[amirmc]

> "... it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?"

This attitude is what's wrong. Exxon also needs to make money so maybe we should cut them some slack around oil spills. So does Foxconn, so let's not badger them about employment practices. Etc.

To your point about how they are supposed to make money. I dunno, innovate on business models, maybe? Advertising has been a driving force for mass-consumer web services and it would be healthy to have alternatives.

[manigandham]

We have regulations in place, outside of that telling businesses to just "be nice" is naive. It's not like these corporations are filled with evil people, all of this tracking is to deliver better products and increase bottomline. In this case, Facebook sells advertising and the effectiveness of that advertising increases with tracking.

It's always easy to just say "innovate" as if the entire industry is just sitting around for some enlightenment... there are other ways to make money but this is the model that works best for them. Advertising is a fine business model, I've yet to really see an actual objection to this.