Yeah, there’s no objective and universal barometer for what is or isn’t immoral. I’m providing evidence (as opposed to pulling things out of thin air) for why it’s reasonable for many, or even most, people in the western world to find Guy Rosen immoral. It’s okay for individuals to not find this compelling.
On 2, a few additional quotes from Wikipedia might help (they admittedly don’t directly implicate Guy Rosen, though you’d have to be extremely charitable in assuming he wasn’t party to these decisions):
“ Onavo, which allowed the company to read network traffic on a device prior to its being encrypted, thereby giving the company the ability "to measure detailed in-app activity" and to collect analytics on Snapchat app usage from devices on which Onavo was installed.[12] It did this by creating "fake digital certificates to impersonate trusted Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon analytics servers to redirect and decrypt secure traffic from those apps for Facebook’s strategic analysis."[13] The program, which was named "Project Ghostbusters" in reference to Snapchat's ghost-shaped logo, was later expanded to include Amazon and YouTube”
“ On January 29, 2019, TechCrunch published a report detailing "Project Atlas"—an internal market research program employed by Facebook since 2016. It invited users between the ages of 13 and 35 to install the Facebook Research app—allegedly a rebranded version of Onavo Protect—on their device, to collect data on their app usage, web browsing history, web search history, location history, personal messages, photos, videos, emails, and Amazon order history. Participants received up to $20 per-month to participate in the program, which was promoted to teenagers via targeted advertising on Instagram and Snapchat. Facebook Research is administered by third-party beta testing services, including Applause and BetaBound, and requires users to install a Facebook root certificate on their phone. On iOS, this is prohibited by Apple's Enterprise Developer License Agreement, as the methods used are intended solely for use by a company's employees (for use cases such as internal software specific to their environment, and internal pre-release versions of apps)”
If everything that anyone cared to not see was censored, there’d be no content on the internet. Also, not smart to conflate (lack of) personalization with government-induced content moderation.
Just want to call out that the head of the trust and safety/integrity division, Guy Rosen, is an Israeli citizen with a strong pro-Israel bias. He’s also a person of questionable morals. From Wikipedia:
“ Guy Rosen and Roi Tiger founded Onavo in 2010. In October 2013, Onavo was acquired by Facebook, which used Onavo's analytics platform to monitor competitors. This influenced Facebook to make various business decisions, including its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp.
Since the acquisition, Onavo was frequently classified as being spyware, as the VPN was used to monetize application usage data collected within an allegedly privacy-focused environment.”
That Meta considered his questionable ethics a feature not a bug, and repeatedly promoted him, is very problematic.
What a patently absurd POV! A phone doesn’t compensate for the inability to solve for basic needs - housing, healthy food, healthcare. Or being unable to invest in skill development for themselves or their offspring, save for retirement.
Leisure time hasn’t increased in the last 100 years except for the lower income class which doesn’t have steady employment. But yes, I see your point that the homeless person who might have had a home if he had a (now automated) factory job should surely feel good about having a phone that only the ultra rich had 40 years ago.
On speculative things or trivial things, sure! On substantive matters (recall: the choice of words is “overturned”), in empirical realms or theory (physics, CS) or math, it’s rather doubtful. Anonymous, self-declared geniuses aren’t to be taken at face value.
“ I've overturned the field leader several times in science”
Either that makes you a field leader yourself, or you did it for trivial things, or you’re BSing. Which one is it?