In a 5 hour open session with US Congress this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was answering questions about security, privacy and other social media related issues.
The questions coming from US senators ranged from good to a little strange. And quite often, Senators were clearly struggling with the subject matter, providing ample time for Zuckerberg to clarify some relatively basic issues (for example, yes, Facebook makes money from advertisers, not by charging its users) as well as dispel some frequently shared conspiracies (no, the Facebook App isn’t constantly surreptitiously recording your conversations through your phone’s mic.)
And one issue Zuckerberg had time to briefly explain was the “common misconception” (as he put it) that Facebook sells your data to advertisers.
So how does it all work?
When a user, for example, likes a Disney fan page on Facebook and then see adverts for Disneyland in their newsfeed, it could be very easy for that user to think that Facebook has sold their information to Disney, who is now placing adverts in front of them. But it doesn’t work quite like that.
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It’s no secret that Facebook draws a lot of information about their users from a number of different places. For example, the information they provide Facebook (eg. gender, marital status) the Facebook pages they like, the websites they visit (that can be tracked if there is a Facebook plugin installed on the website or by using tracking cookies, for example) and even their location (if location services are enabled on their smartphone app.)
As such, Facebook has a pretty good idea of who we are and what we like. Then, advertisers like Disney come along and will ask Facebook to place Disney-themed adverts in front of, for example, parents of young children that have previously liked Disney content. Facebook takes the adverts from Disney and matches them to relevant users.
The process of matching an advert to a user is all done inside Facebook. This means the data of the user isn’t passed directly to the advertiser (Disney.) The advertiser specifies what sort of people they want their adverts shown to, but don’t get passed their details. As such, Facebook doesn’t directly sell a user’s data to an advertiser.
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Of course, Facebook has perhaps the most detailed treasure trove of personal information on users across the Internet, meaning its certainly profiting from user’s data. That is, after all, their business model. The social networking site netted over $40 billion last year.
But while Facebook isn’t selling your data to advertisers or third parties, if you choose to install Facebook apps, that’s an entirely different matter since the developers of those apps do acquire information about you depending on the permissions you accept when you install those apps. Of course, this is how the entire Cambridge Analytica debacle started, after all.
And of course make sure your Facebook account is locked down for ultimate privacy so strangers can’t scrape information from your account.