Some advertisers are quitting Facebook, chiding the company's 'despicable business model'

Advertisers may or may not leave out of principle, but they would certainly be more inclined to turn elsewhere if there's an exodus of Facebook users."Facebook has a frankly despicable business model that's predicated on violating people's privacy and running an ad monopoly," Hansson said in an interview. Fox, whose company also makes productivity software, already deleted his Facebook accounts last year after revelations in March that data firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed user data, potentially to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.Reports in The Guardian and The New York Times initially indicated that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested for Cambridge Analytica, a number that was later revised to as many as 87 million Facebook profiles."That made me realize that as far as I can tell they don't seem to have an internal moral compass besides doing what they're required to by law," Fox said. We said, 'Let's no longer run Facebook ads for a while.' I think a lot of people like me are going to sit on our hands and not spend our money with them until they change their privacy policy."It's not just small software companies and mom-and-pop shops.Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox browser, has made a significant change in its ad budget amid the Facebook fallout. "When we made the decision, we knew we'd have to work harder because Facebook had been a high-performing channel."Other companies say they're leaving Facebook because the targeted ads aren't working as well anymore or because of problems in how Facebook determines and communicates what's acceptable.Approyo, which hosts and manages SAP software for its clients, stopped advertising on Facebook last year and moved more of its budget to Google after growing discontent with the performance of the targeted ads it ran on the social network.Approyo CEO Christopher Carter estimates his company, which is based in Wisconsin, had been spending "a couple thousand dollars a month on Facebook." Because his business provides niche services for a more technical audience, it's also focused on creating content to share with followers on Twitter and LinkedIn."We don't have any advertisements on any of Facebook's properties at this time and, to be honest, I haven't even had them evaluated in 2019," Carter said.