If it’s free, then we are the product.
This is the observation I regularly turn to when posting on social media. It functions, for me, as both a reminder and a discipline; a quiet prompt to consider what I am contributing, what I am receiving in return, and what I actually own once the posting is done.
Where the phrase comes from #
The line has a history worth knowing. The sentiment predates the social media era, with early roots in media theorist Richard Serra’s 1973 video “Television Delivers People,” which argued that commercial television’s real product is the audience delivered to advertisers. The phrase gained its modern form and viral prominence in the 2010s, popularised by commentators observing the rise of the major social platforms. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff was among the first to apply it explicitly to Facebook around 2011, and it has since become one of the more useful pieces of shorthand for understanding how free digital platforms actually work.
The business model is straightforward once you see it. When services are free, your data and attention are the real currency. The platform is not providing you with a free service out of generosity. It is providing you with a distribution mechanism in exchange for your content, your attention, your behavioural data, and your willingness to return regularly enough to be shown advertising. You are not the customer. You are the product being delivered to the customers….. who are the advertisers.
Understanding this does not mean the platforms are without value. It means using them with clear eyes about what the arrangement actually involves.What we do and do not own
Always at the back of my mind, when posting, is the thought that we do not own the platform upon which our content sits.
We explored this theme in the “Owning Our Stuff” piece elsewhere in the Hub — the vulnerability that comes with building a professional presence on infrastructure we don’t control, and the risk of a platform decision, a technical failure, or an account suspension leaving years of accumulated work suddenly inaccessible. That risk is real, and it applies to content as much as to follower lists and message histories.
But here is where I draw some genuine comfort: we own our words.
Whatever platform carries them today, the thinking behind a piece of content belongs to us. The observation, the argument, the experience distilled into a paragraph; none of that disappears if a platform does. It can be repurposed, republished, and redistributed across other media and other contexts as many times as we choose. The words are portable in a way that the platform never is.
This is not a small thing. It is, in fact, the foundation of a sensible content strategy for anyone who creates regularly. The platform is the vehicle. The content is the asset.
The value of being read #
Sometimes the ideas come easily. Other times I need to scratch my head or furrow my brow. Either way, the aim when writing is consistent: to produce something insightful, educational, or entertaining — something that earns the time a reader gives it.
There is value in what we do because our work gets read, liked, and shared by others. That value doesn’t reside in the metrics. It resides in whether the piece has done something useful: informed a perspective, offered reassurance, prompted a decision, or simply made someone feel less alone in a challenge they’re navigating.
If others gain some benefit from our work, then ours is a job well done. The algorithm’s verdict on that piece is secondary. The reader’s experience of it is what matters.
This distinction is worth holding onto, because the two can diverge dramatically. A post that reaches ten thousand people and shifts nothing in any of them has done less work than one that reaches a hundred people and genuinely helps three of them. Reach is not the same as impact, and impact is what we are actually after.
Owning the work, not just the words #
The ownership principle extends further than the words themselves. It extends to the thinking that produced them, the relationships that reading them generates, and the reputation that accumulates over time as a body of work becomes visible.
A consistent archive of genuine, useful content is a professional asset of real and growing value — one that sits outside the platform’s control even when it is temporarily housed there. A Resources Hub, a Medium archive, the LinkedIn post history: these are not just content libraries. They are evidence, accumulated over years, of a consistent point of view and a genuine commitment to being useful.
That evidence is ours. It travels with us. It cannot be taken away by a platform decision or an algorithm change, because it lives, ultimately, in the minds of the people who have read it and found it valuable.
“If we were to have insight into life and its many intricacies, we would have a treasure more valuable than anything we could imagine.” — Roy Chambers.
That treasure is worth protecting and worth building, word by word, for as long as we have something useful to say.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
