Facebook really, really wants you to believe you’re not the product it’s selling

There's a saying that predates the internet, but is often used to describe the omnipresent and free internet services like Facebook we use on a daily basis: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product."

This criticism has been frequently marched out in the fallout of Facebook's recent Cambridge Analyticia scandal, during which it was revealed that more than 87 million user profiles were improperly shared by academic Aleksandr Kogan to a political consulting firm that helped Donald Trump.

Now, Facebook is taking major strides to fight back against the tsunami of criticism it's facing over user privacy. In a blog post published Monday, the company tried to address the idea that it's exploiting users for the purposes of mining data. The post says, in part: Read more...