Facebook sells ad targeting based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status, age, location, salary, education, musical taste, purchasing behaviour, device usage, interests, hobbies and the list goes on. Without 2B users' worth of personal information, there isn't anything to sell. For Facebook to say 'they don't sell your information' is Orwellian corporate doublespeak. Advertisers pay them money and in exchange, Facebook allows them to target sets of users based on those users personal information. How is this not 'selling information about you'?
Are you confused by the distinction between selling personal information and selling ads? The latter does not involve any exchange of personal information to the purchaser.
It seems you are both correct, and the disagreement lies on the meaning 'personal':
- They use 'personal' as 'private', or 'information about you'. e.g. I have a fetish, I wish no one to know, it's 'personal'.
- You seem to use 'personal' as 'personally identifiable information'. e.g. if I have this data, I can know trace back to its originator.
The ambiguity can be found in many places around. Most people don't make the distinction. Rather, they think anything private is personal. At the same time, the definition you use can be found in official documents, like GDPR, the new EU Privacy Law (https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/).
Thanks for clarifying this: personal information does not mean personally identifiable information. Personal information can be sold without uniquely identifying individuals and this is exactly what Facebook's core business model is.
