Facebook is unstoppable

Facebook today revealed its financial figures for Q2 2016 – the three months to June 30 – and if you're an FB hater, prepare to be disappointed. Revenue: $6.4bn, up 59 per cent year on year from $4bn. Profit: $2bn, up 186 per cent from $719m. Earnings per share: 71 cents, up from 25 cents. Daily active users: 1.13 billion …

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad news for FB haters / privacy warriors maybe...

But at least the 'trend is your friend'... Because the endless push to mobile is a move away from the desktop. So here's to bricking every FB-capable smartphone..

"Mobile ads, particular mobile video ads, are driving sales: 84 per cent of its advertising cash comes from handheld devices, up from 76 per cent a year ago.?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sad news for FB haters / privacy warriors maybe...

Why is it a problem for privacy warriors? Joining Facebook is voluntary. They're far easier to avoid than Google or Microsoft, and Google is far worse for your privacy than Facebook could ever dream of being.

[Lamb0]

Re: Sad news for FB haters / privacy warriors maybe...

Do you visit any web sites with a FB icon, DougS? Do you have no anti tracker software like Ghostery or Privacy Badger? Do you allow advertisements to display and scripts to run? FB gathers data on EVERYONE THEY CAN, (complete with facial recognition and any other date they can gather). Your choice is irrelevant to their business model - people are just consumer information to sell.

You have a FB cookie that follows you everywhere that reports what you do... whether you've ever chosen to "join" FB or not. You have no effective option to avoid their data collection unless you enable inhibiting software on your own.

The "opt out" option offered by FB requires registration and acceptance of a permanent cookie that FB pinky swears they'll honor. Good luck with that!

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is that different than any of the other bazillion ad trackers out there? They can't grab any information about you beyond what those other ad trackers can if you aren't on Facebook. They certainly can't link it to any facial recognition as if you aren't on Facebook they don't have your face to recognize (others might post pictures that include you, but they can't tag you if you don't have an account)

Still say Google is 100x worse than Facebook, as it is nearly impossible to go Google free in the modern world.