If I understand your analogy, you're saying that privacy violations are like food-safety violations: they should be prevented by legislative action and government force. I think the analogy is flawed. When you die from poisoning, it's an irremediable situation; you can't just say, "I'll never do business with them again!" and fix it. Also, you have to eat something; you can't opt out of the whole market. Finally, it directly affects your physical safety, so that intentional disregard of food safety is akin to violence.
Facebook's problems, and privacy violations in general, are different. It's not necessary to engage in mediated social interaction; you can opt out with no loss except convenience. There's no bodily harm, let alone death, so if you're burned once, you can simply never do business with them again.
That means the market could fix this problem. That it hasn't says that there aren't enough people who agree that it is a problem, or that the cost is worth the benefit to them. In a case like that, not legislation but education is the solution.
> if you're burned once, you can simply never do business with them again.
The problem is that avoiding doing business with them does not protect you from their behavior.
> That means the market could fix this problem.
Maybe, maybe not. But generally speaking, the free market cannot fix all problems, and particularly has an issue fixing problems that are imposed on people who already don't do business with the bad actor.
Once they've gathered information about you and sold it, you can't take it back. For most people living in western democracies, living with no privacy won't kill you but where is the guarantee your government and the corporations it empowers will always be so benign?
I thought about mentioning that, but even under less liberal governments, the case where an invasion of privacy is fatal is pretty exceptional. I decided not to muddy my exposition with it.
Facebook's problems, and privacy violations in general, are different. It's not necessary to engage in mediated social interaction; you can opt out with no loss except convenience. There's no bodily harm, let alone death, so if you're burned once, you can simply never do business with them again.
That means the market could fix this problem. That it hasn't says that there aren't enough people who agree that it is a problem, or that the cost is worth the benefit to them. In a case like that, not legislation but education is the solution.