Sure, but FB's real "users" are the advertisers. They love this. The people who think they are FB users are just resources, inputs to the money machine. As long as the resources aren't leaving the platform, who cares?
Disagree. How do you suggest they operate their business? Does this extend to print magazines and newspapers--do you suggest they stop running ads and just give away their product? Do you think Facebook should start charging a subscription?
What users want, naturally, is everything awesome free forever. It's naive, though, to things that everyone should always get what they want.
As other have said, I agree there are hard limits and Facebook has violated them, in terms of selling data and collecting it without user's permission. That's different.
>counter to your users desire is not unscrupulous?
I mean no... they don't have to my (or my employer's) site.
I love doing things users like, and I do my best to do that often, but straight up it's not their site. If someone wants ads on their site ... I don't see a problem with that on the most basic level.
Fake news, other content, we're talking about something else.
Wendy's charging me $1.89 for a junior bacon cheeseburger goes against my desire; I'd rather get it for free. That doesn't mean it's unscrupulous for them to charge me $1.89 for a cheeseburger.
The only difference between the first stage of the pipeline and the rest is a matter of degree.