I’m Michael. I was a principal engineer at Facebook from 2009 to 2017, where I was the top code contributor of all time and also conducted hundreds of interviews. I recently co-founded Formation.dev, an engineering fellowship that trains and refers engineers directly into big tech. Ask me Anything!

Thanks for putting int the time to write up your thoughts, I think we can have a good discussion on this. 1. Completely agree, Facebook collects a ton of information, whether the intention is for useful product features, advertising, whether it's secure or not, the fact that they have it somewhere means that there is the possibility for "bad actors" to use it. I would argue that many companies have this problem, like banks, crypto wallets etc... but I would want Facebook to be taking a lead here. 2. There are two things in the second paragraph. Facebook isn't actively misusing data and there isn't a single "algorithm" doing this. This is a misconception that was in the Social Dilemma on Netflix that was represented in a way over the top way. But the second part is similar to point 1. If you for a second assume Facebook isn't doing anything too terrible with this data, what would happen if someone truly evil was. And I think that's another important thing Facebook should answer. 3. Be open minded to more than just only one solution. Maybe that's the best solution but at least leave the door open :D. Google and Amazon do both collect as much information blatantly in the same way Facebook does. Do you have IMDB TV on Amazon Prime? If you watch shows there, you get commercials for products you were just shopping on Amazon for. Apple is building out an ad network to compete with Facebook, they collect a lot of information that they use internally. I think there are ways that all these companies can do a better job and we should hold them accountable. All four make far too much money to not have to give good answers.