Re: Promise to do better
Yes, this is something I wanted to go into in my original comment, but didn't have time to. The criticisms I made of Facebook are almost certainly the result of it being made in Zuckerberg's image.
Zuckerberg is the guy who made the infamous "dumb fucks" comment about the people that handed their data over to him in the early days.
When this first came to light, many people were inclined to give that the benefit of the doubt as youthful arrogance. That's legitimate- many people have said or done dickish things when they were younger, then become better people as they grew up.
The better part of a decade later, and given Facebook's behaviour with him at the helm, I think it's clear that, no, that's a fair glimpse into the person that Zuckerberg is and always was... and that, more importantly, the company reflects *precisely* that mentality.
If I'm wary of too readily applying the actual "psychopath/sociopath" (#) label to Zuckerberg himself, then I'd be less reticent about doing so to the company he founded.
I'm sure most people here know by now that it's been said that the behaviour of corporations in general would- were they actual people- be considered psycho/sociopathic. But Facebook's lack of ethics, its ability to say it'll change or to mouth platitudes, then to immediately go back to behaving just as sleazily as it did before as soon as it thinks no-one is paying attention, to not feel the need to justify itself (e.g. before parliament) if it doesn't have to... it all comes across as pathological, as sociopathic in a way that even the feigned sincerity of most corporations doesn't. At almost a fundamental personal level.
Which is almost certainly because Facebook's culture is- at its most fundamental level- a reflection of the soulless, unethical, amoral, empathetically stunted individual that founded and continues to dominate it.
(#) Don't read too much into the use of sociopath vs. psychopath or the legitimacy of either term; I'm not claiming that this is a clinical diagnosis...!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
