Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet if you said "Or you can pay me directly to use this service," how do you think people would respond? And you literally just described the profession of marketing. So if you replaced the inflammatory phrase "manipulate your thinking" with "market toward you", I think they'd be totally fine with it. I mean, why else do you "Like" something on Facebook anyway unless you want other people to know that you like it…
Well, your whole argument seems to be based on what ill-informed people will tolerate, not was is ethical. I agree marketing is intended to manipulate your thinking... or "market towards you". I suspect I have a different attitude about marketing than you do. I don't use facebook, I used for a week in 2007, and thought "this is just a marketing data machine, no thanks". Further, the innocuous sounding "Connecting the…
The fact that some people choose to remain uninformed about what Facebook is doing with the data that these people willfully give them is on those people.
What is ethical in this situation is personal to you, so you can't make a blanket statement that marketing is or not ethical.
Again, to me, it's perfectly ethical, but I'm a big believer in personal responsibility.
As you said, you signed up, saw what Facebook was about and bailed.
That's called personal choice, and it's a wonderful thing.