I think it's easier to understand how this happens as an aggregate effect instead of "one engineer looked the other way".
As a hypothetical example:
- Some engineer implements the Like/Share buttons to push more users onto Facebook.
- Some engineer working on the ads product realizes that the Like button is a great Trojan horse to gather info about a user's browsing habits. Thinks of it in terms of analytics - "understanding who the users are." Harmless enough, but now we're over the ethical hurdle of collecting that data.
- Another engineer working on the ads product realizes that using this data to target ads could get advertisers to pay more for the same ads. Now you're just using data we already have, right?
- Facebook signs a bespoke advertising deal with some companies which includes access non-anonymous data. Facebook already collects and uses it and users sign it over in terms of service, so... what's the problem with using it in a way that's still advertising, just specific to some new partners?
None of the steps look that bad if you don't look too closely. No engineer had to think too hard about the specific ethical problems, but the aggregate effect is the travesty we have today. If any decision maker along this path stopped to really think about it and cared enough to stop it, this might not have happened, but market competition and general indifference meant nobody really took a long, hard look at this chain of events as it was happening.
As a hypothetical example:
- Some engineer implements the Like/Share buttons to push more users onto Facebook.
- Some engineer working on the ads product realizes that the Like button is a great Trojan horse to gather info about a user's browsing habits. Thinks of it in terms of analytics - "understanding who the users are." Harmless enough, but now we're over the ethical hurdle of collecting that data.
- Another engineer working on the ads product realizes that using this data to target ads could get advertisers to pay more for the same ads. Now you're just using data we already have, right?
- Facebook signs a bespoke advertising deal with some companies which includes access non-anonymous data. Facebook already collects and uses it and users sign it over in terms of service, so... what's the problem with using it in a way that's still advertising, just specific to some new partners?
None of the steps look that bad if you don't look too closely. No engineer had to think too hard about the specific ethical problems, but the aggregate effect is the travesty we have today. If any decision maker along this path stopped to really think about it and cared enough to stop it, this might not have happened, but market competition and general indifference meant nobody really took a long, hard look at this chain of events as it was happening.