[arctux]

I'm emphatically not defending them here, but it may make sense from their perspective. They live and die by ad targeting and maintaining their monopoly power over social networks, both which requires large amounts of personal data. Knowing what apps teenagers have installed and how often those apps are used is instrumental in detecting an up and coming social media rival.

Further, their only major competitor in the ads space is Google, which has access to this information via Android and its control over the Play Store.

Plus, what are the teenagers going to do about it? Facebook also owns Instagram. I guess they could use Snapchat...

[taurath]

Yeah it makes sense, but the problem for their shareholders is their business model will constantly turn them into a huge boogeyman and they'll never recover goodwill that keeps their users stuck to the platform when competitors appear. Mass user migrations happen, and they can happen VERY fast. Wait until a whole country goes off of Facebook.