[ChuckMcM]

Culturally I suspect it comes from the principle of freedom of action, such that people are free to choose to act they want to act and others are free to interact/not-interact with them based on the choices made. So Facebook might choose to act unethically and then people would choose not to use them. Facebook would fail and a new more ethical company would arise in its place.

That at least is the optimists view. The demonstration of crapitalism [1] shows that if part of the selection function is missing (in this case privacy) then everyone loses.

I really liked your notion of advocating the status quo as a trap.

[1] Crapitalism is when some definition of "quality" is taken out of the product selection mix, allowing simply "functionality" followed by "price" as the selecting mechanisms. This leads to inexpensive products which do what they say for a very short period of time. Ultimately resulting in higher replacement costs (which sadly benefits the manufacturer).