this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Is there a Canadian version of paypal that works the same way? I was searching but couldn't find one and ever since AI came around my business shrank to almost nothing. Also, other than having an old nearly defunct facebook account, what $ would I be unwittingly giving to Zuckerberg? Serious and naïve question.
Why old Facebook accounts still matter:
-Your past likes, groups, comments, and interactions are stored and can still be used for ad profiling or sold as part of larger datasets.
-If you once liked a brand or a political page, that interest could still be factored into long-term data models.
-If you have active friends, their interactions with your old profile (e.g. tagging you in old posts, mentioning you) can still keep your account relevant to Meta’s algorithms.
-Your friends may have synced their contacts with Facebook, meaning your email or phone number could still be in Meta’s database.
-If you’ve ever used “Log in with Facebook” for third-party apps, Meta can see when and where you log in.
-Even if you don’t actively sign in, Facebook cookies might still track you across other websites (depending on your browser settings).
-Advertisers may have access to archived data that gets combined with current trends.
-Your profile might be included in anonymized datasets used for AI training or market analysis.
That made me wonder, in regard to your question, how much meta really makes out of Facebook accounts like yours.
Out of curiosity I asked Mistral how much an inactive Facebook account might generate daily. It estimated $0.005 but noted it could be even lower. Let’s take a careful guess at $0.001.
Ridiculously low, irrelevant, right?
Well, there are 3 billion Facebook users. Let‘s assume Facebook earns $0.001 for each account, each day.
This would be 3 billion times $0.001 which equals $3,000,000. Daily!
Links:
-The Electronic Frontier Foundation's analysis of Facebook's tracking technologies
-Privacy International's report on how Facebook tracks users across devices
-The Tracking Exposed project which documents Facebook's data collection methods
-ProPublica's series on Facebook's data practices
-The Washington Post's investigation into Facebook's privacy controls
-Wired's coverage of how Facebook continues tracking after account deactivation
Not quite but credit cards and Interac e-Transfer.