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I ask what is useful then? People who are working on Open Compute project are definitely learning new things. Every engineering blog post from FB is the reassurance of quality research done right. FB's work may not be impactful to you, but it is impactful to a lot of others. Ever heard of React and Cassandra? All came out of Facebook. Sorry, I have to be harsh, your comment is useless.

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If they were a research organisation then I would have nothing but respect for Facebook's accomplishments. However they are not a research organisation but instead a for-profit corporation that devotes an obscene amount of money and effort to undermining privacy for all users of the internet, irrespective of whether you use their platform or not.

I don't think it's fair to judge the merits of an entity purely by what it brings to the world, without also considering what it in turn takes from it.

I think your concern for privacy has no respect for the individual accomplishment. Facebook, like many other for-profit organizations, will always monetizing user data. You have the choice of not using it. The outcome of their research has impact from environmental to computer science. You may disagree how a for-profit should run, but I respect the people who work there performing top tier research. You'd think all of the DoD research grants are less sinister? Perhaps we should never accept any grants from the DoD so none of them goes into military action based on your sentiment of social responsibility.

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