Perhaps there is too much politics on /., but this topic is highly relevant to a large portion of the user base here who own/operate web businesses, so I think your rant is misplaced.

Expansion of the universe, duh!

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Holy Mother of sampling biases (and a 5-digit-uid /. reader who fell for it... for shame).

I have no clue what you're trying to say.

It's probably the cookies left by the Like button that's all over the Internet now, that works even if you're not logged on (even if you don't have an account). That's why I blocked all facebook cookies on my browser along time ago.

You misunderstand. Defending speech != defending idea. Besides, how will you know if an idea will affect anything or not unless you allow it to be expressed in free speech?

Besides the term doesn't apply -- in a man in the middle attack, the man in the middle needs to be invisible. Though I suppose you could argue that the vast majority of people using FB don't understand how the Internet works enough to know that they are really sharing information through a third party that holds on to everything, instead thinking of their communication as analogous to sending a paper letter...

Ah, so you only defend speech you agree with. Like most people, it seems.

Ah, but there's a loophole! Why else do you think he's running for president?

As a statistician, I can assure you that this is perfectly reasonable and safe.