This article misses the point. Its not about the developers, its about the people driving the developers. If you take anti-trust, wiretapping, and other existi

This article misses the point. Its not about the developers, its about the people driving the developers. If you take anti-trust, wiretapping, and other existing laws like the constitution and applied it rigorously you wouldn't have these issues. These companies have been allowed to spy on their customers as an indirect arm of government without being held to the same laws governments are held to, and worse to make a profit off it (i.e. 4th Amendment). If you take government money out of the monetization game, and enforce existing laws like anti-trust, this behavior goes away almost immediately because there is no financial incentive and many disincentives (i.e. prison and fines). Its not like this hasn't happened in the past. Read up on the Stasi, and other socialist systems. You see the same fundamental problems going back thousands of years on that side of the economic system. You either have one of two factors driving economies. The division of labor which historically protects and rewards people for being ingenuous with strong property rights, and Corruption which offers incentive to a small group of people to make a system work. The former is self-moderating as long you don't have a Ponzi or Fraud going on, and the latter is unstable over time because people get old, age and die eventually, and competence isn't rewarded.