There is a suddenness to this episode that deserves some examination. For years, Facebook has been violating people's privacy. For years, people went along with

There is a suddenness to this episode that deserves some examination. For years, Facebook has been violating people's privacy. For years, people went along with it. Perhaps on some level, people were disturbed by it, but they weren't angry enough to do anything about it. If we were discussing economics, then we would call this a Minsky moment[1]. If you substitute "trust" for "money" then this almost fits: "A Minsky moment is a sudden major collapse of asset values which is part of the credit cycle or business cycle. Such moments occur because long periods of prosperity and increasing value of investments lead to increasing speculation using borrowed money." But I think we are also seeing a sudden moral panic, like the one that destroyed MySpace in 2006. danah boyd wrote about that at the time[2]: "Because of their position of power, outsiders are pushing the big red emergency button, screaming danger and creating a complete and utter moral panic. Welcome to a generational divide, where adults are unable to see the practices of their children on kids' terms. If MySpace falters in the next 1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic." But those children grew up. The 16 year old of 2006 is now 28. So this moral panic is a bit different. It's not adults freaking out about what is being done to kids, it's adults freaking out about what is being done to themselves. Mind you, I think it's obvious that Facebook has behaved very badly, so this episode of castigation is well deserved. But the suddenness of it makes me think there is also an element of panic. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment [2] https://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html https://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html