[vsl2]

I agree that Facebook and other social networks have a right to make money through their business model. As the article puts it, if they didn't make money, they wouldn't exist and that would be a loss for many people.

However, there's nothing that says Facebook has the right to become a $100B company through extreme invasion of privacy and other distasteful tactics (whatever they may be - I sure don't know what fully goes on over there). Send me some targeted advertising if you have to, but I will protest against you if you make new "share-with-others-additional-information-about-yourself" features a confusing opt-out hassle.

Just recently my wife shared a photo album via Picasa and Google+, and she couldn't figure out how to restrict who could access the album, though it was very simply prior to Picasa's integration into Google Photos. Do you think Google+ engineers couldn't keep the same Picasa privacy functionality as before or is it because they want to force people to share more than they're comfortable with?

No one is saying that social networks shouldn't make money through advertising and most people are probably okay with some personal data being used for targeted advertising. But given past invasive practices and privacy concerns, there are definitely valid concerns with regards to the extent to which social networks are commoditizing/selling users' personal information in an effort to maximize profits. Furthermore, who knows what happens to sold personal information down the line?

Simple question: If changing social networks was as simple as changing your online shopping preferences, do you think Facebook could get away with what it does? Facebook can obviously take advantage of the fact that its users cannot easily leave to appropriate user data that other sites could not.