Even though such services are free to consumers, we can approximate people’s willingness to pay for them (also known as consumer surplus) by looking at their choices.[98] For example, if you could earn $20 by mowing a neighbor’s lawn but choose to spend that time on TikTok instead, we can say that TikTok is giving you at least $20 of value. As Tim Worstall estimated in Forbes in 2015, Facebook’s US-based revenue was about $8 billion, which would thus be its official contribution to GDP.[99] But if you value the amount of time people spend on Facebook even at minimum wage, the true benefit to
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