I think generally the way this works is that management finds the most positive spin on this (based on their public ads, this appears to be "small businesses everywhere would be going under without this valuable data!") and people repeat it to convince themselves and everyone around them. Or, they believe being there as part of the system helps to keep it from being even worse somehow.

The alternative is telling yourself that what you and your team have been working on is pretty questionable and maybe you should go take a massive paycut and work somewhere else for a while. I think most people have a pretty strong internal resistance to coming to that kind of conclusion.

I've met bankers. They want money, and for the most part, have no moral center nor do they consider second order effects (ie beyond them or their primary client).

This is how a lot of people live. They're not evil, just indifferent.

Considering Facebook are the main reason millions of people won’t take COVID vaccines when they become available, this is the least of their sins, and these are pretty big sins. Same for YouTube.

It's not Facebook's nor YouTube's fault per-se but the fault of this bullshit business model based on "engagement". You eliminate that and suddenly there's no incentive for any company to host, let alone use algorithms to promote crap content even if it's nefarious to society.

It’s their business model and their monopoly behavior is designed to crush alternatives.

My point is that you won't solve the problem by merely breaking up/shutting down Facebook or Google - something else will immediately take its place.

If you want to solve the problem you have to eradicate the underlying disease with regulation and then Facebook and Google will fix themselves (by adapting or going out of business).

100% agree

And their system is entirely designed to create echo chambers amongst users. Those groups are easier to manipulate with ads, and naturally there are corps and PACs with motives and money ready to pay to manipulate.