[azangru]

While I am no mathematician and not at all smart, I work in the tech industry. But I share the attitude of your mathematical friend. Let Facebook do what they please with my data; there's nothing important there.

It's not the data misuse that repulses me from Facebook, but the overall shallowness of conversations, its feed contents (I don't care about what my friends liked or responded to; I am content with just seeing their posts, thank you very much). So there's a lot to dislike about Facebook apart from how they treat our data.

[gnu8]

There must be something important there because Facebook is making money off it. But it’s YOUR data and that money is yours too. Facebook is STEALING from you. Mark is the greatest con artist in history.

[notahacker]

Facebook is making money off the fact I still visit their website enough to show me sponsored content (much like most of the rest of the internet does), and the data in theory means purchasers of its ads get better bang for their buck. I'm not convinced the fact that I'm a 30something single male currently located in a particular area is something anyone would pay me for, and granting Facebook right to use those facts plus data from ad-retargeting networks to show me ads and sponsored content (some of which I haven't even managed to block!) for free use of their web platform seems like a pretty fair trade to me.

tbh I'm not even convinced half the data is actually that good for the ad platforms: the fact that I invariably report obvious ICO scam ads as "it's a scam" seems to have triggered Facebook to show more of them to me.

[azangru]

> There must be something important there because Facebook is making money off it

I think there is a logical fallacy in arguments like this, which is extending conclusions made on large samples to special individual cases.

While there is no doubt that Facebook is making money (I would think, primarily from ads or from paid promotions of particular posts), and while it is true that, in order to better serve ads, Facebook is using their users' data, it in no way follows that Facebook is making money off me specifically, or that my data specifically is of any value to Facebook and not just garbage.

I don't think I am a valuable Facebook asset. I don't follow ads. And I am not a particularly social animal.