No, I'm comparing the complete disregard for user's privacy / well-being with the status quo at the time, which was "major payment portals don't even implement

No, I'm comparing the complete disregard for user's privacy / well-being with the status quo at the time, which was "major payment portals don't even implement HTTPS." If you want to document Facebook's ethical lapses, you could go all the way back to 2004. But it's only the past few years people started actually caring.