Great information and so nicely presented. Reading through it i had to stop and wonder, why aren't more articles written with this type of interactive data to back up the author's points.
It may have been a hackneyed attempt to point out real issues, but to call it propaganda... by who? Who is running the big 'maybe all these social networks are kinda bad, or at least we should be aware of what they are doing' scheme?
>The honeyed words of social justice are more important than great, well executed products, apparently.
I like how all the other comments are pointing out that the forces behind an acquisition are never good for 'focused products' and then there's this comment that shows us the truth, it's those damn kids and their social justice that ruins the products.
Which does an excellent job helping to stimulate thought of just what the power and purpose of these types of apps as well other structures (alphabet) are able to do...
I've seen a couple of comments in this direction across sites and would like to take a moment to point out that while advertisements are certainly annoying and a hassle, the root of the problem comes with the mining of behavior data that is then transformed into profile packages sold for advertising (and whatever other) purposes.
So, even if a browser is blocking ads, or changing the way ads are interacted with, the more important worry (imo) is whether the browser (or its features) are successful in blocking the behavior profile being built by aggregators such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
Worse than the 1960s.