I agree using the data to tailor advertisements is expected and not that nefarious. Facebook has been very careful not to make solid promises about what they'll do with the data, though. That doesn't prove they do other things with it, but they at least seem to want to keep their options open. There are all sorts of interesting services they could run that I think people would find much more objectionable uses of their data; and it's not clear they would announce it if they started doing so.
It's likely they already give the government more data than strictly required; they've danced around the issue when asked if they voluntarily give data to the government, in circumstances that don't require them to do so (i.e. no subpoena, warrant, or other legal order). They could choose to do that with non-governmental entities too; for example, it might be lucrative to start an employee-screening service. Some of that could be risky PR-wise, but they need not publicly disclose it, and might choose to strike private deals with a few large companies for use of the data. They could even get some plausible deniability by doing it via an intermediary: Facebook licenses a data feed to a third party for analytics purposes, and the third party sells curated views on it to interested parties.
Not sure if any of that will happen, but there doesn't seem to be much stopping it. The privacy policy is not that strong to begin with, and can in any case be changed at any time with retroactive effect (at least in the U.S.; they would have more trouble in Europe).
It's likely they already give the government more data than strictly required; they've danced around the issue when asked if they voluntarily give data to the government, in circumstances that don't require them to do so (i.e. no subpoena, warrant, or other legal order). They could choose to do that with non-governmental entities too; for example, it might be lucrative to start an employee-screening service. Some of that could be risky PR-wise, but they need not publicly disclose it, and might choose to strike private deals with a few large companies for use of the data. They could even get some plausible deniability by doing it via an intermediary: Facebook licenses a data feed to a third party for analytics purposes, and the third party sells curated views on it to interested parties.
Not sure if any of that will happen, but there doesn't seem to be much stopping it. The privacy policy is not that strong to begin with, and can in any case be changed at any time with retroactive effect (at least in the U.S.; they would have more trouble in Europe).