Facebook and Google don't sell user data. They sell ad impressions, leveraging user data to decide which ads to show, but it's not like you can just buy a user'

Facebook and Google don't sell user data. They sell ad impressions, leveraging user data to decide which ads to show, but it's not like you can just buy a user's data from them. In fact, they've gotten much stingier with ways to get their users' data. You used to be able to get a ton of user and connection data for free just by using Facebook's API (with the user's permission) but it's much harder now and for some types of data, it's no longer available at all.