Asklemmy

44182 readers

1509 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

161

What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

236 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 95 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The more users you have, the more expensive it is to run.

Like, compute, storage, bandwidth, none of that is free. If you’re providing a free service, like Wikipedia, and you have many millions of users, like Wikipedia, your expenses will be enormous. You can either accept donations, like Wikipedia, require payment, or sell your users.

If there’s something you like that’s free online, support them. If they don’t accept donations, well, I hate to tell you, you’re the product.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 32 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Also when “you’re the product” that doesn’t just mean that your data is the product. A user is a person whom you can influence. “You’re the product” means this company can direct you, influence you, change your behavior. They can offer your behavioral changes, as a service to their other stakeholders.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Marketing can be such an immoral, insidious process.
And it takes thousands of people pushing this shit mindlessly, because hey... "It's just a job, right? Nine to five".

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 5 months ago

Shit. People think they collect all that data just for fun, don't they? Time to change how I talk about this...

[–] xilona@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago

This ☝️✅

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

If they don’t accept donations, well, I hate to tell you, you’re the product.

A statement has never been truer than this