The data-sharing at the heart of Facebook’s latest scandal isn’t an anomaly — it’s how Facebook does business

Facebook's business model has always been simple: acquire as much personal information from users as possible, then find a way to make money off of it. For more than a decade, it proved to be a remarkably successful strategy, bringing to the social platform 2 billion monthly users to friend, feud and play Farmville. But as the year comes to a close, Facebook is facing a pair of major lawsuits in the US and reeling from a string of public relations disasters. The company's stock has lost over 25% of its value since January and took another 7% hit on Dec 19 after a report that it shared the power to read and delete users' private messages with companies such as Netflix and Spotify. Surprisingly, this fall from grace hasn’t been defined by deviation from the practices that made it one of the most valuable companies in the world. The scandals that have pummeled the company in 2018 have largely kept with the fundamentals of Facebook's business model.