I opened Google News. First site I've seen is t3.com - some review of pebble wearable.

I was greeted by cookie dialog. I clicked "more info" -> "partners" -> "legitimate interest".

131 vendors, including among other "Adform - agentic advertising" who wishes to store laundry list of my data for 10 years.

Typical "legitimate interest" section is about sharing data with 40 "trusted partners".

And yes in the end it's always people. What makes a difference is that some of those people sit on the Meta's board and they consistently show, they aren't humanity's finest. To the point, where I don't think any technological stunt can make up for harm they're doing, therefore making their existence net negative for humans.

Of course one can argue on cynical/real-politik level something like Meta was unavoidable due to "how the world works", but that doesn't mean they should be immune from criticism, as honest public discourse is one of the ways to push Overton window.

Happy to see appreciation on your part :-)

What I'm arguing is that if Meta ceased to exist some years ago, there would be less bludgeoning to film to begin with, as social media-driven hate is source for a lot of them.

Is easy access to private camera positive for people disadvantaged against the system? Likely yes.

Would the benefits be largely eclipsed by negative impact like perpetuating violence, depression and polarization if Meta is main vendor? Also yes, because they are careless enough to extract private data and offer it to people benefiting from vulnerable individuals.

Hardly surprising your comments are discussed in context of Meta if you comment in thread about Meta.

Only two problems I can think of: it's bit slow - even our company instance which has reasonable resources could be bit faster. Also they could use a better UI designer.

None of it is major problem for me. As self-hosted Dropbox/calendar/cospend it's perfectly fine.