> Actually, my point was intended to be read with sarcasm.

Ok.

> I am basically cynical about the suspicion that this society seems to automatically cast upon the successful.

When you're successful you will get a lot of media coverage, and that in turn begets more scrutiny. A less successful company would have less of an influence and hence would not be covered as thoroughly. If you become successful you have to really manage your media presence or risk some damage in the longer term.

Familiarity really does breed contempt.

> People automatically favor the underdog, casting it in a good light.

Yes, and that automatism is not a good thing.

> Once greater successes are reached, the former underdog is looked upon as either a bully or dinosaur.

Yes. But not always! Some companies have over the years managed to keep their image remarkably clean. But for every 'good' company there are unfortunately plenty of examples of corporate misconduct and those companies are making it harder for 'nice' ones to succeed.

> I'm not saying that the people or organizations that find success necessarily are bad or good. I'm saying that I've noticed that people seem look upon them either positively or negatively based upon their size, rather than their deeds.

Absolutely, there is a loss of objectivity and mass hysteria associated with 'public outrage' about privacy violations at facebook which would probably have been ignored by the press in a smaller organization. The problem is that a minor issue at facebook immediately gets multiplied by the 400 million facebook users as a potential audience for media coverage, blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

> It is strange to have seen, for example, how rapidly Google went from being perceived as the do-gooder saviors of the new economy to being called Evil.

What goes for facebook, goes just the same for google, and google really didn't help matters when they chose 'do no evil' as their slogan, it gave every google hater a really good handle and a perfect way to use their own words against them.

> Viewed on the balance I haven't detected much of a change in their behavior, and I am very happy about having Google in my world.

Google has done lots of stuff good and has messed up a few times too. On balance they've done great and I couldn't live a day without them, no matter how good duckduckgo.com has become :)

> The vibe here at hacker news has grown from being fix-it oriented and anti-establishment to being snarly and anti-success in all stripes.

Hm, I don't know about that. There is a lot of truth in what you say but it's not a general rule. It's just gotten bigger and there is a lot more in terms of one liners and vote mobbing (especially if you hold an impopular opinion on some subject you can find yourself at -4 in a hurry) but on the whole it still is - just like google - largely positive.

No single website can be 'all good', and just like facebook, google and others have their issues because of their size, so does HN. It would be surprising if it didn't.

> It's one of the reasons I rarely contribute here anymore.

Your contributions are being missed, I definitely noticed you dropping off the radar and the site is poorer for it.

> I've actually been yelled at for being a greentech entrepreneur,

That really sucks, and I don't agree with it one bit. In fact I applaud you for it and I think that we should have more rather than less people working on stuff that really matters, such as renewable energy technology and sustainable living. HN is very much pro-nuclear power from what I've seen in various discussions.

> or alternately, conjuring government support through climate lies,

Climate research has been dented by some not-so-ethical researchers, but this is now used by people with an agenda to invalidate all the research. And that's really a pity because it seems as though we might be shooting ourselves in the foot big time on that one if we don't get to some kind of objectivity. After all, science is about finding out what is going on, regardless of who is right.

> I've seen rage build up in people's eyes, as they realize I'm not clueless in a techie world, but a technical founder with my own successes behind me.

It's sad, and yes, there are a lot of jealous people out there. The more successful you get the more you'll be confronted with that, it's the shadow side of any kind of success. It is also why people are gleeful when google or facebook mess up, they elevate their own positions by kicking at others.

But that does not mean that successful people and companies should not be scrutinized. There has to be a way for a company to be both successful, ethical and open.

> I wonder what this future world will do to its tall poppies.

From personal experience in school I would say that tall poppies have a real problem staying tall. The world would very much like to reduce them to average height so they don't stand out so much.

> In any case, I strongly believe Facebook is a net benefit for the world.

I believe so too, they've (re)connected me with lots of people and for that alone I'm very grateful to Mark Zuckerberg, no matter what the origins of facebook or how much they 'violate' my privacy. One reason why that doesn't worry me at all is that I have very little information on there that you couldn't get in 20 different ways, and secondly because I really have no problem with them selling what little info they have on me. If that keeps them in the air, more power to them.

> I can't think of any major problem society faces that wouldn't be helped on the balance by better and easier communication, and I think Facebook aids that (as do cellphones, Skype, email, Twitter, etc.).

A friend of mine once wrote that a human being has an insatiable need to communicate, I believe that's true. We communicate almost all day long when we are awake, except when doing physical labour. From whistling to indicate we're in a good mood to a scream of pain, words, poems, music, blog postings, emails, visual arts, architecture, snail mail and so on, each and every bit of contribution that potentially outlasts a human life starts out as a communication of sorts.

I think it is that which separates us from the other 'animals' on this planet and we should treasure each and every contribution to our ability to communicate.

The facebook issues will blow over, facebook will sooner or later learn their lesson on how to communicate on privacy issues with their users, and users will learn how to manage their online presence better. It's just as much an educational issue as it is a privacy issue and people are wising up to this. The balance will shift a bit, not much, and facebook will continue.

And who knows, maybe one day another, better facebook will come along. But until then this one is pretty good. And I have not killed my account there.