Facebook and my Data

 I am a bit ambivalent about on-line privacy. Most of us happily sign up to Facebook, Google, Twitter and the like without a thought as to how a free service can earn so much revenue.  Like most people, I love a bargain, but then, at times I get worried about what these free services are doing with my information.

So, how do these companies earn so much when they are charging users nothing? They do it by selling the on-line version of you and me. Our digital lives are their product, not the services they give us for free. Social media companies give us free services so that we willingly sign up to them with hardly a thought to their (invariably multi-page) user and privacy agreements. These agreements permit them to vacuum up every bit of our on-line searching, browsing, emailing, messaging and social history. They then use this information to profile us and sell targeted advertising, or to sell on to third parties for their various uses. Is there another way?

I would like to see an equivalent to Facebook, Google and the like that offered similar services on a paid subscription basis that did not retain, analyse or sell my information for advertising or other purposes. Unfortunately, this has been tried before, and it failed. We seemingly would rather give away our privacy than a little of our money.

Another alternative would be for the social media companies to sell us a subscription-based option that was advertising-free and did not accumulate or sell our data. Let's take a look at Facebook.

In the year ending 3rd quarter 2019, Facebook's revenue was almost US$67 billion. As at the end of the quarter, they had 2.45 billion active monthly users. If my calculations are correct, this works out at about US$27.35 per user, globally.

I, for one, would be willing to pay that much to Facebook if I could be assured that my data would be secure, would not be trawled and that I would not have to put up with advertisements. Will this ever happen? Not likely.

Unless forced to, Facebook is not likely to bother to spend the money needed to add the ability to differentiate between non-paying and paying users. They would also be concerned that allowing some users to opt out of data-mining would water down their offering to their real customers, the advertisers, even though they would be recouping any lost revenue from that source through subscriptions.

So, come on, someone. Start up a Facebook alternative that offers a secure, ad-free subscription based option (and is a little more user-friendly) and I'm in!