Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a comment that might suggest the company is contemplating a paid, and presumably ad-free, version of the social media platform while testifying in front of congress on Tuesday.
Republican Senator Orin Hatch asked Zuckerberg at the hearing if Facebook will always be free. To which Zuckerberg responded, "Yes, there will always be a version of Facebook that is free."
Later in his testimony, Zuckerberg said people had suggested a paid version of Facebook and "we consider ideas like that." He went on to say "We believe that the ads model is the right one for us."
It was the phrase “a version” in the earlier part of his testimony that seemed to suggest a paid version could be a possibility.
Tuesday's hearing, and another planned for Wednesday, are all about the fallout from revelations that political ad targeting firm Cambridge Analytica acquired user data from an estimated 87 million people whose Facebook profiles were scraped and improperly shared from a psychology app developer.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told NBC News on Thursday that Facebook users could have to pay to completely opt out of their data being used to target them with advertising.
NBC asked if Facebook could come up with a tool to let people have a button that allows them to restrict the social network from using their profile data to stop targeted ads. Sandberg said that the company has "different forms of opt out" but not one button for everything.
"We don't have an opt-out at the highest level. That would be a paid product," Sandberg told NBC.
USA TODAY and NBC News contributed to this report.
