Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook users would have to pay to opt out of ads

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg tells NBC News in a new interview that users of the popular social media platform would have to pay a subscription fee in order to avoid the company’s data-driven advertisements.

“We don’t have an opt-out at the highest level,” Sandberg told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview airing Friday on the “Today” show amid heightened scrutiny of the company’s data-driven ad practices. “That would be a paid product.”

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Facebook has been rocked in recent weeks by its admission that Cambridge Analytica, the Trump campaign’s data firm during the 2016 election, gained access to the personal information of millions of Americans through the social media platform.

According to Facebook’s most recent numbers, as many as 87 million Americans may have had their data obtained by the firm without their knowledge or consent. Cambridge Analytica maintains it did not use this data during the 2016 election.

“We were given assurances by them years ago that they deleted the data,” Sandberg told NBC about the data obtained by Cambridge Analytica.

“We should’ve followed up. That’s on us,” she added. “We are trying to do a forensic audit to find out what they have.”

Sandberg also warned that as Facebook completes its internal investigation into how Cambridge Analytica obtained so much data, the company may find “more” damaging information.

“We are going to find other things,” she told NBC.