Lying to the govt. is pretty vague. What lie in particular are you referring to?
> engineer who has even an iota of consideration for privacy
I think it isn't hard to say current practices in tech willfully deceive users about the usage and the value of their data because that would be orthogonal to their business interest.
I think framing it like that is vastly more honest. Not down-playing expectations of privacy.
I think that is reductive of engineers opinions for one, and over-stating the behavior of these companies. How are people being deceived? Are they being lied to in the privacy agreements? That would be obviously deceptive and I can agree they should be transparent, but it's very public that data is part of the revenue generation for these places nowadays.
I think if people just expect to have a free service and give nothing up in return that isnt really a reasonable expectation anymore, so I don't find it deceptive or repugnant. Maybe there is an alternative where social media platforms don't rely on personal data and advertisements and I'd be all for that, but it doesn't exist now.
I do not use their service, and yet they stalk me around the web, with countless tracking pixels and like buttons, assembling my shadow profile. Yes, they are abusing privacy as much as real-world stalkers are.