It's how they pay the bills, to be fair. I don't think that's much of a secret anymore but looks like they're making it more explicit.

You could make an argument that the malware that encrypted your /home folder is also "just a way to pay the bills".

In many jurisdictions that's illegal. EU is saying FB's approach is also illegal unless they make some key changes.

Personally, I hope FB just quits Europe.

That's what I would do: quit Europe. FB is part of life of millions of people. They would cancel this GDPR thing in a day to save their FB experience. Or at least add an exception to GDPR for FB.

Yup. Perhaps this will eventually be a screen for the user to choose:

Button 1: Agree and proceed. Button 2: Set up credit card billing. Button 3: Close account.

The Average Revenue per User can be found in their earnings report (linked above by ihumanable): https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2018/Q1...

For US & Canada this was $86.65 in the last 4 quarters.

For Europe this was $34.95.

Keep in mind they likely don't target ads using just one person's data: accuracy can be improved by looking at the data of similar people, and looking at the data of friends and family. It isn't as simple as offering a $10/month plan to keep your privacy, because they want everyone's data.

"Your data is worthless, everyone's data is priceless."

I'd be very interested in Button2.