[Apreche]

Exactly this. If we create hardware and software ethically, that product will not make enough money. Capitalism is almost entirely add odds with ethical engineering practices.

Think about it. Imagine Facebook not doing anything evil. Never selling your data without your permission. Never spying on you. Putting lots of restrictions on advertisements to make sure they are all ok. Banning all the bad users. Reporting analytics accurately. Etc.

How would Facebook make any money? The only ethical sources of income would be to sell non evil ads (if you believe there even is such a thing) or to charge users money to have accounts like Netflix. Non-evil ads are not very effective, and with accurate analytics, they will not fetch a high price.

What other ethical business model is there? If operating ethically, they would be lucky to cover their operating costs. Giving any kind of ROI to investors would be impossible. The same applies to every Silicon Valley operation. Google, Twitter, etc. If they operate ethically and morally, they can't make enough money.

Of course, if the power were mine, I would force them to behave ethically anyway. I don't care if they all shut down. Gonna eat me some rich people.

[JoelMcCracken]

You say it as if these companies shutting down would be a bad thing. These products exploit their users in ways the users and society at large does not yet understand.

If a product cant be profitable without abusing its power, it shouldn't exist.