It's interesting how surprise and outrage can be orthogonal.

Indeed.

The amoral (and I use that word precisely) shading into unethical cowboy culture of many lions of the contemporary bubble/industry playing field, have set the industry up for a major backlash.

That's why the big three changed tune this week viz. Congressional inquiry. Just as no one is surprised, everyone knows the writing is on the wall.

Harsh oversight is coming; if these firms want a voice when it's being crafted, the only productive posture to assume at this point is one of acquiescence accompanied by increasingly directly worded mea culpa.

There's a difference between speculation and confirmation.

If you've used twitter for the past few years, there's no speculation. The amount of spammers running around peddling porn links and whatnot is out of control... tie that with Twitter's stagnant growth numbers, and it's pretty obvious why they haven't done anything to crack down on that "user growth"