Facebook Should Be a Nonprofit

Facebook users have no way to opt out of advertising because the company’s business model won’t allow it, the company’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said in a “Today Show” interview last week. If users could request that their data not be used for advertising purposes, then Facebook would have to be “a paid product,” Sandberg said. But beyond the alternatives Sandberg laid out — Facebook users can either be targeted with ads, or pay Facebook to avoid them — there’s a third option: Facebook could become a nonprofit organization.

If the idea of internet companies eschewing opportunities to make money with advertising sounds crazy, consider this: Some of the first proponents of the idea were the founders of Facebook and Google. In his book “The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball,” journalist Noam Cohen reports that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg originally didn’t want ads to show up in a person’s news feed unless a friend had “liked” a particular product. He changed course, Cohen says, under pressure to deliver profits to investors.