Monopolies and power blocs being the arbitrators of which is good or bad for our society is the new status quo.

It's not surprising that this press release focuses way more on the extensions mining ancillary 3rd-party information available via the extension (stuff outside of FB) than just what they took from FB - which otherwise FB gets unlimited and unscrutinized access too.

Instead of taking the opportunity to look within at how they are part of the problem, they push enforcement you'd normally expect more from the extension publishers, Chrome/FF/etc browser extension stores. Instead the massive data silos themselves want to run the show while still eating their cake.

They realized tncentives have changed as the interest groups and likewise the regulators (whom have the latter increasingly have their ear) have become increasingly concerned about blowback from the large pile of data they vacuum up every day, and their own self-proclaimed stewardship of that data.

They realized they can control it domestically for their own interests and fool the public into thinking the only concerns are Russia, China, and in this case malicious fringe nobody political groups with zero real-life power.

These are the new sheriffs in the 'wild-west' with inherently vague privacy rules, everything goes internally and for internally 'verified' 3rd parties. Meanwhile they create a smokescreen via engaging in token rule enforcement against tiny firms or the odd domestic authoritarian group so they can showcase themselves as being pro-privacy (ignoring the mountain of despots still using the services or blatant bipartisan double dealing).

IRL it's most likely not some top-level master plan or conspiracy as many claim, these sorts of moral inconsistencies happen naturally in these firms when they set up teams to control priority narriatives and have their loyalists moderate content, with a) primary focus on the fringes and easy hapless targets while b) willfully ignoring the bigger players or 'politically acceptable' groups (and their own businesses over-arching models).

History is littered with examples coming from the 'morally superior west'. Just look at northern Pakistan on the borders of Afghanistan for these sorts of compromises. Engaging in a decades long phony-war while ignoring geopolitical elephants in the room. These same inconsistencies are rampant in our new politically acceptable reality.

These inconsistencies are often obvious by default until some super egregious cases get 'caught' or more importantly politically unpalatable use-cases get exposed, then all of a sudden they are the good caretakers over your data - the people they long promised they would be!

Phony inconsistency is their calling card and easy to sport for anyone who is paying attention.

I sometimes wish I too was dumb enough to engage in hyper-partisan politics. Like blindly backing a sport team. And not see the long term deterioration of democracy, transparency, and rise of misguided authoritarianism by people who just discovered politics and think flailing about with new forms of top-down censorship will not simply backfire. Or is somehow better than the universal rejection of the (already) tiny fringe negative forces which we saw immedately after the capitol riots from bipartisan sides.\\

No, FUD convinces them we have to destroy the rights, rights created to protect them, to get there...