "If you're not the customer, you're the product" is true, but "If you are the customer, you're not the product" is false.

Your reasoning would hold if the categories were mutually exclusive, but, as you noted, they aren't.

No, you're thinking of contrapositive. Converses are not equivalent. In this case, contrapositive would be "if you're not the product, then you are paying for it."

I suspect people are downvoting you because they understand the saying perfectly, it's just so overused these days that it's to the point of cliche. I don't think anyone doesn't know this, the more interesting conversation is when we talk about what that means to us and what we do about it.

A quick google search seems to indicate that disqus is already offering premium accounts. http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/466261-prici...

I don't know if these are ads free though.

Apart from the other aswers, you may be happy to be the product on an iteration and not on another, and you are free to get angry when people claim they live to make you happy and later you discover that there is a postscript (unless we need to suck).

Why would you ever believe a company that says it exists to make you happy? Companies exist to make money, that is literally true. There is no other purpose. It just so happens that making people happy is often a reasonable way to make money, but if making people happy doesn't maximize profits, then eventually something else must be done.

Oh, no, I would never believe that but then again they are as free to lie and/or make changes in their service as I am to leave them when I please and get angry at their shamefacedness.

OK, that seems reasonable. Viva la market! :-)

You expect something other than downvotes for posting a cliche everyone has seen a hundred times and adds no additional insight?

Does this quote have an origin?

That quote is often wrong.

For example, there are "freemium" business models where the users are segmented by usage level, or by need of additional features. In those models, the "free" users aren't being sold, they're just potential customers and advocates.

Further, this sort of breach of trust isn't limited to free services. There are paid services that start selling advertisements as well.

You can still be the product if you're on the free end of a freemium model. LinkedIn is an example.

You can also not be the product as a free user (like on Weebly). The above quote implies that as a free user, you are always the product, and that's just not true.

Honest question, how is a free user not sold by Weebly?

It appears they have a for pay designer platform. It also appears they are funded... are they done raising rounds and/or not considering going public? The reason I ask, is because every free user is being sold then. Their usage/stat of adoption is being sold to investors and others in order to increase their value/price. I imagine someday, Weebly will find a way to place ads/marketing material in front of those free users (even if its just in periodic emails to those users).

EDIT: I could be wrong about them eventually placing ads in front of the users... but I imagine it and expect it to happen someday. If not, cheers!

I started Weebly. I plan to never place ads in front of free users.

As a company we are profitable and have been for over 4 years. We do plan on going public some day. But I find it a bit of a stretch to say that as a free user we are "selling you" as adoption statistics. As a free user, you are getting a lot of value, you pay nothing in return and you have no negative side-effects either (advertising, data gathering, etc)

The reality for us is that free users tend to be really happy with the service we are providing them for free. And they tend tell their friends about us. And some of their friends eventually pay us money for our Pro service (~$3-7/month).

Does that mean you are being sold? Absolutely not. You don't have to tell a friend. As a matter of fact, you don't have to do anything nice for us at all, and we'll still provide something of value to you for free.

But if you are pleasantly surprised at how easy it was, and you end up telling a friend on your own, that's great! And it justifies the cost of the free users of our service from a business point of view.