If you want to get down to a nit picky level like that then, sure. And to be fair, maybe it should be explicitly stated. However, Facebook sells access to the data it collects. It may not be access to the raw data that a phrase like 'selling the data' makes it sound. However, it is making money from the knowledge it has about people (can't even say its users anymore). Either way, the ad buyer (end user) gets access to that data even if it is a black box API style system.
They get the ability to target ads against people who match some characteristics. Facebook's business is literally built on advertisers inability to access that data. If they had access, advertisers would advertise elsewhere and Facebook wouldn't get a cut.
Which is in itself a huge problem in democratic societies as demonstrated e.g. by Cambridge analytica. I think the potential harm that this business model produces and the power it gives the companies who deploy them, is something our formerly nice working systems didn't really price in when the seperation of powers was invented.
So while protection of privacy is always also the right of one individual, I think it is crucial to realize that this kind of power over "the masses" isn't something any free society could afford in the long term on a systemic level. If we look at a democracy with it's separation of powers, it's institutions etc as a delicately balanced electronic circuit — which has the ability to self correct — players like Facebook are like the introduction of new feedback paths that work better for people who don't mind to sell their soul when abusing them. Of course such new connections will have an effect on the whole system, but the crucial point is, that nobody really considered what this effect might be and whether what we have and like in democracy can actually survive this.
You cannot have free elections if the people voting in it are put into their own matrix-esque simulation of reality. How could we ever find agreeable consent if our realities have no common overlap by design?
I think a lot of people in tech sphere don't really want to see this as they are profiting from this. It makes us powerful wizards who see more and understand more than others.
CA actually did get access to user data because they abused a loophole in the Facebook app API that let them grab all the details of not only people who used the app, but also every single one of their friends. They were also using data given to researchers by Facebook as part of a collaboration.
There isn't a loophole with the graph, it was designed for this and was used notably by Zygna and later the Obama campaign. When the campaign hoovered up everything in 2011/2012 and set off alarms, FB saw what they were doing and didn't hinder it. Instead they reached out them, stating that they're on the same side. Hopefully these links aren't mangled.
Here's the media championing it:
"How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barack Obama's reelection"
"Why are politicians now freaking out about a feature that has been publicly documented since its inception and that was discontinued three years ago?"
buying peoples data would be a big deal, that's why its not a nit picky detail. I also don't agree with facebook having all of my data in the first place but they don't just tar up my entire life and hand it to someone.
