[swalsh]

> giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

If we're going to think of privacy invasions as "fees" for the service, let's consider another scenario. Imagine facebook was a paid service and you gave them your credit card. You had already consented to a price of $3, however without telling you they added a new service and changed the price to $5. Automatically you're billed for the bigger amount next month. If you don't want the new service you have to opt-out. Would that be equally okay?

[daveman]

It may be true that FB is making more use of the data than you might have anticipated, but you can argue that's also the risk you take when you use a free service (do you ever really know the full extent a service will use your information, despite what they say in their lengthy EULA?). The funny thing is that in many cases, the user gains more value from the system than originally expected too, due to novel applications of existing data (e.g. timeline).