Bamba wrote:
I think it's more the assumption that those purposes couldn't actually be all that nefarious. How many times have you heard someone justify not caring about this kind of thing with a variation on the line, "They're welcome to it, my life isn't that interesting anyway."
Not that I agree with the above but I've heard it espoused multiple times.
TBH that's the line I take and have done for years, but always with the tacit acceptance that Facebook/Google/etc were always doing whatever nefarious shit they wanted to with my data - (which I assumed was in the T&Cs somewhere, and if it wasn't, they'd do it anyway) - including palming it off to other people to do 'stuff' with it. (Although I've never taken one of those stupid 'What rock star from the 80s would you be?' quizzes, precisely because it was such an obvious way to explicitly give loads of data to third parties outside the immediate platform.)
To me it's a decent deal, Facebook is useful to me for family and friends contacts and keeping up with their news, I have a relatively small number of friends on there and reject most friends requests. Google is great because I find the cohesive ecosystem across multiple devices very convenient, and none of it costs a penny. I was using the 'If it's free, you're the product' line pretty much from day one.
I also make a conscious decision to accept all extra integration and permissions that services ask for, because the cross-pollination they're capable of is pretty cool. Facebook is really good now at showing me cars I'm interested in, and my Google Now screen is brilliant at suggesting articles I want to read. (I make sure I'm signed into my Google account on every PC/device I use, so their algorithms can track me and the stuff I like properly.)
I don't lose any sleep over it, basically, and this Facebook/CA shenanigans is precisely the sort of thing I assumed was going on anyway. Not that I'm saying it's right/healthy/democratic - but it's also not surprising at all.
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