Revealed: How Facebook earns their money

Instead of paying to use Facebook and the other products and services they offer, by using the Facebook Products covered by these Terms, you agree that they can show you ads that businesses and organizations pay them to promote on and off the Facebook Company Products. Facebook use your personal data, such as information about your activity and interests, to show you ads that are more relevant to you.

After conducting a tedious inquiry, Legitfacts Blog discovered that Protecting people's privacy is central to how Facebook designed their ad system. This means that they can show you relevant and useful ads without telling advertisers who you are. They don't sell your personal data. They allow advertisers to tell them things like their business goal, and the kind of audience they want to see their ads (for example, people between the ages of 18-35 who like cycling). They then show their ad to people who might be interested.

Facebook also provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads to help them understand how people are interacting with their content on and off Facebook. For example, they provide general demographic and interest information to advertisers (for example, that an ad was seen by a woman between the ages of 25 and 34 who lives in Madrid and likes software engineering) to help them better understand their audience. Facebook don’t share information that directly identifies you (information such as your name or email address that by itself can be used to contact you or identifies who you are) unless you give us specific permission. They collect and use your personal data in order to provide the services described above to you. You can learn about how they collect and use your data in Legitfacts subsequent posts. You have controls over the types of ads and advertisers you see, and the types of information they use to determine which ads we show you.