I've been arguing with a friend of mine at Facebook about this. He's unrepentant, thinks it's just advertising and it is fine. I disagree, it's an advertising machine that is constantly looking over your shoulder and it reinforces whatever bubble you happen to be in.

Here's a snippet of an email I sent him in this morning:

    Can you see how your attitude, if shared by the leaders
    at Facebook, is exactly why Facebook should get regulated?
    It's a my way or the highway, take no prisoners approach,
    and yeah, that will bring regulation.

    If your attitude was more like "yeah, I get it, it's a
    little creepy, we're trying to figure out a way to have a
    business model that works and isn't creepy" then perhaps
    you'd get to regulate yourself.

    The problem is that the lawmakers are clueless, you may
    well get some stupid draconian regulation that you really
    don't want.  If that happens, you are going to look back at
    these emails and go "welp, we blew it, this is our fault".