The single biggest everyday-use thing I miss with PHP is keyword arguments. With PHP the only real equivalent is passing an array of arguments and then checking if each possible key exists, and that's just way clunkier.
The most provable thing is that if you ever make the mistake of granting them access to your email account, everyone on your contact list can expect multiple spam messages FROM YOU begging them to join LinkedIn. It's the kind of thing only the shadiest of shady Facebook apps employ.
Harvesting of contact information even without permitted access is less clear cut but there's widespread concern due to the large number of questionable coincidences.
Yep, it's a social status dogwhistle, just like requiring college degrees for jobs where it is in no way relevant.
There's also a significant racial component to it. It's not a coincidence that top power-broking universities have moved sharply away from objective towards subjective metrics and increased the percentage of legacy admissions at the same time that increased access for minorities has been sought.
It's astounding that an article like this is published in 2013 anywhere but the dark corners of supremacist sites and the memoirs of fading British lords, where it belongs.
This is nothing more than moaning that the modern predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite are too "new money" for the old predominantly-white, predominantly-male, virtually entirely rich elite.
I love these "economists" waffling on about reasons why young people aren't spending money on X like their parents used to, that have nothing to do with oh I don't know "stagnant wages", "crippling student debt", or "30% unemployment".
"It's All About The Material Conditions, Stupid" -- Karl R.R. Marx, A Song of Capital and Ice
At which point you're back to the same basic problem with passwords: the weakest link and root-problem is the average user's lack of knowledge. There wouldn't be such a mad scramble to find a decent alternative to passwords if everyone was using KeePass or the like, and no alternative is going to be near-future viable if it relies on something too complicated for the nearly-everyone who isn't using strong generated passwords.
2FA is working because all the user has to do is get a text. Anything beyond that level of difficulty is simply a non-starter at this point.