> ... if these companies were governments. But they aren't: they have no power. If you're rightly scared about the combination of information and force, it's government surveillance that deserves the attention, not harmless chat apps.

In the meantime government surveillance agencies can piggyback just fine on information collected from fb, emails etc and can continue to spend money on even more scary surveillance tools.

I can give you personal example of harm: family member was a victim of fraud because of the leaked information online. I would argue that the existence of social media and it being promiscuous with our data makes it extremely easy for criminals.

> it's government surveillance that deserves the attention, not harmless chat apps.

Oh, but it's not harmless when it gets in wrong hands. The only precaution is to get assurance that those services don't collect your data indefinitely and more than necessary.

> allusions to fascist governments are made, which would be fine, if these companies were governments. But they aren't: they have no power.

It only takes one affected person to know what it's like to be spied on and abused with the information at hand. We don't need an entire country to come to shambles to know what such vast information collection could result in. You also seem to be making assumptions that governments cannot force a private company to part with data or that those in power cannot manage to create a warrant just to pay lip service to "due process". Additionally, there is also potential for abuse of the data by the private company's employees. Like how LOVEINT [1][2] exposed the fact that NSA employees used their privileges to spy on and track people in their personal spheres of life, Facebook employees may be doing the same without any kind of monitoring at all. We just don't know yet.

[1]: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog-...

[2]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/loveint-on-his-fi...

>But they aren't: they have no power.

Sorry, what?

Even if that were true, nothing prevents them in principle from serving as the eyes and ears of a fascist regime. Nothing prevents a government, in principle, from compelling them to reveal sensitive information.

At the risk of being conspirational, need I remind you that Facebook was funded by DARPA? Need I remind you that the NSA is installing backdoors in ISPs and other service providers?

Do you really not see the problem being described by the parent comment, or are you just being contrarian?

It looks like you hit reply on my comment by mistake instead of on the parent comment (which was the one that said "But they aren't: they have no power", and I quoted that to add some counterarguments). :)

whoops! Indeed! :)

If you think it takes the power of the state to cause trouble, you're not imaginative enough. If you need convincing, just download your information from all the sites you visit (I know FB and google provide an easy way to do this), send it to me, and I'll help you understand the problem.

and who do you think gives that data to the government?