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I have to wonder if Facebook was even competently exploiting people's data for money. It sounds like they essentially gave away nearly all of their users' profi

by ENOTTY 9y ago

I have to wonder if Facebook was even competently exploiting people's data for money. It sounds like they essentially gave away nearly all of their users' profiles for free to any app developer who could get a user to sign up. Facebook didn't even charge app developers for access to the Platform. This would allow app developers to create a copy of the data and re-sell that. And Facebook wouldn't see a dime. If their crown jewel is people's data, why would Facebook give away a copy of their crown jewels?

mmcwilliams 9y ago
This assumes that the profiles are the most valuable data they have, which I tend to doubt. It seems like the real money is in the interactions between users, the engagement with the feed (what gets eyeballs) and the third-party sources like their tracking pixels and referrer data.