It's part of the startup mythos: lone wolf (nerdy dev in a hoodie no less), builds a CRUD app, becomes stupidly rich via nothing but the hustle. Attacks on that weaken the foundation of belief.

For some perspective: I’m ex-Facebook. I wouldn’t claim that Facebook are completely benign, but I think they’re getting a raw deal in this situation.

The argument that they shared too much information with third parties is a fair one. I don’t know if it was caused by naivety or apathy. But they never hid what they were doing from users. And, unlike some are claiming, they definitely didn’t sell that information.

It was Cambridge Analytica who chose to “weaponise” (their word) that data. The engineer who acted as a whistleblower is currently playing the victim but chose to participate in a morally bankrupt project.

I've already ran across at least one user who was obviously astroturfing trying to play down FB's involvement in this crap, it's actually kind of horrifying to see on here.

On the one side, you have Facebook. On the other, you have lawyers trying to bring a questionable suit and wealthy investors upset that their portfolio's value went down slightly short term.

This is not the thread to get sanctimonious about people defending Facebook.

unfortunately some people are boot lickers by nature.

or perhaps they need to believe facebook is innocent to justify what they're working on.

A bunch of people on here work for FB...