To paint a picture here are some headlines by BILD (largest German tabloid):
"ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: So verdient Facebook mit Ihren Daten Geld", (ZUCKERBERG SCANDAL: This is how Facebook earns money with your data), article based on a report by German national television (ZDF)
"„SCHADEN FÜR DIE DEMOKRATIE“ 60 Prozent der Deutschen fürchten Facebook" (DAMAGE TO DEMOCRACY, 60 Percent of Germans fear Facebook)
Then again, you did say "propaganda" campaign, so I guess there was your assumption of dishonesty.
1) "...[E]thical to me IFF you don't make stuff up." I think you can have propaganda that uses only facts, but in a disingenuous manner. You just don't mention _all_ the facts, and/or put a lens on the wrong perspective. Is that "dishonest?" I'm not sure - maybe a misinterpretation?.
As an example, you can see this all the time with the arguments against global warming: "some studies show that temperatures are not increasing." If you look hard enough, you'll find data points and/or papers that argue against global warming, but they're a very very minor # of studies, that it's not a fair perspective or lens on the arguement.
2) "I find it imperative to do so." I am not a Facebook fan-person by any means, but I'm not sure I find it morally _imperative_ that folks rally against what they are doing. I have a hard time believing that the 1000's of employees that work there are all evil people, but rather the majority are probably well-intentioned and may just need a correction of direction. Can I prove this? No, but if they were, say, selling nukes to ISIS or something at that level, then I might agree with you a bit more.
If Facebook is the vector of incitement to violence around the world, they may be as hazardous as tobacco and firearms.
Nothing wrong with regulation and information campaigns about the dangers of tobacco and firearms, so why not Facebook?
1) While they're not perfect, I'm not sure I believe they're doing more harm than good. As an annecdotal example, my family loves Facebook, because I live pretty far from most of them, and they like the ability to know that I'm healthy + happy, and/or if I'm travelling that I got back safely. They're generally older, so not that tech-savvy, and I do give Facebook Design a lot of credit for making some really intuitive choices in a lot of areas that make it accessible to older / non-geeky audiences. Could I just text / call them? Sure, but I'm a busy person like most people here, so it's easy to just throw up a picture or post to FB and make their days a bit better.
2) A lot of the arguments that they're doing "harm" are pretty pseudo-scientific, if you look at the claims/articles closely. Many rely on "correlation over causation" views, anecdotes, and the like. It's only recently that some true studies have tried to prove this [1], but even then arguing for putting FB on the level of tobacco and guns is a strong claim to make off of minimal peer-reviewed evidence. We might as well toss Google + Amazon + Twitter into this same boat.
[1] https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-t...
Jokes aside. No-one says "shut it off", but make them follow some rules and possibly adding some rules is not a strange thing at this point.
