Facebook faces suit over private messages
http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/03/technology/facebook-privacy-lawsuit/
It is amazing to me that people insist ‘free’ mean without cost. No one anywhere does anything for free. Even those who donate ‘out of the goodness of their heart’ are doing so because it give them the warm and fuzzies. If they got nothing out of the effort they would direct their effort elsewhere. That isn’t just human nature, that is life, the universe and everything: just like water flows to its lowest point. So we have people who use these amazing ‘free’ systems (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) without a second’s thought, even though if they take the time they can easily read that their information is being used to generate revenue (sometimes very substantial revenue!), not to mention huge stock valuations, gigantic bonuses, etc. Free to use doesn’t mean free of cost. The cost is the ‘invasion’ (how can it be an ‘invasion’ when we sought it out?) of privacy. It is certainly possible to communicate securely across networks, but only if the endpoints are controlled. When you add in a middle man who gets to look at the unencrypted data (Google, Facebook, etc.) then you should _expect_ the middle man to examine each message as it travels through their network. If the traversal is ‘free’ you should _expect_ the middle man to somehow monetize the traversal, if for no other reason than to pay for the resources used.
Sort of like asking the lion why eats the gazelle: its purpose is to eat gazelles, what else _should_ it be doing?
