Because governments have a monopoly on violence, and can use your data against you to imprison you, bomb your village, defame you, etc. I can quit Facebook or Google much easier than I can quit the TSA database or DMV record system.
And I don't think too many people would disagree that the best software developers, machine learning people, and computer security people are going to tech companies rather than work at government offices.
And finally, governments are influenced by temporary forces of who's in power, like we are seeing now in the United States. And whoever is in power can replace departments with people to do what they want, which can be borderline illegal. They only have to worry about the next N years, where N is often a number less than 5.
The good news is that with the death of the profit motive, machine learning applications will become less important for the operation of Facebook's core mechanisms.
Yes, you are right about the government, but I think FB is being used by the government to get around the built-in legal protections. Moving it to the other side might make those tradeoffs more visible, but also more fair.
Why infect the democracy by shackling one of these companies to it? Companies basically all die eventually, but they’re much more durable the more closely attached they are to governments.
Facebook proper is losing droves of users in the US. We might do well to keep the playing field level and let someone else beat them. More dominant market players from the past have misstepped and gone under.
And I don't think too many people would disagree that the best software developers, machine learning people, and computer security people are going to tech companies rather than work at government offices.
And finally, governments are influenced by temporary forces of who's in power, like we are seeing now in the United States. And whoever is in power can replace departments with people to do what they want, which can be borderline illegal. They only have to worry about the next N years, where N is often a number less than 5.