When the incentives are this large, it’s just too profitable to not “be evil.” We can decry this, but it’s just human nature.

I also think this is a sign of late stage capitalism where the opportunities to profit “ethically” are becoming much harder to find and exploit. That leads to more pressure to find gray areas that others’ ethical or moral convictions prevented them from exploiting.

I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.

>I just installed graphene os on a brand new cash-bought pixel for the express purpose of not being left out of some important WhatsApp groups or missing out on some other experiences that require installing apps that I know won’t respect my privacy. I assume anything from Meta is hazardous at this point.

There isn't much point in the "cash-bought" part when android has blocked non-system apps from reading hardware identifiers years ago. Not to mention that facebook can easily deanonmyize you through your social graph.

I assume this is a secondary phone? Curious as I’ve been contemplating the same thing

> it’s just human nature

It's not, though. The universal avarice of the current era may not be unprecedented in history, but it wasn't the norm through most of the 20th century. There was a time when layoffs were considered painful failures at some corporations, instead of routine business strategy -- probably because the Great Depression was still in living memory.

Enshittification really hits hard when the luster has fallen but the money printing must continue. The general perception that Facebook is somewhat of a utility app now, the young people have departed for more hip and current platforms, and it's just most used by grandparents and content-generating bots. (Though it's still useful for Marketplace and Events and so forth.) Also long before this, FB weakened a lot of its other features such as Groups, or Facebook Apps.

So it makes sense that they're looking for more nefarious, scraping the bottom of the barrel, desparate behavior to keep the money printer churning despite increasing consumer apathy.

In all fairness to Meta, “don’t be evil” was a different company. Meta is the “they trust me, [the] dumb fucks” company. So they’re being somewhat true to their words. /s