You want free Facebook? Get comfortable with your data being shared with your Carrier.

They say if you’re not paying for a product, then YOU are there product. You’ve wondered how Facebook manages to be one of the world’s most profitable companies, yet it remains free to use. Your data, your photos, your interactions, your habits, that’s the real product Facebook is selling.

Facebook and many other online companies are thriving off of advertisement revenue. Facebook has openly admitted using complex algorithms to target adverts to specific consumers.

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Also Read: Mark Zuckerberg to Mobile Carriers: Facebook Is Good for Your Business

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Also Read: Facebook partners with mobile carriers to offer free data for Facebook messaging

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Back in 2013, Facebook partnered with 18 mobile operators in 14 countries to provide special pricing for usage of Messenger for Android, Messenger for iOS and Facebook for Every Phone. Facebook later expanded this to its feature phone application to be optimized for chat and added a number of new features to Messenger, including voice messaging and the ability to create a Messenger account without a Facebook profile.

Fast-foward to 2019 and the Free Facebook idea is still alive. Only this time, you have to give something in return, and they are ‘kind enough’ to let you know what they’re taking. (Not that you would know what else they’re taking from you anyway.)

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“In order to help us evaluate the success of this service, and to enable us and your operator to understand your use of Facebook’s services, we may exchange some limited info with Safaricom (including any of its group companies). This includes info like your phone number, the amount of data you use and your load and promo balance. This also lets us evaluate the success of this service.

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Back in 2015, Facebook opened its internet.org platform that provides basic information-orientated services for free in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Internet.org is currently available in Kenya, Zambia, Ghana in Africa. This new development could be seen as an expansion of internet.org in which they involved companies get something out of it, everything inevitably geared towards fattening Facebook’s pockets.