Facebook Viewpoints, a new market research app that rewards people for participating in surveys, tasks and research. We believe the best way to make products better is to get insights directly from people who use them.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

@amrith I guess that's the expected initial reaction, but the reality is that there's no need to feel anything about this at all. You either want to do it and you do it, or you don't. This is probably the most succinct and transparent way to transact on user data (i.e. you literally are asked for it, and literally paid for it)... so I'm not sure beyond the current media cycle surrounding FB what objection a person could have towards it.

@amrith I am. It’s a no.

@amrith @wuss I think as a designer a better reply would have been "Care to elaborate?" - not tell someone they don't need to feel anything towards a product from a company with a data-abusing record. Compensating someone under the guise of transparency is only part of the issue. Look how it's expected nowadays to get the whole backstory of a cut of meat at the grocery store: where it's from, how it lived, and what it ate. That to me is a better example of transparency than a few dollars/cents.

@amrith @armand_arana1 I didn't tell him to feel nothing, I said there's no necessity to feel anything. One is a direct order commanding someone to feel an emotion, the other is a pragmatic observation that unlike privacy breaches on a platform you use after-the-fact, you're explicitly choosing to partake in this survey-for-money experience. (also, the irony that you're reprimanding me for something you incorrectly interpreted by conversely telling me what I SHOULD have done as "a designer" is not lost on me). Your analogy also doesn't hold up. If you're the type of person that needs to know the whole back story on a cut of meat before you buy it, then you have the power to simply not buy the cuts of meat that don't provide this information. If you care about where the meat comes from, explicitly buy a piece of meat that doesn't have that information, then recursively complain that that meat had no information, then sorry to say there is no product to protect you from your own stupidity. That is a more correct analogy here. By explicitly asking for user data, and then paying for it, before a user ever provides anything, puts the accountability on the user. Unlike in the past, where users participated on a platform without understanding all the repercussions of their activity.

They're already collecting and selling your data, so now they might pay you 10% to make sure they REALLY know you.

Finally ! they started paying us, For collecting the data from us 😍