Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if it's the other way around? What if the smart and passionate folks at Facebook really do just want to get the internet to the rest of the world, and this is the way they can justify doing so? They are a public company, after all. They have to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, or at least appear to do so...
The fact that going public always tends to make a company's contributions to society less altruistic and turn the ethos of the company into "moar profitz foar de shaerhoaldurs" raises some fairly damning questions about our capital system and its tendency towards greed and stagnation.
Blaming 'capital' seems fairly erroneous. Deirdre Mccloskey, in her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' has a very convincing go at turning the idea into a fallacy. The accumulation and use of capital isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. How much good has come from our desire to pool resources.
Also, it seems to me we tend to forget what the word 'corporation' means, literally "any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body". Certainly the other more obvious definition of the word includes that thing about "having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members", though me must remember that the words "an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law" come immediately prior. If people lose faith in a "company" it will rapidly cease to exist, or at the very lease must drastically change in order to continue.
And yes, I acknowledge we are, probably to a greater extend than we typically realise, products of our environment, products of the societal structures, and built environs, we find ourselves in, and that this makes it very messy to try to discern cause and effect, and to apportion blame. I guess I'm just sceptical of apportioning blame, I don't believe it's particularly helpful.
Maybe this comment is a bit incoherent. I often find myself writing comments then not posting them because I can't seem to make a point without contradicting, or undermining, my own writing.
Maybe my point is that things probably aren't as simple, as clear cut, as we think. Maybe that's why some people study the liberal arts and sciences and go on to write entire volumes on these sorts of topics.