Why privacy matters

Most apps you share photos on are free because ads pay for them. That shapes what they do with your photos, your time and the people you know. Here’s how, with a source for every fact.

Using them doesn’t make anyone wrong. Most of us do. It’s just worth knowing the deal.

How a free app earns its money

An app that earns money from ads earns more the longer you stay and the more it knows about you.

That’s not a guess. Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, says in its annual report that it makes "substantially all" of its revenue from advertising. It also warns its investors that ad revenue can drop when people spend less time in its apps. (Meta, annual report to the SEC, January 2026)

Your time

When your time is what pays, the feed is built to hold on to it.

In May 2024, the European Commission opened proceedings to find out whether the design of Facebook and Instagram, their algorithms included, may "stimulate behavioural addictions in children". Opening proceedings doesn’t decide the outcome. (European Commission, 16 May 2024)

What it knows about you

Ads pay more when they’re aimed at you, and aiming takes a profile: what you like, where you go, who you know.

In January 2023, Ireland’s data protection regulator fined Meta €390 million. It found that ads based on what people do can’t be treated as part of the contract they accept to use Facebook and Instagram. (Data Protection Commission, 4 January 2023)

In September 2025, the CNIL, France’s data protection authority, fined Google €325 million. Gmail had shown ads between people’s emails without their consent, and Google had set tracking cookies when people created an account, without valid consent. (CNIL, 3 September 2025, in French)

The people you know

Your friends and contacts are worth something too.

In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission imposed a $5 billion penalty on Facebook. According to the FTC, Facebook shared people’s personal information with apps their friends had downloaded, and many people didn’t know. The order also banned Facebook from using, for ads, the phone numbers people gave to secure their account. (FTC, 24 July 2019)

Leaks

The more an app keeps, the more there is to lose.

In November 2022, Ireland’s regulator fined Meta €265 million after a collection of Facebook users’ personal data turned up on the internet. The inquiry looked at Facebook’s search and the tools that import contacts from your phone, and found that people’s data wasn’t protected by design and by default. (Data Protection Commission, 28 November 2022)

Data brokers

Your location, collected by an ordinary app, can end up for sale.

In January 2024, the FTC banned the US data broker X-Mode Social from selling sensitive location data. According to the FTC, it collected location data through other companies’ apps and sold it to hundreds of clients. That data could show visits to medical clinics, places of worship and domestic abuse shelters. (FTC, 9 January 2024)

Photos of your kids

More than half of French parents have shared photos or videos of their children on social networks, according to a 2023 survey the CNIL cites.

The CNIL strongly advises against it, especially from a public profile. A photo can reach people outside your contacts as soon as one of them passes it on. It can carry the place and time it was taken. And a child may find it hard, as an adult, to erase hundreds of photos posted when they were small. The CNIL’s advice: share them privately, by secure messaging, email or MMS. (CNIL, 28 November 2025, in French)

What it adds up to

None of this is dramatic on any given day. Over the years it adds up: ads that know too much, a feed that’s hard to put down, photos of your kids in more places than you meant, and data you can’t take back.

What Noo does instead

Noo earns nothing from ads. So it doesn’t need to know you, and it doesn’t need to keep you.

The limits are written down too: places, like your building’s noticeboard, are readable by Noo’s server, and people can always take a screenshot.

Read our promise · How Noo works

Sources

All read on 29 October 2026.