Human morality is cheap and SV has showed that.
You can also choose (if you decide you are free to choose) the set of morals that makes you the most happy (hedonism) or give you the most utility. Or you can decide to be a nihilist.
So it's not the same.
It's already been built for the US government, so why not profit by selling a US supervised version to the Chinese? Better than China building its own tech.
I think you underestimate the degree to which Google is a top defense contractor and in building this stuff for China is acting at the behest of the US Government.
These are people who were part of the first scaling out of single platform to 2 billion people. Their skill was in building out such a network and keeping it running. The skills required to do that well, came from people with business and compsci backgrounds. That work is done.
Now what matters is who joins. And what happens next to such a network.
Compsci and biz people won't make a difference to vision. The next phase will be driven by ideas from social sciene, ecology, history, psychology, economics, politics, religion etc. People who have a deep understanding of the value of human networks and what they can do, will drive the next chapter of where Facebook goes.
I think that the people leaving also knew this all along, but now they are finally coming to terms with the impact that FB has really had on people, the world, privacy, and the way it has desensitized everyone to this type of behavior.
Facebook hasn't changed, that's not why people are leaving. They're leaving because they've finally been able to look in the mirror and realize that this isn't worth the paycheck anymore. That's gonna be a tough pill to swallow for most.