Why no one really quits Google or Facebook
Why no one
really quits Google or Facebook
Another week,
another set of scandals at Facebook and
Google. This past week, my colleagues reported that Facebook and Google had abused Apple enterprise developer certificates in order to
distribute info-scraping research apps, at times from underage users
in the case of Facebook. Apple responded by cutting off both companies from
developer accounts, before shortly restoring them.
The media went into overdrive over the
scandals, as predictable as the companies’ statements that they truly care about users and their privacy.
But will anything change?
I think we know the answer to this
question: no. And it is never going to change because the vast majority of
users just don’t care one iota about privacy or these scandals.
Privacy advocates will tell you that the
lack of a wide boycott against Google and particularly Facebook is
symptomatic of a lack of information: if people really understood what was
happening with their data, they would galvanize immediately for other
platforms. Indeed, this is the very foundation for the GDPR policy in Europe:
users should have a choice about how their data is used, and be fully-informed
on its uses in order to make the right decision for them.
I don’t believe more information would
help, and I reject the mentality behind it. It’s reminiscent of the political
policy expert who says that if only voters had more information — if they just understood the issue — they would change
their mind about something where they are clearly in the “wrong.” It’s
incredibly condescending, and obscures a far more fundamental fact about
consumers: people know what they value, they understand it, and they are making
an economic choice when they stick with Google or Facebook .
Alternatives exist for every feature and
app offered by these companies, and they are not hard to find. You can use
Signal for chatting, DuckDuckGo for search, FastMail for email, 500px or Flickr
for photos, and on and on. Far from being shameless clones of their
competitors, in many cases these products are even superior to their originals,
with better designs and novel features.
And yet. When consumers start to think
about the costs, they balk. There’s sometimes the costs of the products
themselves (FastMail is $30/year minimum, but really $50 a year or more if you
want reasonable storage), but more importantly are the switching costs that
come with using a new product. I have 2,000 contacts on Facebook Messenger — am
I just supposed to text them all to use Signal from now on? Am I supposed to
completely relearn a new photos app, when I am habituated to the taps required
from years of practice on Instagram?
Surveillance capitalism has been in the
news the past few weeks thanks to Shoshana Zuboff’s 704-page tome of a book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” But surveillance
capitalism isn’t a totalizing system: consumers do have choices here, at least
when it comes to consumer apps (credit scores and the reporting bureaus are a
whole other beast). There are companies that have even made privacy their
distinguishing feature. And consumers respond pretty consistently: I will take
free with surveillance over paid with privacy.
One of the lessons I have learned —
perhaps the most important you can learn
about consumer products — is just how much people are willing to give up for
free things. They are willing to give up privacy for free email. They are willing to allow their stock broker to help others actively
trade against them for a free stock brokerage account with free
trading. People love free stuff, particularly when the harms are difficult to
perceive.
This is not to say that Facebook and Google
shouldn’t try to improve their shoddy records on privacy, or rebuild trust with
users. Those consumers are always able to leave, and their sentiment should
never be taken for granted. But after more than a decade of abuse, we should
look deeper at our analysis and perhaps conclude that these issues aren’t abuse
at all, but rather a bargain, a negotiation, and one that people are quite
willing to live with.
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