It seems like a vast networked trove of everyone's information is doing the opposite of "preserving our democracy from attacks" - its actively enabling it.

Minimizing the damage of collecting that information is maybe not directly evil, but helping kick the can down the road to the point where facebook is so deeply networked in our society its unremoveable doesnt seem like a high horse to be riding on.

your line of reasoning makes it sound like it would be simple for everyone in the world to stop using Facebook or some similar social media platform. I see nothing wrong with trying to improve something that is already well ingrained into human society.

Is it Facebook the executive team and business model that’s ingrained, or is it the general concept of sharing photos and links, and sending messages?

Or, have the former earned a monopoly on the latter/our-species?

Hopefully I didn't make it out to be simple as much as stark. I feel like the option where you get a bunch of money and perks is probably the "simpler" option.

The various democracies your friends are protecting are at risk from Facebook et al, not hackers abusing Facebook.

Did they just found their moral compass after 2016 or were they selectively applying morality when their platform being abused to spread misinformation in 2016 elections. Or when Facebook could not curb hate speech in Myanmar that had direct impact on thousands of lives. Or when Facebook ran mood manipulation experiments... or when Facebook decided to use 2FA type security features to show ads to users ?

How does the fit with Myanmar? It’s hardly a democracy, but is ‘morally bankrupy’ too strong a term for what they have helped create there? And that’s ignoring Cambridge Analytica, the creative accounting for that and the other related scandals.

Are they spying on private communications to identify terrorists? Please don't tell me you are calling this rudimentary Russian propaganda an attack. The ads were aimed at the lowest common denominator of America, and those that were already going to vote for trump I am sure. The reality is Trump won because enough of our citizens felt left behind and wanted to try something other than the status quo.

And unfortunately Hillary Clinton did it to Putin first, probably using similar methods.

http://time.com/4422723/putin-russia-hillary-clinton/

underestimation can be a grave mistake in these matters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPNFilter

>>trying to preserve our democracy from attacks

Hahaha, thanks, that was a good one.