Facebook, on all accounts, is a business. A business is exists in order to make money, full stop. In today's world, user privacy, and ethical values do not exist in the economic formulas. Sure, it makes for great PR. But at the end of the quarter, those "values" would be crushed in an instance to maximize profit.
Make no mistake, your interests and Facebook's are completely orthogonal.
Facebook is not about "making the world more connected". I pity whoever believes that is true.
There's a bit of confounding of this given the rise in popularity of what's called "Cause Marketing". Socially beneficial activities undertaken by (generally) traditional for-profits. Often seen as a marketing benefit. Not bad of itself, but it's helpful to remind companies that token measures don't absolve other actions.
It's fair to say that many traditional for-profits don't. Inclusive of social networking for-profits.
The problem with Facebook is not that it is a company. It IS with their privacy record. The problem IS corporate misbehavior, not the existence of capitalism.
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The answer is a definitive yes.
Facebook, on all accounts, is a business. A business is exists in order to make money, full stop. In today's world, user privacy, and ethical values do not exist in the economic formulas. Sure, it makes for great PR. But at the end of the quarter, those "values" would be crushed in an instance to maximize profit.
Make no mistake, your interests and Facebook's are completely orthogonal.
Facebook is not about "making the world more connected". I pity whoever believes that is true.
NB: there are for-profit companies who have a corporate charter to create a net social benefit. They're called benefit corporations: http://www.bcorporation.net/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
Non-profits also frequently serve this role.
There's a bit of confounding of this given the rise in popularity of what's called "Cause Marketing". Socially beneficial activities undertaken by (generally) traditional for-profits. Often seen as a marketing benefit. Not bad of itself, but it's helpful to remind companies that token measures don't absolve other actions.
It's fair to say that many traditional for-profits don't. Inclusive of social networking for-profits.
The problem with Facebook is not that it is a company. It IS with their privacy record. The problem IS corporate misbehavior, not the existence of capitalism.