Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: nextdoor.com?

[Diana Carroll (dianaecarroll]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> wrote:

> Because a social platform is “for profit” doesn’t automatically make it
> suspect as your posting implies.


Actually I think it does.  Doesn't make it BAD...but should make you pause
and ask yourself: what is their business model? How do they make money?
Because if they are for-profit, they have to make money *somehow*.

You mention FaceBook, which is fair.  The answer is that Facebook makes
money in numerous ways, most obviously selling advertising which FB users
will see...but that is not the ONLY way they make money, and advertising is
not the only way websites (even "free" ones) make money.  Some ways are
more insidious -- for instance, one way is gathering email addresses and
demographic information to sell to third parties, which might be legit
advertisers but not on the actual website but others...or might be spam.
Whether that's ok or not is a personal decision, but it's worth thinking
about...and tagging all for-profit sites as "suspect" is really just a
reminder to ask yourself and your members that question: is the way this
site makes money ok with us?

(You can usually get an idea of how they make money by viewing their terms
of service.  Often selling email is mentioned with a phrase such as "we may
provide your individual information to our marketing partners".)

Diana