[PaulStatezny]

> What is wrong with his statement?

I assume they think it’s disingenuous to paint Facebook in such absolute terms, ignoring the context in which it was first launched:

It was competing with MySpace. Social media was a much newer phenomenon; it hadn’t yet taken its modern shape.

Perhaps Facebook has become a tool for surveillance, but it seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that surveillance is the primary reason it exists.

[ponderatul]

Does it matter if it is the first reason, or the second, or the nth if it allows surveillance on its platform because it benefits them.

Even the fact that they allow it, by not doing enough to prevent it is enough reason for me to believe Snowden's statement.

[realusername]

The pivot to surveillance is pretty old now, I guess we could say that at the absolute start of Facebook, they really wanted to create a social media but that shift was pretty quick.

[rdiddly]

And yet surveillance is the foundation of the primary service they sell right now. If a company makes clocks, we tend to say it's a clock company.

[usrusr]

But if they claim to be a dishwasher company, and they started with making dishwashers before eventually pivoting to clocks, you don't call them "rebranded as a dishwasher company". Rebranding implies a certain temporal order that does not fit here. Some people get hung up on bad arguments getting used for a good cause, I'm one of them.

[product50]

Yes - FB does all the things it does because it wants to sell your data off to Russia. That is its mission statement. Awesome right since that is what you want to hear. Lets go back now - party is all over.

[rdiddly]

Nope they sell it to their advertisers. Remember?