[Flintstone]

Well, according to one of their senior executives who in a leaked internal email wrote:

So we connect more people.
That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack co-ordinated on our tools.
And still we connect people.
The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.
[...]
That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43594959

[johnm]

It is an interesting philosophical issue. All tools can be used for good or ill and the morality and freedom of expression issues have been at the core of Internet discussion and development since the 1970s.

The general feeling has been that the pluses outweigh the minuses and the minuses sometimes need to be addressed and sometimes accepted as a fact of life.

Until recently those in the driving seat of Internet development have been able to minimise political involvement but that’s got harder since the turn of the millennium.