[DanielBMarkham]

I hate crowds. If everybody went to the left, I'd go to the right. I'm a natural contrarian.

But you are asking for some really heavy lifting here. You're positing that we have two choices: assume ill intent on the part of Facebook or assume it's all good.

These are not the only choices, and they're not opposites of each other. Most likely is that FB folks are actively trying to help posters as much as they can. Most likely is that the average poster enjoys all this cool stuff. Most likely is that this is a terrible feature that should have never seen the light of day because of where it's taking the industry -- deeper down a pit of the surveillance/security state. Most likely a lot of folks complain about it simply because it's trendy.

All of these things can be true at the same time.

So I'm not really sure what to say. Sucks to work at Facebook, I guess. Too many developers and a mission to own the planet. Maybe they should have just stuck to "pictures of people you know and what they've been doing lately"