Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“Facebook, the online social network, has more than 2 billion global users. Because those users do not pay for the service, its benefits are hard to measure. We report the results of a series of three non-hypothetical auction experiments where winners are paid to deactivate their Facebook accounts for up to one year. Though the populations sampled and the auction design differ across the experiments, we consistently find the average Facebook user would require more than $1000 to deactivate their account for one year. OK, so the value users gain from Facebook is $1k a year, there are 2 billion of them, that’s two thousand billion, or $2 trillion in value a year. Of which Zucks has 10%, that $200 billion. Pretty good deal for us, really. But that’s not right, not at all. For Zucks’ money is a one off capital sum, the consumer benefit is an annual one.” (03/17/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/entrepreneurial-capitalism-the-greatest-deal-in-all-of-history