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Comment by EazyC | Hacker News Reader

None of this clickbait nonsense compares to what Facebook and Google have on most of us and the average American. These people that run something like this and boast about knowing "When the last time you had Chinese food was" are literally the information industry's equivalent of click farms and scraper sites.

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Are Facebook and Google selling granular personal information to third parties and individuals on specific people by request?

I fully acknowledge they utilize the information they mine about you to optimize their ad networks, but that's quite a bit different from releasing the information for a price.

Yes, they are. You can sign up for retargeting information from them, and cross reference that with those people when they visit your site. You pay it forward and pay a bit per segment, but you get the same results.

Retargeting doesn't release the information to you. They are selling access to their network under specific conditions. Retargeting just lets me say, "make sure X sees my ad", it doesn't let me say "I know of X person, send me all their information so I can do what I want with it."

There's a pretty big difference. Facebook and Google would not be in business if they let third parties aggregate their detailed personal records.

They don't sell it to me on an individual basis but are selling them on a group basis. Not a whole lot of difference.

There is a huge difference between aggregate metrics and detailed individual personal information. It's such an astounding difference, that I'd love to hear what you think is so similar between "people between 30 and 40 like your product", and "Leon Kowalski from 1187 at Hunterwasser, who is 32 years old, divorced, pays alimony, has $30,000 in debt, has been arrested three times, once for felony assault, buys fetish sex toys online, and participates in white supremacy forums likes your product."

There is a difference in how they sell it but I was saying, not very well, that they have more information about individuals than anyone ever has.

I think the difference is that these companies provide the data to anyone as a service (FB/Google keep it all in house).

That said, I agree there's nothing particularly newsworthy in there. These companies have existed for a long time.

I wouldn't call most Bloomberg articles "clickbait". I am glad they are exposing the existence of these companies. And I think you're missing what distinguishes the two: with FB/google, you can opt out. These other players are aggregating public records. There is a difference.

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