Facebook Emails Show Its Real Mission: Making Money and Crushing Competition

[Miles Archer]

British lawmakers on Wednesday gave a gift to every Facebook critic who has argued that the company, while branding itself as a do-gooder enterprise, has actually been acting much like any other profit-seeking behemoth.

That gift was 250 pages’ worth of internal emails, in which Facebook’s executives are shown discussing ways to undermine their competitors, obscure their collection of user data and — above all — ensure that their products kept growing.

The emails, which span 2012 to 2015, were originally sealed as evidence in a lawsuit brought against Facebook by Six4Three, an app developer. They were part of a cache of documents seized by a British parliamentary committee as part of a larger investigation into Facebook’s practices and released to the public on Wednesday.

It should not come as a surprise that Facebook — a giant, for-profit company whose early employees reportedly ended staff meetings by chanting “domination!” — would act in its own interests.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/technology/facebook-emails-privacy-data.html

[Devil Child]

1. Uhhhh when was making money and crushing competition NOT FaceBook's prime directive?

[Baitball Blogger]

2. When was it not a prime directive of capitalism?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. try this part -- "obscure their collection of user data"

Whose data is it? That's been answered in the EU, but not here.

[msongs]

3. its what corporations do nt

[egduj]

5. I've noticed that a large number of businesses try to make money and outdo their competition.

It's a crazy world.

[Kajun Gal]

6. Soooo glad I got off facebook a couple of yrs ago. Its nothing but Trouble!