Most users are willing to quit Facebook — for $1,000

Facebook has had a hell of a year. Though the #deleteFacebook movement has gained some traction, there are still billions of users who have stuck it out, through every last privacy scandal.

A study published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday found that many of those users would also be ready to jump ship — for a price. Among 1,258 participants, the study found that the average user would only be willing to deactivate their Facebook account for one year for a $1,000 payout.

Researchers found that users were willing to shut down their profiles for an hour if they were paid a dollar, and required $40 for a Facebook-free week. To sacrifice the privilege of having their private data sold to hundreds of corporations and organizations for a full year, participants required $1,000. Considering Facebook's tanking public image, the unwillingness to part with the social network for a smaller sum may seem surprising, but it also points to what's gotten Facebook this far in the first place.

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"Part of the reason people stay on Facebook, despite real concerns about how it's used or misused, is quite simply, we still get a lot of joy from it," said researcher Sean Cash, per Motherboard. "You might have over a decade of photos, you might use it to organize study groups … someone in their 20s could have been on Facebook all of their adult life." It looks like CEO Mark Zuckerberg's constant mantra about the Facebook "community" has paid off — he had better hope his users aren't.