Given that Facebook as a UX has become user hostile, they are absolutely banking on clueless masses assuming “big data” is being used to produce magic.

Larry Page was one of the keys to selling that story years ago.

Find me a web app with a truly novel utility, UX, and real problem those things solve. You can’t cause they’re all the solve and designed by factory thinkers. It’s all about agency management.

It’s emotional flock building just like with the churches. Believe, buy-in, die before you realize it was an empire building scheme for a rando with no other life skills, and a rich family to support him.

But here’s the twist; are the rubes the users or the advertisers? Double twist: it’s both!

People will need stuff and find it with or without Facebook.

This. Because nobody can inspect FB's data, advertisers always had to believe that their segmentation and cohorts were as good as they were saying, creating better leads for them. But now they can't tell that story any more.

Yes it's lose-lose for Facebook. Either the individualized advertising works, and the value per impression is going to go way down on iOS, or it doesn't work, and they're going to have a lot to answer for. It's an experiment they don't want to run.

Or does fb not actually need the tracking id to track us at this point? Do they need make a big deal to distract us from how accurate their passive tracking is?