Facebook’s Data Sharing and Privacy Rules: 5 Takeaways From Our Investigation; The New York Times, December 18, 2018

Nicholas Confessore, Michael LaForgia and Gabriel J.X. Dance, The New York Times;

Facebook’s Data Sharing and Privacy Rules: 5 Takeaways From Our Investigation

 

"You are the product: That is the deal many Silicon Valley companies offer to consumers. The users get free search engines, social media accounts and smartphone apps, and the companies use the personal data they collect — your searches, “likes,” phone numbers and friends — to target and sell advertising.

But an investigation by The New York Times, based on hundreds of pages of internal Facebook documents and interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its partners, reveals that the marketplace for that data is even bigger than many consumers suspected. And Facebook, which collects more information on more people than almost any other private corporation in history, is a central player.

Here are five takeaways from our investigation."