Why Are We So Surprised by Facebook's Data Scandals?

Surveying the reactions to the latest revelation that Facebook played fast and loose with user data, it was hard not to harken back to what Scott McNally, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, told a group of reporters, including one from WIRED, in 1999: "You have zero privacy anyway. McNealy was widely excoriated for candor, but nearly twenty years later, we appear to be not only fighting the same fight but continually shocked that McNally's words, so jarring then, remain so true now. Zachary Karabell is a WIRED contributor and president of River Twice Research. This past spring, when it was revealed Facebook allowed campaign data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica to target users, it was grandly described as "Facebook's Privacy Crisis." When Facebook disclosed in September that hackers accessed the data of 30 million Facebook users, the massive breach that threw the public into a panic, prompting Facebook to assure the masses with messages that "Your privacy and security are important to us." And then, a few weeks later, when reports found that Facebook allowed select companies to access user posts and contact information without clear consent, commentary after commentary described this as "Yet Another Massive Privacy Scandal."