I'm no Facebook fan, but the chronology seems remarkable here. Facebook were irritating Rupert Murdoch, and traditional media in general, by refusing to pay fees for articles that appeared in people's feeds. About a month before everybody started running hit-pieces on Facebook, the negotiations broke down, with Facebook telling the news guys to go take a hike.

Suddenly, everybody is absolutely horrified by the fact that Facebook is selling people's data. Despite the fact that it's always been their explicit business model.

Facebook is absolutely a horrible idea, but the news are hardly being impartial. It's incumbent publishers trying to knock out a new rival, using their reputation and power to get the newcomer dragged through the mud by politicians. Nobody should be surprised that the most news-sensitive, not the most privacy-sensitive governments were the ones to attack Facebook most directly. The UK, for instance, is perhaps the most invasive surveillance state west of China - and yet, they've been leading the charge against Facebook. Despite the fact that the same government has floated ideas about monetizing government data about its own citizens!