Except for the folks who didn't make an account whose friends have contributed to "shadow profiles" for them...

I mean, let's just admit that you don't have to be a Facebook user and you don't have to sign a Facebook TOS for them to accumulate data about you, so it's not quite as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be.

As far as the "good" and "evil" parts of the stack... fair point. I think most devs are somewhat abstracted away from the collectively malicious vision, since most of the constituent parts are relatively benign on their own -- "let's identify faces in photos!", "let's automatically identify faces in photos", etc. It's product folks, or maybe even higher up than that, who connect the powerful pieces produced by devs to actually make Facebook the monster it is today. I'd guess that even the devs who have impact on that vision don't really have the power to dramatically sway that vision, they've got a bit of technical input at best.

Still, have you ever worked on a product you don't believe in? If you're just cashing in a check, I guess it could work, but if you're as idealistic as me you want to work on something that's doing good in the world. Especially when so many tech companies proclaim their intent to "make the world a better place" or "do cool things that matter."

> their users are there voluntarily

Not really. Many people just feel they have to use Facebook to connect with the society efficiently. Some people even consider those who don't use Facebook weird.

That's their problem. I never use FB and it does not hurt one bit. People have to be responsible for their own choices. No one is forced to use FB. Their weak will is not my problem.

The network effect is strong but it does not make FB use necessary or involuntary. You will not be put in a cage, fined, beaten, fired, etc, for not using FB.

Yep, but you might be left out of many events and slowly become a social outcast amongst your friends. As a first-hand non-facebook user, this aspect really blows.

Would you say the same about gambling software? What about software related to selling heroin?

All of these products are designed to be as addictive as possible (to varying degrees). The whole point of of an addiction is that your are there voluntarily. (Not saying facebook is as bad as the things above, just that they are all designed to addict.)

They certainly do make it as addictive as possible, but IMO that still does not mean users are there involuntarily. Persuasion is not the same as coercion.

Doesn't FB keep track of (possibly profile) people who don't directly use FB? They can possibly profile you from using data brokers and information actual FB users give to them.

That's a fair point but I would put much of the blame for that on the US government for not having proper EU-like privacy laws which make it illegal, or at least mandate an opt-out mechanism.

Or developers and companies could self regulate, because they care about other people.

Or we could have a legal system where everything is forbidden except for those things explicitly allowed.

In capitalism it's mostly the customer's responsibility to switch when a company becomes too-evil in some way. Depending on your politics you could, perhaps, argue with some truth that network effects make that extremely difficult for social media sites, so the only solution is to have the government extensively regulate FB, twitter, etc, but I am not entirely convinced. IIRC FB engagement with teenagers and early-20s folks is already declining noticably in the US (though there probably are multiple reasons for that beyond just privacy concerns).

Usually a replacement comes along to make it easier.

Slack vs irc

Facebook vs myspace vs geocities

> Or developers and companies could self regulate, because they care about other people.

I hope this is sarcasm.

Not really but probably should have been