| Naive questions: What has been the US legal/regulatory framework governing "privacy" that telecomunications operators have had to work within for the past thirty years? Has Facebook had to operate within that same framework? As FB grew, has it been subject to the same restrictions? Has Facebook, with the billions they have made through collecting and monetising user data, and with the competition they have given to the telecommunications providers, played any role in any "shrinking" of past privacy protections afforded telecom subscribers? I have not lived very long but the big difference I see from past decades is that collecting user data and monetising it is viewed as a "core business". While I was not yet born at the time, I am confident that the telegraph was not funded by reading peoples telegrams and trying to sell that information to merchants. As far as I know telephone service was not funded by recording peoples conversations and marketing the value of the collected information to advertisers. Even consumer internet service, first appearing in the 1990s, was not funded by collecting user data and trying to "monetise" it. "Free" communication thanks to the internet has brought us a new type of company. It operates in a legal grey area, free from many of the restrictions that applied to its predecessors. Until proven otherwise, it appears that without collecting data on users and marketing it to third parties, this type of company cannot survive. Yet, whether these new companies exist or not, as far as I can see communication over the internet is still "free". (The cost being the internet subscription fees.) Of course when a user chooses to utilise the "services" of these companies to "simplify" their internet use (or even their first introduction to the internet), that notion of "free" becomes rather complicated. |