charlesatlas

vmarks said:

Nielsen ratings did come from somewhere, though. Advertisers weren't just throwing dollars at TV spend, they were working on spending on time slots when they knew people would be watching, and more than that, when they knew their target audience would be watching. Soap operas are called that because it was that time of day when the housewife was at home, and they could advertise soap to her.

They came from some viewers, but not all viewers. Nielsen ratings are statistical projections. They have no actual and personally identifiable information on the vast majority of TV viewers. FB has such information on every one of their members. Or at least they think they do. I downloaded the information from my FB account, which I set up with a fake name. They have nothing on me. Not one single thing. They have no idea who I am.

Cambridge Analytica? That's so last week. I don't see any mention on AI about the reports that the FB app on Android phoned home to share call and text logs. I feel a class action coming. Alas, poor Fandroids.

fallenjt said:

As I have always been suspecting since day 1 I got on FB in early 2000, nothing was free but user information trade off. That's why I kept all personal information offline. My FB account contain only fake info about me: phone number, birthday, home address, employment...whatever. I never trusted FB from day 1 and I'm glad that I didn't.

Ditto. I have a FB account only because you need to be signed in to see some pages. But they have absolutely no genuine information on me and I'm going to keep it that way.

With all due respect to Steve Jobs, die, post-PC era!

randominternetperson said:

How does it take 1000 "engineers" to run a service like Snapchat?  Perhaps that 10% of their IT operation (which includes lots of non-engineers).  

Design by committee. How else do you think their controversial redesign came to be?