[EliRivers]

Real world? You must be aware of real world events in which this sort of thing really has already happened.

The ultimate arbiter is reality, and in reality this sort of thing does already happen. We could do it brazenly over the counter, or alternatively I could pay Facebook to act as a consultant; to give me their view of my market. To satisfy the legal chaps, we can just scrape the names off the data and then summarise it in a nice binder. A number of financial companies do this today. The fines are peanuts compared to the profits.

Even when it isn't company policy in some way, it is easy to bribe an employee to simply hand over a big chunk of data. The "real world" shows us that this does and will happen.

As an aside, I would suggest that the "real world" in the sense of which you are speaking doesn't even exist. Everyone, everywhere, builds their own cocoon of social mores and illusions and local conventions, and from my perspective it is you who doesn't understand it. If you're going to suggest that laws will stop it happening, I remind you that the law is whatever you can successfully negotiate and argue and persuade and influence as necessary, and big companies with deep pockets can do that very well. Some things are very hard to argue; shooting someone for no reason on live TV. Some things are eminently arguable; the Chinese wall between the data holding division and the business consultancy division. Really happening, every day, in the real world.

[notyourwork]

Its disappointing that you are trying to counter my question and keep suggesting this happens in the real world all the time with no citation to support it.

Lots of illicit things happen should we just shut down the world entirely? Cars kill people so we shouldn't approach the streets. Food can make you ill if supply chains don't handle it properly so we should stop eating.

You are suggesting that because people break laws we should not do things. That's not how it works.

[EliRivers]

It's pretty well known that the Chinese walls in banks, designed to prevent some parts of the business illegally using information from other parts of the business, spent much of the approach to the 2008 financial collapse being ignored, and were often used to screw customers over for the purposes of enriching the banks. RBS just got busted for creating subsidiaries and feeding them confidential information for exactly that purpose. It was in the news in the last fortnight.

It's not at all disappointing to me to me that you bleat bullshit about "citation needed" as a defence. It's pretty expected around here; no need to actually do any work, just sit smugly pretending that you're civil and polite. Here we are engaging in yet more bullshit passive aggressiveness, each of us pretending that we're being oh-so-civil and look, look, it's the other one who's wrong, I'm just asking questions.

If you actually wanted to know, you could have found lots of examples yourself. You DON'T want to know, because this isn't about knowing anything. This is about some stranger on the internet disagreeing with your pre-formed opinions (which are pretty unusual around here, actually - the common religion here of free market fundamentalism would take it as read that FB will sell your information to your competitors) and your opportunity to posture and present yourself as reasonable.

So fuck you and fuck me, and fuck this passive-aggressive childishness that goes on around here as petty posturing from smug dickheads like you and like me. If you choose not to believe me, that's fine, but don't you dare suggest that it's my fucking job to educate you. I'm done with this passive-aggressive crap.

"You are suggesting that because people break laws we should not do things. That's not how it works."

No I'm not, and you fucking know it. I'm suggesting that giving your information to FB will lead to other people getting it. That's what I'm suggesting. This junk on the end about cars killing people is your strawman attempt to smugly present yourself as some kind of adult.

[notyourwork]

All I was trying to do is have a mature conversation and asked for a reference to better inform myself. Sorry for trying to be an adult. Grow up.