CMV: Those who sign up for social media have no right to complain about their data being mined and sold.

Facebook benefits from huge positive network effects. The more people who use Facebook, the more unique value Facebook offers to its users, and this is value that none of Facebook's competitors offer. Facebook has described itself as a "social utility" - a direct comparison to natural monopolies like public utilities. Given these network effects, and the insane amount of effort it would take to convince all your friends (and their friends of friends, etc) to switch to a Facebook alternative, if you want to use a social utility like Facebook it is more or less the only game in town. And even then the alternatives tend to also sell you in a similar manner, or you can't expect that they won't turn around and do that eventually.

Additionally, while different friend groups operate differently, for many Facebook is already an indispensable aspect of social life. All their friends use it and coordinate some substantial fraction of social activity through the website. In addition, there's extrinsic social expectation that one has a Facebook profile: for example, employers will search for your profile and some get unnerved if that data point is not available when evaluating prospective employees.

Finally, Facebook does not give users a reasonable option to control their data, such as the possibility to subscribe for $5/mo, if it means retaining ownership of their data.

So, given that Facebook is the only real game in town, given that Facebook is integrating itself more and more into social life and even work life, and given that they do not provide reasonable alternatives for people who want to retain their data, I don't think it's very fair to invoke "no right to complain" here.

And that's not to mention that Facebook can be creepy as hell, more or less ignoring the expectations of consent.

/r/changemyview Thread