The often-quoted statement 'if you aren't paying, you are the product' is closer to the truth but is actually misleading. As per the book on Surveillance Capita

The often-quoted statement 'if you aren't paying, you are the product' is closer to the truth but is actually misleading. As per the book on Surveillance Capitalism, our interactions with Facebook (or Google) are the raw material from which they create their products, which are sold to advertisers, namely the ability to target ads at specific groups of people.