The language as written would be very much like a neighbour saying, “Can I have your weed whacker? I’ve got to do some trimming around the garden,” then following up with, “What, you want it back? But I said, ‘can I have it,’ I never said I would give it back.’”
When you ask for something and state the purpose, it implies you are asking for it for that purpose. When it says “upload info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames” it suggests that the information being used is superficial.
I have a friend who used to sell furniture. He used lots of techniques to get people to buy. That’s expected for anyone in sales - they want to sell. For him, the ethical line was: do they know what they are buying and do they know what they are paying for it?
This message appears to be designed to obfuscate both what you are buying and what you are paying. The public reaction to recent facebook privacy scandals suggests that lots of people didn’t know what they were buying or what they were paying for it.
I don’t give businesses a pass for being unethical because we expect it of them. They didn’t want to convince you that their service was a good deal for what they were asking in exchange, they wanted to make you not consider what you were giving in exchange at all.
