Army of GOD wrote:Oh, and by your logic: someone goes out and buys Campbell soup in a can. That person then goes and brutally murders 15 kittens. Therefore, you don't buy stock in Campbell's soup because it's used to kill kittens.
Your analogy is flawed. Campbell wouldn't be responsible for everything their customers do, unless there's a proven causation between their soup and their customers' actions. Whereas, if a company willingly poisons their customers, they are directly responsible for it.
Furthermore, let's get back to this comment for a bit:
Army of GOD wrote:I love how natty's beef with Facetbook is that they don't respect people's privacy. You know, the people are 100% willing when they sign up for the site
See, that's one thing you don't get: Facebook et al. don't only track people who sign up for their site. Ever visit a site that has one of the ubiquitous "Like" buttons or whatever else social network plugins? That's enough. Facebook gets their tracking cookies on your computer. Any website with an ad - tracking cookie. And sure, if you never create a facebook account, it's harder for them to get your real-life information, but they still have your IP - all it takes is for you to foolishly give out your information somewhere that Facebook has access to - bam, your name, etc. is now associated with your IP, and all the information of your browsing history etc. they've gathered and associated with your IP is now associated with your real life name.
inb4 "just stay away from all sites that have things that can track you, it's your own fault for using them!"
But see, when you browse other sites, nowhere did you give permission to these corporations to track your every move. Nowhere did you give permission for them to gather information about you which they can then sell to whoever wants it - insurance companies, employers trying to decide whether to hire you, banks trying to decide whether to give you a loan - those can all be sold the information that social networks collect about you. You may laugh about it now, but are you still laughing when you get denied a loan because of your online shopping habits, or not hired to a job because you watch dwarf porn?
Besides, that would require you to stay away from the majority of sites on the internet, pretty much.
inb4 "it's their own fault for using the internet at all!"
Duh, that's so stupid, why would you even... uh... possibly were going to say that - internet has become so essential to our lives and communication... besides, we should have a right to use the internet without having our movements tracked by corportions without our permission.
inb4 "but you can stop them from tracking you if you know how! all you have to do is install some browser plugins!"
True, but how many people know about this? How many people are technically savvy enough to do it, when most people still use IE and manage to periodically f*ck up their computer with malware because a blinking pop-up window told them they won a car or some shit?
And you're again... uh... hypothetically missing the point, because people are not being told up front that they are being tracked - they are not even given the option to opt out from tracking by the sites that do it... sure, most browsers now have the "do not track" checkbox but it's basically a formality, the tracking cookies just go right ahead and circumvent it.
