[optionalparens]

I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you here (for the record, I despise Facebook and anyone who works there), rather I want to point out that ethics often has no correlation with law. The difficulty in making ethical determinations is precisely that there is often no well-defined written criteria like a law or terms of use that dictate what are the ethical boundaries or what might be ethically or morally reprehensible.

[MarkMc]

Yes, I agree there can be unethical behaviour that is still lawful. But regarding the specific charge of deception it becomes much harder to convict Facebook if the company has done everything that they explicitly agreed to do.

In this particular case I cannot even see any shade of grey. I apply for a credit card. The application form states that the credit card company may pass the information about me to third parties. The credit card company tells Facebook my income. Facebook does not reveal to me that they know my income. Where is the deception?

[Karunamon]

And that's fine. Most of the "ethical" barbs I see being leveled about facebook are on the hypothetical/philosophical level, rather than the practical one.

As a general rule, I'm a lot more bothered by actual bad actions rather than hypothetical future ones. Facebook collecting all the data they want just doesn't even register as even sorta bad to me. (And no, I don't work there.)

[optionalparens]

I definitely disagree with you on Facebook being bad and there not being a practical component, however I'm willing to see what you are saying. There's a lot that can go wrong, but like you imply, it's mostly perspective. Sure it's hypothetical, but even those with the best intentions see the results of their work take interesting (evil) turns for the worst. Further, there's a lot that does go on that is not hypothetical and the problem tends to be that it is hard to educate yourself about if you are an outsider, i.e. not the person doing these things.

Regarding hypotheticals, if you collect data, it is always there for someone to abuse, whether they are technically "allowed" to do so or not by laws, company policy, or otherwise. It can and does happen more often than we believe as I came to find out from friends and family who work in government and legal roles. I am more of the cautious sort and would rather try to make a best effort that might not be perfect to simply mitigate and minimize the issue of the wrong thing happening. Though these cases may never happen, I am in the camp of "let's not make it easier."

As an aside, a lot of feelings towards these issues can be influenced by environmental and contextual reasons. For instance, I was raised in a family that lost a lot of people due, but not limited to things like data collection, humans selling each other short, supposedly good people making bad choices, and individuals acting highly in self-interest despite their "ethics." Further, I also grew up in a country more under constant and tangible threat than the US for part of my childhood and served in its army against very real threats during wartime. I'm certainly no action hero as my job was more of the engineering and intelligence nature, though I have seen first hand what people can, will, and tend to do with data, especially if there is money or physical security involved. Especially on the other side of things (i.e. our enemies) if they are losing. As such, I am more sensitive than most when it comes to people knowing things about me. I assume "they" know everything, but as I implied, I try not to make it easier than it needs to be and I actively throw in disinformation about myself. It helps if you know a thing or two about algorithms and the best ways to confuse them :)