a) I fail to see how facebook's grander ambitions have much to do with this topic

b) if Facebook were to truly create a "perfect algorithm" that only showed me "what i liked," they would never show me ads. That was what you presented as your greatest concern in an above comment, that users wouldn't be introduced to negative things and this was a bad thing. It is completely counter to Facebook's goals to produce this algorithm and show me only what I like - so that earlier point is moot. In addition, it further demonstrates how this comment I'm responding to is only tangentially related to the discussion we were having before.

c)

Facebook isn't really about friends anymore;

This in no way belies my point that you still select what friends you add or do not add on Facebook, which was also relevant...to the discussion we were having before you went off on a huge tangent. That discussion was about whether or not a user would be able to discern that the news feed is filtered by more than him- or herself.

d) Are you deluded? Yes. Do you know a lot of people who consider Facebook to be life or something?

e) I'm not being naive. However, this (the issue of Facebook being a big sinister prying presence in everyone's life who may warp information based on what it wants its users to think or see) was not the issue that we were discussing. Curation and manipulation are different. In that case, why don't we start talking about how you aren't wringing your hands about Rupert Murdoch and should be?

Do you have valid concerns about the presence of Facebook in people's lives? Sure. Were you communicating effectively about what they were? No. You appear to be jumping from point to point because you already know what your argument is - Facebook is a big bad evil - but have not settled on how you are going to prove it, or how it is related to the article at hand.