Are You Really the Product?

he pithiness that makes “you are the product” so quotable risks obscuring the complex pact between Facebook and its users, in ways that make social media’s problems seem inevitable and insoluble. They’re not—but if we want to fix them, the first thing we need to do is redefine our relationship. To the extent that our personal data has become a product, it’s because we—and our representatives in government—have allowed it to happen. If we don’t like how Facebook is treating us, we shouldn’t throw up our hands and call ourselves the product of a system over which we have no control. We should act like people—customers, workers, citizens, whatever—who have the power to demand change.