While this statement is often true (big companies make these cost-benefit decisions), I don't think it really captures what is happening to Facebook. Doing a cost-benefit analysis like this requires having data on potential costs and benefits. In most cases, Facebook didn't have this data.
When an individual, company, or institution is faced with a decision, but lacks data to properly evaluate it, they fallback on other decision making tools, including instinct and principles.
Facebook almost certainly didn't know the consequences of the many decisions they made, they didn't know the potential costs or benefits. But they did have some underlying principles, namely: maximizing platform engagement, convincing people to share more personal data on their platform, and exploiting user data for better advertising.
With these foundational principles, you can end up making some really bad decisions even without a proper cost-benefit analysis.
- lets you sign a waiver that you are willing to receive spam
- ensures that you sign with your real name, not a shell
- are not a helpless child that can be endangered
This together guarantees that neither a crime is committed nor enabled.
Indeed; when I clicked the story I expected it to be about working for a FAANG.