Working for Facebook is a morally bankrupt position. If you are an engineer you have plenty of job opportunities available to you and there is no excuse for you to continue contributing your labor and time to a wholly malignant organization. At a certain point one has to ask how we as an industry will start dealing with those who continue to take a paycheck from Facebook even in the face of constant and horrific evidence of wholesale ethical violations and negligence.
But why? Use of the platform is entirely voluntary. Beyond that, what are they doing besides targeting ads at people based on pretty basic info that those users (almost entirely) provided to Facebook of their own free will. Yeah, I know they were found recently to be using "shadow contact info" to target ads. But even that study seems fairly contrived- they had to upload an entire organization's private data without their consent just to prove the point they were making in the article. But even if we all agree that that's bad, so what? Okay, so if they stop using MFA data and shared contact data not necessarily shared by the users to target ads are they suddenly not evil? My guess is that most people would remain unconvinced.
I think there's some part of society that just hates the idea of advertising of all kinds. They think they should be able to move through life without having information foisted in front of them without their consent. That's a fine view, but the reality of our society is that it relies on businesses being able to sell and they do that largely by advertising to consumers. I also think a lot of the lament comes from the idea that using these platforms is a waste of time, which obviously is more of a personal value judgment call.
But above all this, I believe Facebook is hated because it's powerful. But it's powerful because people the world over use it and use it a lot. And that doesn't seem to be changing at all based on Facebook's last several earnings reports. People seem convinced that everyone should agree that Facebook and targeted advertising is evil and the use of the platform isn't worth the trade-offs. And yet people don't care. That stubborn fact. People just simply do not care about having their phone numbers, ages, political beliefs, genders and interests used to target ads at them. Lots of people can't wrap their minds around that fact- that not everyone is so concerned about using that info for ad targeting. Some fraction of the active FB user base probably does care- but not enough to delete the app and stop using it. "Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
No it's not. Do you know Facebook creates shadow profiles of you by tracking your online activities?
Even if you discount that, what about when all your friends use Facebook? Then you are going to be forced into a situation where you either use Facebook or stay disconnected from you friends.
How would they do this if you never visit the site or download the app? If you're referring to the use of a pixel, compared to the full-fledge use of cookies used by other ad networks (the Gizmodo article from yesterday itself noticeably had ads all they way down the page based on sites I'd recently visited), surely that alone doesn't make FB evil relative to other advertisers?
what about when all your friends use Facebook? Then you are going to be forced into a situation where you either use Facebook or stay disconnected from you friends.
Why are you forced to use Facebook or be disconnected from your friends? You still have texts, email, Twitter and phones. I know a few people (admittedly not a lot) that refuse to use Facebook. They complain occasionally because they believe they are missing out on seeing photos or something, but nothing to the point where they are in the dark. I think the use of Facebook is a convenience and each person has to weigh their values against what they know Facebook does. But let's not elevate what Facebook does beyond the level of displaying ads for money and crossing ethical boundaries in some instances about what data they use to target those ads. Based on some comments you'd think they were proactively trying to destroy the world.
Your friends install the app on their device. They provide access to their contacts. FB slurps in all of that data. For every person in the user's contacts, FB compares that info to their records. They update connections where found, and start new records when not found. So they now know your name/email/phone number/physical address info depending on how detailed your friend's contact was about you. I haven't read anything if the user has added your picture in their contacts if that's something FB can read as well, so they could know what your face looks like. They are now tracking you, and you've at this point never joined FB. One day, you decide to join FB, and you're presented an option to connect with people FB thinks/knows you know. Oh, and now that you're a user, you don't get to see that info that they had been making on you before you signed up either.
To me, this is the most evil part of the scheme.