Facebook entered into a consent decree with the FTC [1]. (Facebook had to do this because it violated promises made to consumers.) Facebook then violated that consent decree. These e-mails may show Mark Zuckerberg--the Chairman, CEO and majority vote holder--complicit in those violations.

One can dig deeper into the privacy and antitrust issues [2], cultural issues and other matters. But at its core, this relates to their flagrantly violating a binding agreement with a federal regulator.

The individual criminal-law analogy would be violating one's parole agreement.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/11/faceb...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust...

What's a reasonable person? Plenty of "reasonable" people drink Coke every day because the system indoctrinates otherwise rational people into believing that sugar isn't a poison comparable to alcohol. One of my friends, who is an attorney, still thinks that snack foods devoid of fat but loaded with sugar are somehow healthier. Speculating how a rational person would respond ideally isn't very useful in this situation because most people, including those who are well educated, are influenced heavily by their environment and, more specifically, peers and authority.

When you have Zuckerberg and journalists touting the end of privacy as being a good thing(there are plenty of articles and quotes from 10 years ago reflecting this sentiment), as well as surveillance gradually integrating into people's lives through convenience, you bet that most people are going to shrug their shoulders at privacy. Does the fact that people comply with invasion of privacy mean that the issue doesn't matter? Maybe it does if you don't think that the behavior of the masses can be manufactured.

I do agree with you that the current media outrage against social media, Silicon Valley, etc., is essentially the same kind of consent-manufacturing as when they were telling us that privacy is gone and that we should accept Facebook as the lesser evil because it "makes us more connected". I happen to agree with the current manufactured outrage, but I don't agree with the intent behind it. (which I suspect has to do with the old-guard media finally realizing that it's dying and it doesn't like the fact that social media has taken their audience and, hence, their money)

The question is do you combat that with education or with regulation? Personally I think the government’s track record with this kind of regulation is terrible, with the possible exception of cigarettes. In the US marijuana is still a schedule one drug right up there with opioids, which makes zero sense when you look at the risk profile of each drug.

Public education is extremely difficult, for example the Just Say No campaign fell mostly flat, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Cigarette usage is down these days due to both increased regulations and increased public awareness of the risks.

By that same token, convincing people to be either pro-privacy or ambivalent to privacy is manufactured behavior, isn't it? If people vote against their interest, then who are we to force them one way or the other? Its hard to say without sounding harsh, but at some point, you have to draw the line on personal responsibility, and stop coddling people. Also, privacy is a relatively modern concept. When cities and towns were small, everyone got into everyone's business. Certainly, you can favor one position over the other because of your belief that it would lead to a better society.

There are lots of things here that reasonable people can discuss and agree or disagree on.

Alcohol can indeed be classified as a poison. When someone gets their stomach pumped after drinking too much, they're being treated for alcohol poisoning.

This is getting off-topic, but just because the human body is well capable of expelling consumed alcohol doesn't mean that it won't suffer from other problems in the future like fatty liver disease(which is also caused by chronic sugar consumption, btw).

And your opting out of the network makes it a little less valuable, since now no one has access to updates about yourself. If you can convince a few more people to lower their exposure or to move to something like friendica then the network becomes even less valuable and helps to lower Facebook’s power.

I would much rather fight the problem this way than trust legislators to come up with a fair way to regulate it. Same with sugar, I would rather invest in educational campaigns to convince people how bad sugars and sodas are for their body than have the government ban all sugar or decide how much can be in a product. The lobbies will usually end up writing the final laws anyway, and who knows what their incentives are.

I’ve been off of Facebook for a decade and still have a robust, satisfying social life. My real friends know how to contact me and I never feel left out of the actual important stuff going on. I think of Facebook’s existence as a blessing: it allows me to easily filter out all those low-effort “events” run by people who don’t really care if I come.

Not sure how email solves that problem.

I mean, to be fair, even Facebook won't necessarily tell you about an event unless the event creator pays them money to promote it. It's actually not a great platform for small-scale publicity, and _only_ publicizing an event on Facebook is clearly a mistake for a number of reasons. But despite its many virtues, email doesn't actually address GP's case at all.

There isn't a passive tool that would solve this other than getting people's email or mailing address, and that's absolutely fine since if you wanted to go to these reunions and be invested in these events, you can send an email to the school and get yourself on this contact list.

Also agree re:Coca Cola. However I also believe that we shouldn't blindly accept a status quo of "companies are inherently evil and value financial growth over the wellbeing/health/privacy of their customers". There are a few shining examples of business being conducted with true respect for customers. These ethical entities are few and far between, but they are worth their weight in gold and we should be mindful to vote for them with our wallets.

Getting aunt Sue to care about data harvesting and stopping the likes of Google/Amazon from taking over the world are both uphill battles. But something has to change, soon.

As we are all parts of the society that we can't escape from, regulation matters a lot to everybody who may or may not use facebook products.

If Facebook is the new Coke I'm not sure you're making the point you're intending to make. This just sounds like the stereotypical libertarian tech excuse about not taking responsibility for what is clearly becoming a pressing social concern.

Sugar taxes, smaller cupsizes, transparent information about the dangers of consumption, and so on are all fairly modest ways to set the right incentives.

And when it comes to companies behaving in irresponsible ways, for example if it turns out they ran disinformation campaigns, or hid important information about breaches from the public, then I think from time to time it's fair to bring out the hammer and hit them with substantial fines.

It can absolutely not be the case that Facebook violates user privacy, is aware of it up to the very top, and the next day the stock price soars by billions of dollars because evidently the market doesn't take our ability to correct this behaviour seriously.

If this leads to voters developing bizarre views of the world that influence who they vote for, then their carelessness becomes our problem.

Correct. When the Obama campaign used data just as aggressively as Cambridge, people cheered how "technologically advanced" that campaign was. People have a selective memory, but Facebook data harvesting and exploitation was a critical strategy used by Obama to win his elections. I guess 2008 and 2012 are too far back for most people to remember.

The stance of "just opt out of stuff you don't like" bakes in a lot of assumptions about your position in the world, and trivializes real criticisms of Facebook by people who do not have the same choices you enjoy.

I'd love to see a list of companies that require a Facebook account. Not ask for Facebook account, require Facebook account.

"You may have relatives abroad you can only talk to through Facebook or WhatsApp" They can't pick up the phone?

Side note: I've never had a Facebook account.

I don't have one. I don't miss it, and am increasingly glad. But I do have the "spouse firewall"; my wife uses it and I get most of the news I need through that, and even by local standards I'm not really a social butterfly, so between the two things, my experience may not be 100% relevant. So there's my science-style "why this data point may not be relevant" disclosure.

But it certainly isn't a "requirement for modern life" or anything. The times I faintly regret maybe not having a Facebook account are separated by many months, it's not like every day I go to do something and alas, my life is degraded because I don't have a Facebook account. It's a rare event, such that I could pretty much recite to you every one from the past 5 years. (All of them are family news, either get-togethers I wouldn't have heard about, or some family news that I ultimately would have heard anyhow and didn't have any action items on either way.)

(There's enough people without a given social account that I'm still yet to encounter the site that only has Facebook authentication. I hear they exist, but they haven't naturally crossed my path yet.)

source: https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/personal-experience-doesnt-m...

All those other situations existed before facebook too, and people still got to reunions, went to church, and talked to their relatives living half a world away. Chances are, these people are signing into facebook with an email address or telephone number, so it's not like facebook is literally all they know unless grandson set up grandpas account (but I bet grandpa still has a landline, forwards nigerian prince emails, and writes letters just fine).

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/landlord-data-mining-tenant-a...

https://www.businessinsider.com/empoyers-ask-for-facebook-pa...

>it turns out Coca Cola knew its products could lead to obesity. Of course they did, and no reasonable person thought it didn’t.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2005/02/15/51...

Coca-Cola has just 40% of the non-alcoholic beverages global market share.

And as others have pointed out, "don't use Facebook" doesn't solve the problem of all the data they already have on you and will never destroy.