A free service doesn’t have to mean you’re the product

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If you’re not paying for the service, are you the product?

That’s been Silicon Valley conventional wisdom for at least a decade, but the new focus on data privacy in the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal has inspired the world to re-examine the maxim. It’s pretty clear now that it’s an oversimplification, and there’s a strong case to be made that thinking this way is downright dangerous.

That doesn’t mean we let services like Facebook off the hook, but we should be cognizant that there are other ways to monetize a free service outside of “profiling” users to optimize advertising. Read more…

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