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Surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner. That social networks like FB sell personal user data to advertisers is the industry's worst-kept secret.
by na85 13y ago
Surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner. That social networks like FB sell personal user data to advertisers is the industry's worst-kept secret.
At least now they're dropping any pretense that they give a rat's ass about privacy.
- ryanmerket 13y agoFacebook doesn't sell data to advertisers. Do you have a source for your claim?
- beagle3 13y agoDon't know if this is still the case, but in the past it was possible to pay facebook for ads targeting e.g. 25-30 year olds in the US, and color that add with a cookie, so that when you saw the same browser later, you'd know it was a 25-30 year old from the US. (It went much deeper than that - marital status, month of year, a few other things I can't remember). So, while they weren't directly offering and selling this information as is, you could buy it from them by buying ad space on the demographics you cared about. (Yes, this also required you had other access to ad networks, real time exchanges, etc -- but if you really want info on people, it was chump change)
- NickSharp 13y agoFacebook "partners" with several large 3rd party advertisers. I'm not sure how you would define "sell data", but other advertisers are using that data for targeting at scale already.
- DominikR 13y agoThese post were public anyways, therefore I fail to see how this will affect anyones privacy. Also, like ryanmerket said: Facebook doesn't sell data, you are just misinformed.
- nitrogen 13y agoA lot of Facebook users are making public posts without realizing it, and a lot more don't understand the ramifications (difficulty traveling, job risk, stalkers, ID theft, etc.)
- skymt 13y agoAs the article notes, this did happen eariler: Bing has the same level of access.