You are not a product
Nor must you be a Mine
🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.
While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.
You can buy my book Permissionless here.
You’ve heard the line (slogan?) a thousand times.
“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
It’s a clever-sounding thing people post on the very platforms they criticize and spew at the parties I am no longer invited to because I have a terrible habit of rolling my eyes, and because I have no poker face at all.
But I think the idea is wrong.
Or perhaps - it’s not wrong enough.
It lets you believe the transaction makes some kind of sense: the platforms take your data and/or your soul, but you get free cat videos. A fair trade, maybe slightly sleazy, but completely understandable.
A product.
Fine.
Products are things. Things get used, sure, but they also get shelved, preserved, owned.
All well and good.
But you are not actually the product.
