[smoyer]

I don't believe the programmers at Facebook have evil intentions - I think they're just trying to build something that's technically cool. The problem is the MBAs will trying to build something businessy out of it and won't care whether it requires evil if it might possible make them some money.

There can also be a temporal factor. Today there might be no evil intentions but in a couple years someone might find that "we have this whole data set we could do X with".

[forgetsusername]

So you think the engineers are innocent and altruistic, and the MBAs are evil, huh?

What an incredibly naive viewpoint. Which one is Mr. Zuckerberg? I recall him have a few choice words for the "suckers" who sign up for his service and hand over their data.

[smoyer]

Of course not - I'm skeptical of everyone's intentions and specifically think through how to best protect my own privacy (I don't have a Facebook account). Of course, Facebook didn't choose "Don't be evil" as their slogan so you can assume the standard "Make money by any means possible" slogan. Yes, I'm appropriately jaded.

In any case, the comment I responded to was pretty specific in asking us to trust that the programmers motives were pure. I wanted to point out that things could turn creepy later in the business life-cycle even if the original motives were non-evil.