Not hard to find information, although it is typically couched as brand reach and advertising spots. The big data sales side of FB and other sites is more sensitive and less overt
https://www.facebook.com/help/494750870625830?helpref=uf_per...
'Politicians running for office can be lucrative ad buyers. For those who spend enough, Facebook offers customized services to help them build effective campaigns, the same way it would Unilever NV or Coca-Cola Co. ahead of a product launch.
While Facebook declined to give the size of its politics unit, one executive said it can expand to include hundreds during the peak of an election, drawing in people from the company’s legal, information security and policy teams.'
It is harder to find information about FB's data sales policies (which are very opaque unless you speak to people high up in marketing large companies and their activities). FB's ad platform information is pretty transparent, but the quarterly numbers don't really add up for me based on spend by large firms like Procter & Gamble etc in those areas...
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/audiences... https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/reference... https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/buying-ap... https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/targeting...
So you’re explicitly agreeing that you have no proof that Facebook is offering data for sale.
The quote you cite has nothing to do with the initial assertion: providing consultants that teach people how to use the ad manager is something completely different than selling PII.
Trump, Cambridge Analytica and how big data is reshaping politics - Gillian Tett in the FT https://www.ft.com/content/e66232e4-a30e-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c9...
The linked article, once again, provides no proof (or even mention) of any data being sold by Facebook. I have no idea why you keep piling on irrelevant articles.
That’s the exact opposite of Facebook selling them the data.
At the bottom it says to reach out to https://aboutthedata.com/ to see what data they have on you.
So I did. Then I scroll down to see "See and Edit Marketing Data about You. CLICK HERE" only to be redirected to a registration page that requires my US-based address and last 4 of SSN.
Talking about misled communication, or rather blunt deception, otherwise how the heck "click here to see data about you" lands me on registration page? I don't want to register, I want to see the data!
I’ve spent lots of time and money getting data out of FB.
You can pay to get anonymized topic data via DataSift and others, you can pay to run ads against users you have email addresses for (but you don’t get their data) or you can scrape (which is against the terms of service and they have an aggressive anti bot system to stop it - unlike Twitter).
Their political support systems are analytics support to ad buying.
Sources on this?