It's down to the unfortunate reality that people aren't the actual customers of Facebook or Experian, their actual customers are advertisers and lenders (principally there's a few other people but basically anyone who's asked you for permission for a credit report). Under that lens it makes perfect sense that both would have information about everyone because it makes them more valuable.
It's easier to see with Experian because people pretty much never actually use their credit report actively but rather monitor it to know what the actual users will see about them. It's a metric about you rather than a metric for you. Same basic schema applies to the advertiser profile Facebook builds. They've just built a facade to get you to give them a lot of info willingly (in the case of users).
> It's down to the unfortunate reality that people aren't the actual customers of Facebook or Experian, their actual customers are advertisers and lenders
These are kind of opposite cases, aren't they?
With Facebook, their actual customers are people who want to have a relationship with you.
With Experian, their actual customers are people who you want to have a relationship with.
Lenders also want to have a relationship with you too. They want to make all the loans they can as long as they're good loans. Either way it doesn't change the dynamic that much for the average person they're the product, or I suppose more accurately information about them is the product and the companies are the customer.
It's easier to see with Experian because people pretty much never actually use their credit report actively but rather monitor it to know what the actual users will see about them. It's a metric about you rather than a metric for you. Same basic schema applies to the advertiser profile Facebook builds. They've just built a facade to get you to give them a lot of info willingly (in the case of users).