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.
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This question that we should all wonder about because you said you saw someone else talking about it on the tele? That one might be moose? I mean moot?
Thank you doc. I have a few huge grains around here. I appreciate the free consultation.
Why does anyone ever think that any of us are surprised?
We’re angry, not surprised.
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Me too, not that I’ve ever been a member of Facebook. No doubt that option will be removed from the BoingBoing login page…
Your condesention is pretty damn funny all things considered. Your position is so strange. You say are not defending Facebook, but your argument seems to be that they said they didn’t, so that is that. I don’t have a Facebook account because I did not trust them from the get go. If you have that much confidence in them, you go ahead. I will sit back and watch this shitstorm with a great deal of amusement.
Well, Mark, they may have, but I did not. Yet you collected my data anyway, because I was adjacent to someone foolish enough to join your service.
I hope every country with privacy laws shuts you down for that alone. I can’t imagine that would be good for your precious share prices.
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Yeah. I am feeling self-satisfied after deleting my FB account today. Increasingly unwilling to work with companies that don’t deserve my trust and don’t think it matters. I’m about to not buy a Volkswagen as well.
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I hate to do this, but damn, man, with that `nym, lack of familiarity with American idioms and I assume your autocorrect changed moot to moose! I am dying! 
How’s Natasha?
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