[dahart]

> Opportunity cost? If Facebook has these contacts now, then their third parties have them, so those contacts are no longer as valuable, if valuable at all.

We don't know that's true, I would be cautious about making assumptions. But, even if we assume it is, opportunity cost isn't equivalent to financial loss, so we can't say people lost money they weren't already making.

Anyway, I don't think email lists being sold has prevented email addresses from appearing in other lists. It's clear to me that nobody is tracking the value of my email address because marketers keep buying it over and over.

That said, from my point of view, I don't like the idea of selling my own email address or trying to extract money from it. I don't want that, and I don't agree with the idea of selling my privacy in order to battle my concerns about Facebook taking and/or selling my privacy. The selling of my privacy is the very thing I don't want to have happen.

Privacy is not a monetary value for me, it's something I value having, not something I value selling. I don't want it to be subject to capitalist thinking and market analysis.