Facebook Says It Doesn’t Sell Your Data – But It Does Rent It Out

And while Facebook doesn't sell user data directly to third parties, it makes money from the information. In that case, a political data-mining firm, Cambridge Analytica, managed to get data on as many as 87 million Facebook users through a personality-quiz app that was purportedly a research tool. He does say that to comply with new European data rules, Facebook had asked users for permission to use data to improve ads. But framing the issue as one of relevance to users glosses over Facebook's business model of allowing companies to target advertisements based on people's information.