Sorry - I want to make clear that the point of sharing this article on HN is not to give credit to who came up with this concept. I simply want to start (or continue) discourse on this particular subject.
To be honest, this isn't even just about Facebook, I'm sure you could have the same argument about the majority of today's tech companies who are commoditizing information about users and using that to monetize.
Generally, though, this is a trend that is not slowing down, instead it's rapidly speeding up. In addition to that, the methods have become increasingly worse. I'd like to continue discourse on methods of combating this particular phenomenon.
In essence that's a concept worth spreading. For example see how the Google memo debacle, or how Trumps president run news were formed to fit the particular outlets readership for maximum rage-views and/or confirmation sympathy.
As for combating this - there are no golden bullets. Even Google's search starts to lean towards sources that a given user visits more oft... or actually my search patterns fit to a given scheme that's abused by media outlets in their SEO.
I've had an idea for aggregating time-ordered news headlines for analysis to get a broad comparison of author and company leanings. This could be then shaped to a browser extension informing the user about that. The problem is that then it would be accused of labeling stuff with broad strokes.
(This mainly comes from me not remembering which news site likes which politicians and social issues.)
A universal system of micro-payments could help change the system or at least provide support to alternative systems. I want to pay for things I use to support the creator and to signal that it is valuable. Unfortunately, all the efforts in creating micro-payments have failed (in the US?). Seems to me this is a place where the controller of the local currency (in the US, the Fed/Federal government) should set up a system. It would only take one nation with a floating exchange rate to set up a working micro-payment system and it could become the defacto global online currency. Many nations would quickly follow. Come on Canada, do this.
It would have to be an opt-out system, like advertising is (blockers), otherwise profit from micropayments wouldn't accumulate to anything sensible.
Arguably it doesn't even matter () because it's more profitable to run advertising along with donations/micropayments to diversify revenue streams. This also doesn't solve the issue of views as currency and the optimizations it drags along.
OP, I didn't mean to imply that you did. This was me shouting stuff out to the HN crowd because I think it's interesting and it's tangentially related to the article.
That, plus there's sure to be a young whipper-snapper on HN that will read the article and think, "what a neat idea that nobody has ever thought of..."
I agree that this particular article probably doesn't introduce any new ideas into conversation. However, I think it's important to continue dialogue on methods of action to combat this phenomenon. Realistically, while there are more and more articles and comments like this, the fact of the matter is that Facebook's growth and monetization is not slowing at an appreciable rate at all, and their methods have not substantially changed (if anything, they have changed for the worse as they concentrate more and more on monetization).
