> Were there tech people screaming foul? The press? Not really, they seemed reasonable, until it seemed that some bad agents were getting a little unscrupulous, and so FB did the right thing and altered the APIs to make them more secure. Security polices change all the time, in this case they tightened up given some field data. That's it.

Others quoted about screaming foul from within facebook. I was involved with RTB ad exchanges at the time, and everyone knew that the data is available to whomever wants it, with facebook's tacit approval.

Gabriel Weinberg (yegg) founder of duck duck go had a story on his blog about how he targeted his own wife with a facebook ad, and about how easy it is profile/get everyone's FB data, and he wasn't the only one.

Your experience may have been different; it looks to me like you'd rather look at the world through rose tinted glasses and give FB an undeserved benefit of the doubt -- but I'll accept that this was your experience. However, I have about 20:1 anecdata about "improper FB" than "proper FB", so I tend to believe the latter.

If there was one story of patents done right, does that indicate there are no patent trolls and it's all blown out of proportion?