Facebook’s response

Facebook has written a response to the movie “The Social Dilemma” where they try to explain what is wrong with the movie. It is a little bit amusing to read through the document.

One point is:

You are not the product. Facebook is funded by advertising so that it remains free for people. Facebook is an ads-supported platform, which means that selling ads allows us to offer everyone else the ability to connect for free.

Of course, you yourself are not sold by Facebook. But Facebook sells advertising. And with advertising they try to sell the attention of their users.

By twisting a few words they try to present themselves as “the good guys”.

We want people to control how they use our products, which is why we provide time management tools like an activity dashboard, a daily reminder, and ways to limit notifications.

This sentence also shows that they try to shift their responsibility onto the users themselves. It is the stupid users’ fault if they spend hours in front of their devices. In doing so, Facebook forgets that they are the ones who have optimized algorithms, that users spend more and more time with Facebook apps to see more and more ads so that Facebook can make more profit.

Or do you put your phone aside just because you can see somewhere hidden in an app that you’ve been on your phone for 2 hours already?

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