No, I don't find it inappropriate, nor would I call it spying at all. I wrote in another comment that I consider social media searching more like yelling in a public square and thinking that anyone who overhears your shouting is "spying" on you. That is essentially exactly what one is doing when they post publicly on social media.
And if social media users in general broadly disagree with you about that (which seems to be the case, given the confusion), who's to say who is right about this totally subjective standard by which we judge appropriateness? Isn't it society at large which gets to decide societal principles?
Sure, but I don't believe they do disagree though, as I stated in my initial comment that it's generally only those on HN who disagree, a vocal minority. The article shows how regular people don't care, they find it even better service than normal to be catered to. So if that's the case, by your logic, we should agree that it is appropriate, right?
You might be right that this isn't a particularly good example, but I'm not convinced that finding this to be inappropriate is an opinion that's just limited to technologists. I would be interested to see the reader comments on an article like this (but it seems they don't have those on sfgate).
