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Comment by NoodleIncident | Hacker News Reader

> Some apps, like Facebook, allow for some data tracking to be manually disabled. But by default, it is turned on. That gives the company reams of personal data on who we are and what we are doing, which it then vacuums up, packages and sells.

Facebook would be giving away money if they ever actually sold your data. As everyone here knows, they use that data to target the ads that they sell.

Do journalists phrase it this way out of ignorance, or is it an intentional lie to make Facebook look even worse than it is?

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I agree that the most used phrasing of "selling your data" is factually wrong. On the other hand, I think it is approximately true enough for the general public.

I don't expect the usual reader to understand how that data is commoditized inside Facebook to serve better ads. Do you remember how a US Senator had a hard time understanding how ads allowed Facebook to remain free? People will not grasp without significant effort the ads economy and no journalist wants to take on that every time they write about tracking.

It's a tough situation. I'm not satisfied with how they do it, but I understand it's a limitation related to the medium and target audience.

But that still means a real estate agency doesn’t have my address, and the painter doesn’t have the list of shoes I have bought.

Only being able to show me ads in some apps is a comically narrow way of way of “having sold all my data”, akin to “Thugs have sold my house” for “temporarily skinny-dipping in my swimming pool while we were on holidays”. Not nice, but they didn’t sell my house, and Facebook didn’t sell my data, just told an advertiser they could put a picture in a window where there would be house-owners passing by.

I don't think the analogy helps. Digital goods can be sold infinitely many times, unlike your house. Explaining the difference between selling data and selling a service enabled by that data is not as easy as it sounds. It means that a real state agency doesn't have to know your address to assess how much your property is worth - someone else is doing the math and connecting you and them.

I think there's room to be charitable and that most people don't see a meaningful distinction between "sell ads based on your data" and "sell your data to people to use in ads".

This is often the problem of journalists not consulting experts on topics like these (although, a case could be made that the scale they had to adapt to with the Internet forced them to churn out news stories too quickly to get an expert for every story). They can still write an article about this problem (because targeted advertising is considered a problem to most people and/or NPR wants to make more people aware of it) but nuance is important and saying they 'sell your data' isn't misinformation I would want spread.

That's a circular argument. If journalists actually understood the distinction and explained it, more people would see the distinction after reading their articles.

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