Given Facebook's influence and the sheer size of their userbase, the potential long-term implications of this particular kind of manipulation are... unsettling.
It's ironic. Silicon Valley is all about question the authorities. Ask why.
And now we hear stories like these Orwellian like practices...
This will be another interesting topic historians will examine years from now. What happens when an outsider/outcast/underdog group becomes the insiders/powerful. Do they act like tycoons in the past (using power to preserve itself) or keep true to the spirit of outsider/outcast that may lead to its demise?
I vote for Silicon Valley powers becoming like the past tycoons.
His thesis is that the pinnacle of power throughout time as technology has evolved has shifted from brute strength, to money in the industrial age, and now finally to information in the post-industrial age which we live in now.
http://www.amazon.com/Powershift-Knowledge-Wealth-Violence-C...
Power is a funny thing... and I suspect people aren't so different than other animals in this regard.