It is sad that people even care or think that General Mills doesn't "experiment" on its customers by changing the amount of sugar or the size and color of packages or the flavor description or the premiums offered.
The author here appears to feel that Facebook should be regulated as a utility with an appointed oversight board :-) However, if you asked them "So you're suggesting the country nationalize Facebook and make it the 'US Social Network Service'?" they would probably sputter and cough and object, not understanding that what they want "a non-commercial entity to provide a service that costs millions of dollars a month to run for free" as just not being possible.
I think if someone can figure out a distributed social network where the cost of running it is born by the users explicitly then you'll at least have an alternative to suggest.
Seriously, who cares about this? It's not like they blocked access to their services, you could still access Facebook via their website, it's just harmless A/B testing.
The overreaction of the title is just to pull in clicks. A friend of mine worked in the sensationalist world of internet publishing for years, and he eventually felt absolutely filthy from being forced to do this kind of thing dozens of times a day.
The author here appears to feel that Facebook should be regulated as a utility with an appointed oversight board :-) However, if you asked them "So you're suggesting the country nationalize Facebook and make it the 'US Social Network Service'?" they would probably sputter and cough and object, not understanding that what they want "a non-commercial entity to provide a service that costs millions of dollars a month to run for free" as just not being possible.
I think if someone can figure out a distributed social network where the cost of running it is born by the users explicitly then you'll at least have an alternative to suggest.