When you remember how few people change the default settings in the software they use, Facebook’s motivations become a lot clearer: Facebook needs advertisers. Advertisers want to target by gender. Most users will never go back to futz with custom settings. So, Facebook effectively designs its onboarding process to gather the data it wants, in the format advertisers expect. Then it creates its customizable settings and ensures it gets glowing reviews from the tech press, appeasing groups that feel marginalized—all the while knowing that very few people, statistically, will actually bother to
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