Standard disclaimer: I work for Facebook, views expressed are my own and not the company's. Yada, yada.

This post by Marco Arment obviously rubbed me the wrong way. I'll admit this post is just taking the flamebait.

I'm a pretty big Apple die-hard. I admire their quality, passion and drive to improve people's lives through products. So I follow Apple punditry regularly to keep up with the rumors and other insights. There are a number vocal Apple proponents out there, Arment and John Gruber happen to be two of them. They're usually consistently thoughtful about the motivations behind Apple's actions. Gruber in particular has been accused a number of times of being a paid Apple shill. While he gets paid very well by advertisers for what he actually does, I don't think having a pro-Apple bias means you're paid directly by Apple.

Both of them take an incendiary approach in regards to most other successful market leaders however. Their takes on Google and Facebook are prime examples of how they'll cast stones at companies from the outside without having a clue as to what goes on on the inside of. Which leads me to wonder, if they have no clue about these companies and will freely write about their evils, are their previously noted insightful takes on Apple valid? Gruber has noted he has friends inside of Apple and he also interacts with them as a "member of the press" so I'm inclined to believe his thoughts are shaped by this. Arment, as creator of one of the most popular iOS apps, might have the same.

I highly doubt they have any friends inside Google or Facebook based on their published works. So they're left to spin whatever they want about them with little regard for what's actually true. This brings me back to the post above. Some minor admissions that Apple isn't perfect, followed by generalized accusations about the motivations of Google and Facebook. If only life were so black and white. The true bullshit lies within their ability to shun commercialism except for when it suits them.

I'm no Google fan but I'm not dumb enough to fantasize that Larry Page plots and schemes ways to grab all of your data and store as a master plot to take over the world. No, they're there to provide a service to the world (index everything and make it searchable) and make a profit. Selling ads and finding better ways to target them appropriately is core to both Google and Facebook's business plans. Focusing on the business plan and ignoring the company missions is very selective hearing indeed. The irony of course is that Arment and Gruber's business plans aren't far off from the same thing.

Business Plan:

• Google: Sell targeted advertising based user interests.
• Facebook: Sell targeted advertising based on user interests.
• John Gruber: Sell advertising based on his own interests and who will pay him.
• Marco Arment: Sell software.

Core Mission:

• Google: To index the world's data.
• Facebook: To make the world more open and connected.
• John Gruber: To link to others' and offer his own opinion.
• Marco Arment: To make things he finds useful.

I'll put Facebook's track record on making the world a better place up any day against Arment and Gruber's. The holier than thou attitude is unwarranted, but is undeniably associated with the Apple-follower community. Nothing is ever good enough from a market leader, unless it's Apple.

As far as what's noted in the post about Facebook's "bullshit", I'd love to address that. Being a part of Facebook for the past 15 or so months has given me more insight on the company than these guys will ever have. It's seriously the best company in the world presently in terms of openness, honesty and mission. There are no secret plots to make it so you don't have any privacy. We want people to open up about themselves, sure. Humans are social creatures and we want to better the world by creating tools that enable that type of information sharing. But we want you to do it in a way that is comfortable for you. For some people, they'll never be comfortable with it and that's fine.

More irony comes from Arment and Gruber being proponents of Twitter, which has next-to-no privacy settings. Everything there is public by default. They're also phobic of services that want your full name, but both freely publish their own on the Internet. Why? Because identity is key to business. Identity is also key to personal areas as well though and that's the part they miss. It's okay to be for anonymity, just don't claim that every service that's not anonymous must just want your personal information to sell. Facebook doesn't sell any user information. Selling the ability to target your ads based on demographics is not even close to the same thing.

Arment's assertion that people don't want to interact with brands is not only false, it's asinine. Hundreds of millions of people "Like" things on Facebook explicitly for this reason. It's reality and observable. Twitter's current business plan is also based on this fact. Conveniently ignored of course in the context of talking about Facebook, of course. There's value to the brand (strengthening and measuring) and value to the end-user (two-way communication, involvement).

His final assertion that Facebook tracks what users do while they're logged out is false. The author of the original post that identified a bug sending too much information to Facebook wrote a follow-up post that for the most part vindicated us and our response but of course, nobody remembers the response, only the accusation which unfortunately gets repeated and repeated until it's "accepted". A good blogger should hold a higher standard, rise above the here say and examine everything from both sides.

I just wanted to get that off my chest. It's infuriating to work some place, have inside knowledge of motivations and the people working there and then have an outsider with readership demonize it in a few short, offhanded sentences. I hope everybody can work some place with as much passion as Facebook and end up making the world a little better.