Facebook's behavior kind of goes beyond mere data collection tho. They have hired paid shills/astroturf orgs like Microsoft and Oracle did to go after rivals or

Facebook's behavior kind of goes beyond mere data collection tho. They have hired paid shills/astroturf orgs like Microsoft and Oracle did to go after rivals or plant fake stories. And then there's the Onavo VPN fiasco, wherein Facebook was using VPN snooping for competitive intelligence, so they could buy up any threats early, at least according to leaks. There's some questionable stuff you could say Google has done (Disclosure: I work for Google), like fund think tanks on free speech that end up coming to the conclusion that 'Search Algorithms = Free Speech' and that you can't regulate algorithms (although some of those orgs, like the ACLU and EFF likely held those positions prior, and the EFF is not beyond publishing critical pieces on Google), but I think funding researchers who end up writing favorable opinions is a different category than funding people to plant fake stories and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Like, the Koch Brothers funding a college researcher that studies global warming, and it publishing a skeptical review of existing papers, is more defensible than the Koch's funding a bunch of online trolls that post non-credible rumors or conspiracy stories on regulators who want to crack down on carbon. The former is at least philosophically defensible if the criticisms of the academic literature actually expose real flaws. The latter is just immoral.