this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Ads and selling your personal data. In twitterβs case elon musk also uses it to influence politics and amplify his own opinion.
Some also have subscriptions.
The major tech companies like Google, Facebook, etc don't sell user data. That's a common misconception. The data is what makes the company valuable - nobody else has it. It wouldn't make sense for them to sell it, because they'd lose their competitive advantage over other companies.
Advertisers can target ads based on the data, but the advertiser never actually sees user data.
It's not a misconception, it's just how people say what's happening. They're basically selling their ability to make a profile of you based on your data. It's just colloquially said as "selling your data."
Some people think the big tech companies literally sell your data though, so IMO it's important to clarify.
There are companies that do that though, like Acxiom, LiveRamp, CoreLogic, etc. With Acxiom at least, you can buy lists like "high net worth individuals who are likely to buy a new car in the next 6 months" and get a list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses, based on data they've collected from both public and private sources.
Those data broker companies collect data from things like supermarket loyalty programs (to determine consumer spending patterns) and other companies who are willing to sell data about you, and compile them into profiles.
Yea, I mostly meant selling your data to advertisers, but in the case of big companies the ad platform is ofcourse internal.
They sell your eyes and your mind.
Advertisers don't see any of the data though. What the companies are really selling is your attention.
This is 100% correct but just wanted to say when I see an admin account with the little red A. I always think it's the Scarlett Letter and giggle.
Around 97% of Meta's revenue is from ads. The rest of the revenue is mainly from things like Meta Quest headsets, fees from Facebook Marketplace (for orders that are shipped), etc.
Meta is a public company so all this data is public. See slide #4 in the earnings presentation here: https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-events/event-details/2025/Q4-2024-Earnings-Call/default.aspx