You don't actually have to meet people to form an opinion about them, you can simply use all the information at your disposal and base your judgement on that. If a lot of people reach the same conclusion that does not automatically mean that they're a mob, they could also simply be in agreement.

Zuckerberg comes across in interviews that I've watched and in the statements that he makes as the guy that got away with it. And Facebooks strategies and actions re-inforce that. It is very well possible that that is a wrong conclusion but to date I have yet to see much evidence of that.

If facebook throws its considerable weight behind an all-out effort to protect the privacy of its users at the behest of the upper management then I'll re-consider that position but until then my opinion will remain where it is today: distrust coupled with a creep factor that is right off the scale.

The German Data protection watchdog today issued a message that Facebook is in breach of European privacy laws:

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/05/18/2149357/german-priv...

That alone should make you wonder about whether or not the FB upper management is playing nice with its users or not.

I find it amusing that you assume those are the only two options. I joined HN 1701 days ago, but I already had a dim view of FB's management due to several actions taken by the company as well as some of their internal policies.

It does change things when you know the people personally in terms of what you might say about the company they work for.

But what the "HN mob" is evaluating is what Facebook is actually doing, not each and every employee of the company as a person.

Ultimately, it's more important what Facebook's users think of the company, and what hackers who understand the technology that Facebook uses think of what they are doing, not what Facebook's business partners think of Facebook's employees and management.

(This is my opinion not fact.)