In the digital age, personal information and data is a new
quasi-currency. Privacy is often the trade-off to use a digital
service that is 'free' in the traditional sense. As early
as 2009, the OPC recognized this trade-off, and found, for
example:
Facebook has a
different business model from organizations we have looked at to
date. The site is free to users but not to Facebook, which needs
the revenues from advertising in order to provide the service. From
that perspective, advertising is essential to the provision of the
service, and persons who wish to use the service must be willing to
receive a certain amount of advertising.
This view was echoed again in 2017 by the Supreme Court of
Canada in Douez v. Facebook, Inc. where the court
noted that "Facebook is free to join and use, but all
potential users... must agree to its terms of use as part of the
registration process." The business models may have evolved
over the past decade, but as the Court in Douez point
