It's interesting that we have 2 big scandals in tech right now: one with Uber's self-driving car killing a pedestrian, and the other with Facebook revealing too much data about users and their friends to third-party apps. With Uber, we're asking for data (telemetry leading up to the accident) to be recorded and access to be more open. With Facebook, we're asking for access to be more closed; ironic that we usually criticize Facebook for being a walled garden.
Assuming data needs to be recorded in the first place to make the products work better, what's ethically better, open access or closed? Is it better for a few big tech companies to wield so much power with their troves of user data, or is it better to distribute it across numerous companies/governments who can be even more unscrupulous (e.g. Cambridge Analytica, Russia)?
EDIT: even now, with full benefit of hindsight, should Facebook allow accessing friend lists with user permission (would lead to more cases of abuse by third-party apps), or not (would perpetuate their walled garden and monopoly on social media)?
I'm not sure that's a useful binary. In both cases we're asking corporations to handle their data in a responsible way. Neither open nor closed is absolutely more ethical, it depends on the context.
In addition to what n4r9 said, we organize our moral code around freedom of individuals, and not freedom of other entities. So it's morally acceptable to ask for privacy of individuals, yet ask for things and institutions to be surveilled by society at large.
Assuming data needs to be recorded in the first place to make the products work better, what's ethically better, open access or closed? Is it better for a few big tech companies to wield so much power with their troves of user data, or is it better to distribute it across numerous companies/governments who can be even more unscrupulous (e.g. Cambridge Analytica, Russia)?
EDIT: even now, with full benefit of hindsight, should Facebook allow accessing friend lists with user permission (would lead to more cases of abuse by third-party apps), or not (would perpetuate their walled garden and monopoly on social media)?