How Much Money Facebook Gets From Selling Your Data.
Mark Zuckerberg is making bank on your information. While Facebook’s spokespeople did not reply to our inquiries, we will offer one clarification in their defense: They do not “sell off” data, technically. They sell a service to advertisers. Looking to peddle your hemp-rope macramé vests? Facebook will happily take your money and use algorithms to serve your ads to a carefully curated subset of its users. Those with no taste perhaps. Or no arms. As for the “worth” of your data, to derive a (very) crude estimate, one could take Facebook’s 2018 first-quarter revenue ($11.97 billion), divide by the number of active users (1.45 billion), and come up with about $8.25 per quarter, or $33 a year. But that’s not necessarily a useful calculation. In fact, it would be well nigh impossible for anyone outside the company to figure out exactly how much an individual’s data was worth, and it might be difficult even for Maestro Zuckerberg himself. That’s because users are not parceled ...