Better Privacy Protections Won’t Kill Free Facebook.

Setting aside that some people might actually like the option of paying for services in exchange for enhanced privacy protection, history tells us that advertising can support free content just fine without needing to know every detail of our lives to serve us unique ads tailored to an algorithms best guess about our likes and dislikes based on multi-year, detailed surveillance of our every eye-muscle twitch. Despite the unfortunate tendency of social media to drive toward the most extreme arguments even at the best of times, “privacy regulation” is hardly an all or nothing proposition. We have a lot of room to address the truly awful problems with data collection and storage of personal information before we start significantly eating into the potential revenue of Facebook and other advertising supported media.

It is far too early to suggest that creating real privacy protections, or even banning targeted advertising, would drive out free Facebook (or other free, advertiser-supported services). We still have free over the air broadcasting, and it remains a very profitable business despite the continuing predictions of its demise. I will add from over 20 years of experience in media and telecommunication law that I have learned to treat the claims of broadcasters that any new regulation (or even continuing existing regulation) will mean the end of free over-the-air broadcasting.