Would you pay for Facebook?

permissions, but we’re talking about two billion users. You’re not going to make a dent in that.’’

Zuckerberg made it clear in his Capitol Hill testimony that ‘‘there will always be a version of Facebook that is free’’.

That means if Facebook were to establish a subscription service, there would be a two-tiered system where some pay for privacy and others pay with their data.

That structure could, on the one hand, end up disadvantaging less affluent users while simultaneously allowing wealthier consumers – the ones advertisers might be most eager to court – to bypass ads altogether.

Then there are the technical challenges.

If a user who pays not to be tracked interacts with a user on the free platform, the subscriber’s data would likely be swept up too, Khatibloo said. And could Facebook guarantee that it wasn’t tracking paying users on other parts of the internet?

Perhaps the main reason social media companies haven’t tried pay models is because the adsupported business has made them behemoths.

‘‘Why is the advertising-based system so dominant? Because it works for the companies, it works for the advertisers and it works for consumers,’’ said Dan Jaffe, executive vice-president of policy for the Association of National Advertisers.

Facebook’s critics have long said the company’s harvesting of personal information makes it a singular danger to digital privacy. But that is precisely why Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

That means any movement away from a data-driven business could undermine its success.

‘‘(Facebook) is sitting on one of the richest, most longitudinal, quantitative data sets we’ve ever seen,’’ said Khatibloo. ‘‘They’re not going to give that up easily.’’ - Los Angeles Times