facebook used user data as an incentive for companies to build apps on their platform. at one point their ambition was to compete with iphone/android (they got

facebook used user data as an incentive for companies to build apps on their platform. at one point their ambition was to compete with iphone/android (they got as far as an android skin, but amazon and firefox were competing in this space as well, it wasn’t crazy to think they could do it) if you want people running your OS, you need a good app store, and facebook’s whole thing was free apps (farmville and the like) - without traditional monetization, how could facebook attract big developers to fill their phone platform with apps and avoid the fate of windows phone? well, when you use an app on facebook, you give the app permission to read your data, sometimes a lot of your data. see this illuminating article, “What the fuck was facebook thinking” [0]. facebook can say truthfully they never sold anyone’s data, because they gave it away for free to anyone who would build an app to keep people on their platform. [0] https://jamesallworth.medium.com/what-the-f-was-facebook-thinking-a1c49dbf29c2 https://jamesallworth.medium.com/what-the-f-was-facebook-thi...