[HN Gopher] Facebook bans, sends C&D letter to developer of Unfo...
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Facebook bans, sends C&D letter to developer of Unfollow Everything
extension
Author : mmastrac
Score : 996 points
Date : 2021-10-08 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techspot.com)
| m0zg wrote:
| Reminds me of how many years ago I advised a guy who was being
| sold a real shit instrument at a musical instruments store that
| what he's about to buy is a waste of money and he shouldn't buy
| it. I also explained why that is. Things got heated and I was
| asked to leave, as well. :-)
| jessaustin wrote:
| This piece by the actual developer, linked within TFA, seems
| better:
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every...
| fotta wrote:
| Discussed yesterday too
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788821
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Everyone who says they've done the same thing is probably guilty
| of the cardinal sin of social media: linking to accounts you
| really have no business linking to. The underlying problem is
| connecting to everyone you recognize and everyone who asks. On
| Facebook, I only befriend people who are actual, real-life
| friends. (Currently a paltry 148.) Life changes and moves on.
| People who fall off my radar get unfriended. It's pretty simple.
| And, of my friends, I mute those whose posts I find annoying
| and/or spammy. The people who are "friends" with thousands of
| people? That makes ZERO sense for anyone, and you have only
| yourself to blame for a news feed that is nutty and bizarre. I
| get it. We're all still working out how to live with an
| antagonistic service that we can't live without, but I have
| settled into this approach, and I can promise it works much
| better than gaming your number of contacts.
| noasaservice wrote:
| I logged into FB with chrome (normally use ff). Got the plugin,
| and ran the unfollower.
|
| Now, my FB feed is empty. It's pretty nice and now tamed. I don't
| see the usual inflammatory garbage Fb always tries to entice me
| with.
| neither_color wrote:
| Anyone have the source so we can build it ourselves?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Neither the techspot nor the slate article link to the tool the
| entire article is about.
|
| Here is a direct link to the tool:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-...
|
| Why do news organisations resist linking users to the source of
| news so heavily?
| burkaman wrote:
| That's a different extension. They can't link to Unfollow
| Everything because he was forced to take it down.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That seems pretty bad. They used the threat of a lawsuit to
| govern his use of a completely unrelated platform owned by a
| different firm. I'm sure the courts just love this shit, but
| that would only show how fundamentally unjust the courts are.
|
| Is there something wrong with the linked extension? Is its
| existence contingent on FB lawyers not identifying the
| developer?
| barbazoo wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be the same tool. The letter cites
| "Unfollow everything for facebook"
| cproctor wrote:
| I have been thinking about the difference between human users and
| computational agents. There is a widespread pattern of enforcing
| that only human users may interact with a service, not
| computational agents. Running a user-installed extension is one
| example; additional examples are CAPTCHAs, account verification
| by phone number, or services which refuse to provide API access
| such as banks.
|
| Sometimes the reason is to protect users (e.g. banks), sometimes
| to protect the service from abuse. But often the reason is to
| ensure value can be extracted from users (e.g. serving ad
| impressions) or the power that can be exerted over users.
| Regardless, I believe this comes down to power: computer
| scientists understand that acting through a computational agent
| is fundamentally more powerful than acting directly as a human
| user. Computational agents can operate at scale, they provide
| virtualization (e.g. throwaway identities), and thereby conserve
| the ultimate scarce resource: our attention. Many systems seem to
| have computational power asymmetry as their fundamental
| principle: as little human contact on the system's side as
| possible; as much human contact on the user's side as possible.
|
| If there's any path ahead that avoids a totalitarian nightmare
| resulting from asymptotic concentration of power, it depends on
| cultivating a more widespread understanding of computational
| power and developing new social norms and policies. As a CS
| educator, this is one of my top priorities.
| wussboy wrote:
| I haven't thought about it like this before. Thank you.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Computational agents (...) conserve the ultimate scarce
| resource: our attention. Many systems seem to have
| computational power asymmetry as their fundamental principle:
| as little human contact on the system 's side as possible; as
| much human contact on the user's side as possible._
|
| That's the key thing nobody is telling people about the so-
| called "attention economy": it's whole point is to make things
| as _inefficient_ as possible - because money is made on the
| friction. In order to make money off attention, companies need
| to capture it (thereby making you spend it on something else
| than what you wanted to). To make more money, they need that
| attention to last longer (thereby making you spend more time,
| and /or spend it more often, on things that make them money).
|
| Seen this way, it's clear why services hate end-user
| automation: their whole business is causing the very friction
| the users would like to automate away.
| rektide wrote:
| I have what feels like a religious belief, that denying
| humanity the ability to use tools to explore, to poke & prod &
| pry at the virtual materials in front of us is Anti-
| Enlightenment, flies in the face of the godhood & what nature &
| destiny & whatever provenance might be has built in creating
| mankind.
|
| No material in the universe has ever been resistant to
| understanding, to probing, to exploration. It's from this
| exploration that humankind has emerged & whatever of greatness
| of civilization that we have has been built. These mechanized
| systems that we legally are not allowed to explore or work is
| one of the most de-humanizing hells I can imagine.
|
| Humanity as we know it can not endure in a world where we are
| never allowed to understand or go further. Shame on any company
| or law that acts otherwise; they are monsters.
|
| Thank you for your very succinct well captured write up.
| Humankind seems desperately in need of a defense force, needs
| to be able to grasp what an existential threat forced-
| consumierzation is, how radical of a historical upset this
| juncture we're at is. I 100% agree that giving people insight &
| visibility & faculties to work with, understand, see, & monkey
| with computers is essential to keeping our core liberaties
| alive, in an increasingly mechanizing & automating world.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But often the reason is to ensure value can be extracted from
| users (e.g. serving ad impressions) or the power that can be
| exerted over users.
|
| Yeah, I assume this is the most common reason. This needs to be
| fought on principle. It doesn't matter what their terms and
| conditions say. It doesn't matter how much money they lose. We
| should always have full control. We should be able to block
| their advertising. We should be able to automate our browsers.
| We should be able to turn our user agents into cyberweapons
| against them.
|
| This is legitimate self defense against their abuse. We're
| talking about a company that gets people addicted to bullshit
| feeds so they can make money by showing ads. _Of course_ an
| "unfollow all" button is necessary. They won't provide one
| because they want us addicted to their feed. So we'll provide
| one for them.
|
| People spend their days on social media because they're
| addicted to it. If a browser extension can somehow help people
| break free, it's objectively a good thing for humanity. If this
| world was just, courts would rip Facebook a new one if they
| dared to waste their time with this stuff.
| quantified wrote:
| This is why large roomfuls of people spend their days curating
| a set of social media profiles. It's a jobs-creation policy for
| the lower rungs of cyber-scamming and mischief, while maybe
| discouraging it from getting out of control. Eg
| [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/02/click-
| far...], was looking for other references too.
| ddingus wrote:
| Thank you. That is good work.
| userbinator wrote:
| Knowledge is power... and they don't want you to have too much.
|
| Imagine if almost everyone knew that they could use things like
| userscripts and stylesheets to enhance their browsing
| experience. Or that DRM can often be cracked by changing a
| single byte.
|
| This is why the war on general-purpose computing started. There
| are some things they don't want you to know because they'd lose
| control.
| fullshark wrote:
| Seems so short sighted, if some subset of users prefer another
| version of FB, give it to them to make sure they don't leave. The
| value of FB is the network, keep it healthy instead of doing
| whatever you can to increase ad real estate.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| This seems like it would fall under Anti-SLAPP if taken to actual
| court.
| standardUser wrote:
| I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I
| followed a couple years ago. My feed is now a very limited
| selection of gaming and media posts that I enjoy immensely. No
| politics at all and almost nothing in my feed from actual
| individuals that I know. I ended up enjoying Facebook again, even
| if in a very different way.
|
| It was a tedious process and a tool like this could help a lot of
| people find their own value in the platform by getting a fresh
| start. Sadly, FB has no interest in that and would rather corral
| us in ways as to maximize their own benefit, not ours.
| chias wrote:
| I quit facebook for a couple years, but recently reactivated
| because the truth of the matter was that my family uses it and
| I missed finding out about _so many_ things, including some
| marriages and births. When I reactivated, I set out to do
| exactly that: every time I look at my feed, I unfollow
| everybody who is not immediate family. It has been tedious and
| slow-going, but the net result has been actually pretty great.
|
| One thing I struggle with is the tags. You unfollow someone and
| your feed won't include their posts anymore, but it _will_
| include random posts that they're tagged in, and I haven't yet
| found a way to curtail this. I've used "Hide this post"
| repeatedly because the option text says "see fewer posts like
| this", but it hasn't really had an effect. Have you found a way
| to fix this?
| sanjayparekh wrote:
| I did a Show HN a little while ago but you might want to
| check out TogetherLetters [0]. We made it to keep going with
| regular updates for groups of people (friends, family,
| coworkers, etc.) via email. Never shared on the web and it's
| consistent (bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly in the free
| plan, weekly added in the paid plan). It might help solve
| some of your FOMO pain.
|
| [0] https://www.togetherletters.com
| 3520 wrote:
| You may be able to configure F.B. Purity [0] to your liking.
| I installed it last night after seeing it mentioned in
| another thread here and it's cut down on all of my newsfeed
| clutter.
|
| [0]https://www.fbpurity.com/
| ViViDboarder wrote:
| I use RSS to follow media posts rather than people.
| ok123456 wrote:
| There's no getting away from politics if you live in somewhat
| of a swing state. My feed is full of AIPAC, conservative think-
| tank, and posts by the local guy who just doesn't want his
| property taxes on his $3 million dollar estate to go up
| $200/year. All of them paid for. All of them have no way of
| "unfollowing".
|
| There is nothing in my follows or "likes" that would indicate
| that this is anything I'd be interested in. It's just as bad as
| the broadcast TV ads that they "disrupted:" indiscriminate,
| obtrusive and unwanted.
| rndmind wrote:
| Yeah, that surmises why I left facebook back in 2014. When
| all of my older aunts started joining the site, I thought to
| myself "man... this is just not what it used to be, this
| isn't cool anymore."
|
| Looking back when I left in 2014, facebook has turned into
| 4chan but worse because its connected to real life
| identities. It's an utter garbage fire and I laugh at the
| users of it.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > All of them have no way of "unfollowing".
|
| If you unfollow all your friends/pages, your feed will be
| empty and will look something like this: https://romanvesely.
| com/static/b031d9ff5bb48d618d1226fb363a9...
| walrus01 wrote:
| It's tedious but it is possible to click on the context menu
| next to an ad, then click "why am I seeing this ad", and then
| click "never show ads from this source again".
|
| Now that I think of it, a client side extension that
| automates this process, would be an interesting thing.
| Generally the same idea as the extension mentioned in the top
| post, which automates the client-side of unfollowing
| everything, but for attempting to 'block' ads from
| everything. I wonder if they've rate limited that...
| thinkloop wrote:
| Couldn't you go a step further and have the extension look
| for "sponsored" list items and simply remove them from the
| html?
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| It's a cat and mouse game. See an example of how Facebook
| obfuscates "Sponsored" here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/anila7/fa
| ceb...
| wheels wrote:
| F.B. Purity does just that, but the HTML is fairly
| complicated (if I remember correctly, the relevant words
| are a jumble of absolutely positioned spans, with a lot
| of fodder thrown in to throw off blockers). Facebook
| changed their code about a month ago, and the extension
| developer has been working on a fix for almost all of
| that time and still hasn't rolled it out yet.
| loeg wrote:
| It's obfuscated to make it difficult to ad-block.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Ad blockers such as uBlock Origin try. IIRC, Facebook
| obscures the HTML in a way that makes blocking without a
| more advanced parser harder.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| My boss shared a story about his time at Facebook. He was
| working on ads during 2012 election, and Facebook had a
| problem. It was just a couple of weeks before the election
| and the Romney campaign had money to burn. They were
| winning auctions on facebook left and right. The problem
| was that too many people had clicked the "never show ads
| from this source again" button on the ads. Guess what, he
| was tasked with turning the button off for Romney ads, now
| facebook could show as many political ads as the campaign
| could buy.
| ddingus wrote:
| Never see ads from that Source again, until you do...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _It 's tedious but it is possible to click on the context
| menu next to an ad, then click "why am I seeing this ad",
| and then click "never show ads from this source again"._
|
| The ad-buyers funnel their ad buys through agencies and
| separate accounts.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Their business model is based on doomscrolling.
| prescriptivist wrote:
| I did this too and use facebook for the marketplace and half a
| dozen pretty active niche groups that don't have corresponding
| communities outside of facebook. I agree that it was tedious
| but since doing that I can't muster much ire toward Facebook
| beyond the general ire I have for everything on the internet,
| which I think has been a net negative for people's happiness
| (broadly speaking).
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| > I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I
| followed a couple years ago.
|
| I did much the same. I unfollowed every page, and any person I
| hadn't seen in person within the past year.
|
| My Facebook is now a carefully curated list of people I like,
| and cat pictures. It's done wonders for my mental health.
| decodebytes wrote:
| Is this the same as unfriending?
| standardUser wrote:
| No, you can mute any friend (or any page) without them
| knowing, but I think the term they use is unfollow.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I
| followed a couple years ago. ... I ended up enjoying Facebook
| again, even if in a very different way.
|
| Facebook and other social media platforms actually gives users
| a lot of tools to tailor their feeds. Muting or unfollowing
| people (leaving the friend connection intact) should be the go-
| to operation for anyone who's always posting things you aren't
| interested in.
|
| The other half of tailoring your feed is learning to embrace
| the like button. If you see something you like, click the like
| button. Sounds simple, but I know a lot of people who refuse to
| click the like button because they dislike the concept of like
| counts, but they forget that it's one of the primary mechanisms
| for telling the algorithms what you want to see. The more you
| like content, the more you'll see it.
| ohashi wrote:
| I feel like they also are trying to send me content that
| upsets me to get me to engage. Mute one conspiracy theorist
| and all the others start getting moved up in my feed.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Well, you "engaged" with the muted piece by interacting
| with it (even if it's to mute it), so you must be
| interested in that content, no? /s
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Do they provide bulk tooling or automation APIs to do it
| effectively?
| qudat wrote:
| It sounds like you turned facebook into twitter. Just use
| twitter.
| javajosh wrote:
| Good anecdote! In fact, I don't see why FB is doing this at
| all, as it seems to be against their self-interest. Heck, it
| never occurred to me to unfollow everyone; it may make the
| platform bearable/usable. (I went on a "brief" fb pause over a
| year ago. Just never had a reason to go back, except to say hi
| to friends that I don't have other channels to. But the
| cost/benefit doesn't really work out. Unfollow Everything would
| change that calculation for me.)
| prepend wrote:
| I did something similar and I probably open every few weeks or
| so and it's great.
|
| It would be nice if I could easily switch between networks but
| I have to keep the same pared down list of people and things I
| follow.
|
| It reminds me of Google circles where you could have more fine
| grained networks.
| cronix wrote:
| > has no interest in that and would rather corral us in ways as
| to maximize their own benefit, not ours.
|
| I'm trying to think of a for-profit business that does _not_ do
| that and coming up short.
| standardUser wrote:
| There's lots of ways to make a profit and some companies have
| found ways to make user choice and transparency key selling
| points that endear their customers and keep them coming back.
| Or at least show some restraint and not engage wholesale in
| dark patterns, even if only for reputational purposes.
|
| Look at GoDaddy, a near-universally despised company that has
| managed to become a dominant player by engaging in anti-user
| practices. But there's plenty of other players that profit in
| that same space while maintaining really positive
| relationships with their customers.
|
| So while I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that for-profit
| businesses always and only act like for-profit businesses,
| there's still some room to maneuver. Facebook has clearly
| chosen to manipulate and data mine every single user to
| within inches of their lives in what amounts to a scorched
| earth policy.
| quotemstr wrote:
| HN: "How dare Facebook ban this extension! All it does is let a
| computer do automatically what a user could already do on his
| own. Ridiculous!"
|
| Also HN: "automated facial recognition is bad"
| oauea wrote:
| First facebook tries to take down the entire internet with their
| bgp spam, and now this?
| anonu wrote:
| The threat of a lawsuit when the big guy has infinite resources
| is a scary proposition. Dealing with this can easily cost the
| developer $10s of 1000s. Basically, corporate bullying. Its not
| right...
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Zuckerberg mentioned how much pride he and the team at Facebook
| take in their products.
|
| I wonder how much pride they take in users saying the experience
| is enhanced by orders of magntiude when they unsubscribe from
| their feeds...
| eddiezane wrote:
| ~10 years ago when I still had Facebook for campus events I
| remember installing this extension and loving it. Glad to see
| it still exists.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo...
| busymom0 wrote:
| That's why I never watch those hearings or read whatever empty
| words these people say. Only care about actions. The hearings
| have pretty much become a way for politicians to grandstand for
| cameras and partisan politics while the CEOs get to lie and
| make untrue claims without any consequences.
|
| Actions > Words.
| sharklazer wrote:
| True, but has this ever not been the case? Pols and Execs
| alike want great (or at least not bad) sound bites. They
| perform on an act on a stage.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I think it has accelerated in the last 5-10 years because
| of Twitter and other social media. I do not think the
| hearings such as the Church Committee Hearings are possible
| now a days.
| indianhippie wrote:
| I wrote a custom script for myself about two years ago to do the
| exact same thing! It's still publicly accessible in my GitHub
| gists. I had no idea that others will find it useful.
|
| I unfollowed everyone. Then I added a selective few to follow. I
| have tweaked who I follow and who I unfollow over the last two
| years to give me a balanced news feed that I enjoy. Basically
| twitter behavior but on FB.
| annadane wrote:
| One of the worst things that could have happened to Facebook is
| the whole Cambridge Analytica thing; now they can always just
| hide behind the veneer of "we disable scripting/API access to x
| degree because something something hand waiving black magic user
| safety third party developers and do you want another scandal
| like we had with CA" even when they may be completely different
| situations
| tzm wrote:
| FB also demanded a list of every single domain the developer
| owns. Seems egregious.
| busymom0 wrote:
| That demand sort of tells me FB is "reaching" too much and may
| not have much teeth.
|
| In the recent 2020 ruling for VAN BUREN v. UNITED STATES,
| Supreme Court states that:
|
| > "An individual "exceeds authorized access" when he accesses a
| com- puter with authorization but then obtains information
| located in par- ticular areas of the computer--such as files,
| folders, or databases-- that are off-limits to him."
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf
|
| To me this means that as long as OP's extension is only doing
| stuff which their authorized cookie/token etc is authorized to
| do, they should be fine. Also it's not the OP who's doing these
| actions, it's the end user who's using the extension to achieve
| authorized activity. So I don't see how OP's extension is in
| the wrong.
|
| Only valid claim FB might have is about using trademarked data
| and any data collection maybe. But the end user using the
| extension to perform authorized actions (even if automated)
| should be okay imo.
|
| Btw, link to FB's letter for those curious:
|
| https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a...
| javajosh wrote:
| I went looking for the (Chrome) Extension and found:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-...
|
| It's called "Unfollow Everyone" though. Is it the same thing? The
| only clue about the developer identity is the email address,
| 'easwarismyname@gmail.com' and the developer is "TMP".
|
| I'm curious -- if FB pressures Goog to delist the extension,
| would this open them up to anti-trust action?
|
| Also I wonder if the Everyone -> Everything was a mistake, or an
| intentional misdirect to avoid a Streisand effect?
| burkaman wrote:
| That's a different one. Unfollow Everything has been taken
| down.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| > would this open them up to anti-trust action?
|
| IANAL. I understand anti-trust regs to work at a market level.
| FB asking for an extension that interacts solely with their
| wholly-owned, private platform doesn't affect the larger social
| media market at all.
| baoha wrote:
| Someone should create a gofundme page for the guy to fight this
| nonsense in court.
| gdsdfe wrote:
| This maybe why the no-code low-code movement, if can call it
| that, maybe be very useful. If one can easily create such an app
| and run it for themselves, what Facebook are gonna do ban
| everyone from their platform?
| unobatbayar wrote:
| Interesting that people still use Facebook, even after everything
| that has happened and happening.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| How can this C&D have any legal basis? This person is providing
| an extension that is just a piece of software for a browser. The
| user can choose to 'violate the terms of service' or not. But
| browser automation isn't something Facebook has the standing to
| block, I would think.
|
| Also how do they feel about Social Book Post Manager
| (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-
| post-m...), an extension that lets people delete their Facebook
| history selectively (like all your video views), in bulk? This
| seems like a basic feature any trustworthy social media platform
| or technology company in general should provide. But since
| Facebook doesn't, someone made an extension that helps users out.
| Unfortunately this extension is out of date and doesn't work in
| 2021 because it doesn't have '2021' as an option in their date
| filter, and because Facebook's continual UI changes to the
| activity log seem to be designed to break this extension, since
| they certainly provide no benefits to users.
|
| Can some hacker here who has the skills please make a tool to
| help lay persons clear their posts/comments/likes/etc. one by one
| for Facebook, Instagram, and the rest?
| cyral wrote:
| C&Ds often have questionable reasoning to back them up. Any
| lawyer can write something that sounds scary to get you to
| stop. Whether they are actually interpreting the law correctly
| is up to the courts, and Facebook knows most people give in
| because they don't want to chance it or spend money fighting
| it.
| jerf wrote:
| One trick they can pull out in the future is to write into the
| terms of service that you can't use the service to develop
| extensions manipulating the service. Then they change
| something, anything to make the extension not work. If the
| extension gets fixed, clearly someone broke the terms of
| service.
|
| Watch for a terms of service update from facebook.
|
| I had a company fire this at me back in 2000 or so. It worked,
| in that it wasn't worth dealing with the issues and I stopped.
| It didn't work in the sense the company is long gone anyhow....
| outside1234 wrote:
| Regulate Facebook now
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Facebook engineers lurking on HN reading this: you are complicit
| in things like this by developing the technical infrastructure
| that makes it all possible. If your motivation is money, you can
| absolutely find that employment elsewhere.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Shaming does not work, otherwise FB would have no engineers at
| all; the fact that FB still exists is a proof it does not work,
| so what is the point?
| int_19h wrote:
| It might also work in a sense that FB has less qualified
| engineers than they would otherwise have. Which would cause
| their quality of service to be less, hopefully. Which would
| provide some advantage to their competitors, and/or annoy
| some of their users into leaving.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I genuinely feel like shaming and social ostracization should
| be way more commonly used. If suddenly you stop hanging out
| with friends who work at outfits like Facebook, if they stop
| being invited to dinners, are socially shunned, then I
| genuinely believe it will have a net positive effect.
|
| The problem is that bad behavior is normalized and
| rationalized in our society, 'everyone needs a paycheck.'
| This legitimizes working for companies like this.
| notjesse wrote:
| I believe that in a society that has free speech, there is
| a duty of the member's of society to exercise their free
| speech and disassociate from those acting unethically.
| Particularly for unethical actions that cannot be
| prosecuted due to the rights afforded to all.
|
| Now while there are a lot of things that facebook probably
| can be prosecuted for, there are many things that they
| probably can't be. So I think we have an obligation to
| shame and shun those who act in reprehensible ways. And
| obviously in proportion to how culpable/complicit those
| individuals are.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| My point exactly (your last 2 sentences).
| spiffytech wrote:
| There's a book, _So You 've Been Publicly Shamed_, that
| investigates a few cases of internet lynch mobs, and the
| history of shaming as punishment.
|
| The book's conclusion (as I recall) is that shaming is far
| more cruel than we commonly think, and shaming used to be
| more common until people realized its cruelty.
| pnt12 wrote:
| And they'll get new friends.
|
| I doubt that shaming individuals works. But having
| thoughtful discourse about it is probably much better - let
| people hear the arguments and make up their mind.
|
| With this being said, I do find it a waste that some of the
| best minds in the world are working towards ads and
| engagement businesses. Having a tool for global
| communication is wonderful, but their unethical behaviors
| are unexcusable.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _I doubt that shaming individuals works. But having
| thoughtful discourse about it is probably much better -
| let people hear the arguments and make up their mind._
|
| Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Have a nice long
| thoughtful conversation with your friend about why you
| disapprove of what they're doing with their life, offer
| to help them find a new job if you're so inclined, but
| cut contact if/when they refuse to reform. Tell others
| what you've done and encourage them to do the same.
|
| Shaming almost certainly does work, otherwise humans
| wouldn't be so inclined to try it all the time. I'm quite
| certain that shaming is a tactic baked into our social
| instincts by evolution.
| int_19h wrote:
| It does work, but it has to be truly pervasive. If it's 1
| out of 9 personal interactions that the person might
| have, the very proportion becomes a self-justification:
| "if it really were that bad, why don't all _those_ people
| bring it up? "
|
| But e.g. you don't see many people openly self-
| identifying as racists anymore.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _The problem is that bad behavior is normalized and
| rationalized in our society, 'everyone needs a paycheck.'_
|
| The movie _Thank you for Smoking_ , about a tobacco
| lobbyist, calls this the _" Yuppie Nuremberg Defense."_ All
| manner of immorality, even shilling for a tobacco firm,
| will be excused away with _hey man, I 've got a mortgage to
| pay._
| urda wrote:
| Every employee and Engineer that is currently at Facebook is
| involved in this mess. Every one of them are complicit. To
| the FB Engineers reading this: it is a saddening you have
| chosen to use your talents to build dangerous technologies
| instead of technologies that improve our lives.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The developer should let the FTC know.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've made a post here[1] about getting in touch with the FTC,
| the US Dept. of Justice, and states' Attorneys General offices
| when it comes to companies like Facebook stifling innovation
| and competition.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27924908
| 8note wrote:
| If you are banned by Facebook, does that mean they will stop
| tracking you?
| lilSebastian wrote:
| Delete all accounts, block all social media endpoints at DNS
| level. Nuke the site from orbit...
| grumblestumble wrote:
| This is the kind of malware I can get behind.
| marstall wrote:
| I unfollowed everything manually a couple years ago - on Facebook
| and twitter. still use both tools, but I feel it's much more
| under my control. Haven't looked back or missed anything.
|
| What possible basis would Facebook have for preventing people
| from managing their own account in this way, improving their
| lives? Insanity.
| randall wrote:
| Fwiw I have adhd and (by necessity of my job) spend a lot of time
| on fb. Newsfeed eradicator has been very useful for me.
| hwers wrote:
| Great ad for the extension, I wanna try this now.
| StatsAreFun wrote:
| Is there a chance the EFF might defend this solo developer?
| asdff wrote:
| Even EFF can't take down goliath
| wrboyce wrote:
| I received a C&D from Facebook many moons ago. I was a young man
| and absolutely shit myself, to the extent that I don't even have
| the source code anymore. All I did was publish some CSS to make
| Facebook look a little less shitty.
| ben_w wrote:
| Eesh.
|
| Ironically enough I was thinking recently about how, content
| aside, Facebook's UI is as bad now as it was in 2010.
| lightsurfer wrote:
| This company is worst than Exxon by at least an order of
| magnitude. Exploiting humanity and consciousness. What a level of
| audacity. Eventually MZ will be removed to rebrand.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| If Zuckerberg had not ignored a C&D letter (from the Winkelvosses
| lawyer), there would be no Facebook.
|
| Once Mr Barclay is no longer using Facebook, then whatever
| "browsewrap" agreement was created between Barclay and Facebook
| is arguably no longer in effect. Whatever provisions survive do
| not include a prohibition on using automation.
|
| The Terms state
|
| "If you delete or we disable your account, these Terms shall
| terminate as an agreement between you and us, but the following
| provisions will remain in place: 3, 4.2-4.5."
|
| The prohibition on automation is provision #2.
|
| Even if you believe that Facebook can bind non-users to these
| Terms, then you also have to consider that most courts have
| refused to enforce browserwrap agreements to begin with. For
| websites trying to enforce browserwrap, there is a recurring
| problem with the question of consent. Generally, the website has
| the burden of proving the user read and understood the Terms.
|
| But let's assume Facebook can get past this hurdle. Let's
| consider the "automated means" provision. Is it enforceable. It
| is unlikely a provision like this one in a browsewrap agreement
| has ever been reviewed by any court. Facebook's provision is
| extremely vague and ambiguous. What is "automated means". It is
| the essence of a computer. If browser extensions are banned, why
| not state this explicitly. For example, Facebook-approved web
| browsers without any extensions all use automation to request
| image and JavaScript resources. Users do not manually request
| those resources.
|
| The clause itself states
|
| "You may not access or collect data from our Products using
| automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to
| access data that you do not have permission to access."
|
| But the UnfollowEverything extension does not access nor collect
| data.
|
| It is arguable that (a) for any ordinary user, using
| UnfollowEbverything does not violate the Facebook Terms and (b)
| that it is only the usage of this extension by researchers who
| were otherwise gathering behavioural data that triggered the C&D
| letter. We already know that Facebook fears researchers studying
| the effects of its (scripted, automated) website on users.^1
|
| 1.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210806191005/https://www.wired...
|
| In the Facebook Terms, Facebook itself admits to using
| automation:
|
| "And we develop automated systems to improve our ability to
| detect and remove abusive and dangerous activity that may harm
| our community and the integrity of our Products."
|
| It is 2021, and courts in Northern California are well-aware that
| automation is useful, _for everyone_. They would also understand
| that unfollowing friends results in no loss to user privacy. Nor
| does it interfere with any ads.
|
| But let's assume Facebook can overcome these hurdles and a court
| in Northern California agrees with the ridiculous arguments
| Facebook's lawyers would have to make. Imagine (a) Facebook
| manages to affirmatively prove Barclay consented to the
| browsewrap that no one ever reads and (b) he understood that
| using UnfollowEveryone was a violation of the Terms. What would
| Facebook claim as damage/loss for Barclay's alleged "breach".
|
| As an aside, this bit in the Terms is amusing
|
| "We do not control or direct what people and others do or say,
| and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether
| online or offline) or any content that they share (including
| offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful and other
| objectionable content)."
|
| It is easily arguable that Facebook does seek to control/direct
| what users do as it forced Barclay to spend hours in order to
| unfollow each of his friends by pointing and clicking.
|
| Facebook attempts to control and direct what users see and do
| when using the website, rather than allowing users to make their
| own choices. That seems beyond question.
| voodootrucker wrote:
| I just did this manually in protest.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Long time ago I took the time to unfollow 99% of my "Facebook
| Friends" and get out of groups and pages that were of no interest
| to me.
|
| So now I follow a handful of friends and a few pages of interest
| to me, it's quite interesting.
| christoz wrote:
| I'd tried to unfollow as many as I could by tapping, at some
| point after 50 taps Facebook blocked me form further tapping, I
| don't even remember how I got to the list of all individuals -
| groups - pages, I am using mobile web version. Clearly Facebook
| won't make your life easy in this
| tonetheman wrote:
| Glad Facebook is really working to make their platform more safe.
| I mean this is clearly worse than the treason, sedition, antivax
| and genocide normally seen on their platform.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I'd assume that ~trillion dollar company can walk and chew gum
| at the same time.
|
| Especially, if you look at Facebook history, siphoning data
| from there (that this extension was also doing) brought them
| one of the biggest scandals (cambridge analytica).
| VieEnCode wrote:
| In a similar vein, I've been using News Feed Eradicator:
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
| threatofrain wrote:
| Big prior discussion from yesterday.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788821
| nvr219 wrote:
| Here is where you can download the extension
|
| Here's the extension zip files that were archived from the Chrome
| Store. You can get all versions back to 1.0.
|
| https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid...
| https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid...
| https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid...
|
| They are CRX (Chrome Extension) files, some manual steps needed
| to unpack, or change .zip to .crx and open with Chrome.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo...
|
| Install Instructions:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
|
| Source:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo...
| SilasX wrote:
| Chrome doesn't require extensions to be signed? Or hasn't
| revoked the signature?
| gnicholas wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I think you can side-load any extension
| locally. About 3 years ago Google made it impossible to have
| users click a link on your website and install that way
| (which some people referred to as side-loading), but I think
| you can still enable dev mode and side-load a downloaded
| file.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I didn't know about this extension but now I do. Thanks FB
| lawyers.
| leeoniya wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
| riffic wrote:
| I didn't know what Barbra Streisand's Malibu residence
| looked like, but now I do.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I recommend avoiding all browser extensions unless they come
| from well-known developers (eg 1Password) and they're
| downloaded and installed through official channels.
|
| Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing
| activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this
| extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home
| to the author's server. That might be what the install
| instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine
| the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author
| defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the
| plug-in was working, except for study participants who
| apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in.
| Either way, I wouldn't rush to install a plug-in that was
| caught sending _any_ of my social media data to a 3rd-party
| server.
|
| I certainly would not install a browser extension from an
| unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless
| the claimed origin of the code.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| Isn't this basically a prelude to a SLAPP lawsuit?
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Understandable, because (anecdotally) it turned out to be the
| most effective way to get rid of Facebook. Over a couple of weeks
| I unfollowed all the friends and communities, and ended up with
| clean page that asked me to add more friends. Since the place
| turned to barren land with no life, I simply stopped coming
| there.
| eyeareque wrote:
| If they ban you does this mean that they stop tracking you and
| saving data about you? Sounds like a win.
| barbazoo wrote:
| The timing of this is interesting. The letter is dated July 1, is
| this a repost or has this been reported earlier already?
| MR4D wrote:
| Is there a GoFundMe page we can donate to for legal defense Yet?
| mdoms wrote:
| It seems like this guy straight forwardly violated their terms of
| service.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I guess C&D and ban is another way to treat your Facebook
| addiction.
| smashah wrote:
| How come Teller API is (apparently) 100% legal and has massive VC
| backing but there is possibility of legal grounds for this
| blatant bullying?
|
| Just shows that tech is more scared of Facebook than massive
| established institutions.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| For banking specifically, you have the Open Banking initiatives
| around world, including the PSD2 directive in Europe, which
| requires that APIs for banking should exist and be offered to
| all.
|
| There is no regulation or other government directives requiring
| social media companies to provide APIs open to all.
| smashah wrote:
| I know about PDS2 which is why I specifically bring up the
| example of Teller. They literally use mobile clients and
| reverse engineer banking protocols manually then expose them
| as APIs to their customers.
|
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/teller-api?comment=483805
|
| I support teller in this endeavour.
| mlboss wrote:
| It would be nice to have the extension source code on github.com.
| We can all create and install the extension locally.
| goldenManatee wrote:
| Oh look, Facebook trying to make themselves more popular with us
| this week.
| sedatk wrote:
| Here's the first-hand account of the extension's author:
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every...
| bsd44 wrote:
| Why is this worthy of media attention? As much as I despise
| social networking websites, I don't see anything wrong here.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| What makes this browser plugin illegal software that is worthy
| of a ban?
|
| What else can Facebook demand that its users use or don't use?
| krapp wrote:
| > What makes this browser plugin illegal software that is
| worthy of a ban?
|
| It isn't illegal. Facebook isn't a legislative body or a
| court, it can neither create nor adjudicate law.
|
| And you can read Facebook's case via their cease and desist
| letter linked in the article.
|
| > What else can Facebook demand that its users use or don't
| use?
|
| Outside of their platform? Nothing, obviously. They're not
| going to break into your house and burn your books or
| anything.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Exactly, Facebook cannot dictate what software one can make
| or run. They can claim a terms of service issue and ban you
| from their service but they cannot stop you from developing
| software.
|
| If it were me, I'd be tempted to martyr myself just to show
| how fucked up Facebook really is. What is the worst that
| can happen? The guy goes bankrupt. Life goes on.
| krapp wrote:
| >They can claim a terms of service issue and ban you from
| their service but they cannot stop you from developing
| software.
|
| They can stop you from developing software for their
| platform or using their API or brand, which is what
| Facebook has done. They haven't demanded the developer of
| Unfollow Everything cease developing software altogether,
| only that they cease developing software for Facebook.
|
| Also, Facebook is nowhere near unique in having similar
| terms for developers.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| The issue was 'automating user interactions'. The demand
| is 'I agree to never again create tools that interact
| with Facebook or its other services'.
|
| That demand is wrong. What if the developer makes an
| extension for some other web site and then FB buys that
| site? They'll go the legal route again. I don't think
| that is right.
| NackerHughes wrote:
| So... where can I download the extension?
| mort1merp0 wrote:
| See nvr219 comment above
| NackerHughes wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| For any others as unobservant as me: https://www.reddit.com/r
| /programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Ha ha. Streisand Effect!
| TravisHusky wrote:
| The cease and desist seemingly has no real legal basis, but I
| mean you can send a cease and desist for anything you want. My
| mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors didn't
| like it so they had a lawyer send a cease and desist with no
| legal basis. My mom ignored the C&D and is enjoying her new shed.
|
| The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag out
| lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives because
| they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone else. It's
| complete abuse of process, and really should be dealt with more
| harshly than it is.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag
| out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives
| because they can afford to hold"
|
| Meh. Just show up. Don't hire lawyers. File motions all day to
| see more evidence.
| javajosh wrote:
| Tangentially, I wonder why both the words "cease" and "desist"
| are necessary. Aren't they synonyms? Perhaps it's just for
| emphasis?
| morsch wrote:
| It has an interesting history.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
| fogof wrote:
| They are slightly different in meaning. Cease = Stop doing
| it. Desist = Don't do it again.
| dlivingston wrote:
| " A legal doublet is a standardized phrase used frequently in
| English legal language consisting of two or more words that
| are near synonyms, usually connected by "and", and in
| standard orders, such as "cease and desist".
|
| The doubling--and sometimes even tripling--often originates
| in the transition from use of one language for legal purposes
| to another... To ensure understanding, the terms from both
| languages were used. This reflected the interactions between
| Germanic and Roman law following the decline of the Roman
| Empire."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
| hackcasual wrote:
| Driving without due care and attention
| lelandfe wrote:
| Thought this was also pretty great:
|
| > _Doublets may also have arisen or persisted because the
| solicitors and clerks who drew up conveyances and other
| documents were paid by the word_
| svachalek wrote:
| That seems likely and probable.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Are solicitors and clerks also doublets?
| djrogers wrote:
| No, but conveyances and other documents was. ;-)
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| No, but if a lawyer can find a way to bill you for the
| services of both, they will.
| abruzzi wrote:
| This is interesting. I've always worked off the assumption
| that while english legal documents look like english they
| are actuallysomething a little special. These words get
| tested in court cases and opinions are written about them
| and what them mean. So, in this case my assumption
| (possibly incorrect) had been that each of those words had
| specific legal meaning, and perhaps a venn diagram would
| show 95% overlap of the sets, by using both words they get
| 100% overlap.
|
| (Its also why lay people shouldn't write their own
| contracts, because a lawyer with contract experience won't
| use words that haven't been tested.)
| thinkloop wrote:
| Now we're only missing what the two languages are for
| "cease and desist"
| zinekeller wrote:
| Cease - Latin to _cessare_ meaning "to yield", then Old
| French.
|
| Desist - Latin to _stare_ (sta-re, not homonym of stair)
| meaning "to stand", then (still) Latin to "sistere"
| meaning "to stop" plus prefix de, which in this context
| is "an order (from top, aka court) to down (aka to you)",
| then Old French.
|
| Huh.
|
| So this is basically court-enforced stop and yielding to
| the other party.
| [deleted]
| celticninja wrote:
| Cease is more like stop doing something you were already
| doing, where is desist is More like don't even start it.
|
| So perhaps they should be cease or desist.
| James-Livesey wrote:
| Perhaps, but then one _could_ say, "I'll pick 'cease',
| please! I'll get back to doing it again later"
| wavefunction wrote:
| Or "stop doing it and don't restart"
| citizenkeen wrote:
| My law professor told me it was a temporal phrasing: stop
| doing it (cease), and don't do it in the future (desist).
| Otherwise I could stop for one day, or in the age of the
| internet one minute, and then begin again: I would have
| ceased and resumed.
| [deleted]
| panta wrote:
| > The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag
| out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives
| because they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone
| else.
|
| There is no certainty in the legal system, they could very well
| win even if they are in the wrong. More so when they can employ
| an army of lawyers and put economic pressure on the system.
| XCSme wrote:
| > My mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors
| didn't like it
|
| Note that depending on the country, you might still need
| authorization to build any structure on your own property.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I recently moved into a neighborhood with a stricter HOA,
| after avoiding them for most of my life.
|
| My plan is to wait until February 2022, and build the ugliest
| golden Trump mailbox I can slap together. Then, when they ask
| me to take it down, request an appeal, and film the ensuing
| meeting. Then, send said video to Fox News et al. Then, run
| for HOA on a platform of abolishing the HOA.
|
| ... I really don't like neighbors telling me what I can and
| can't do.
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| I can't help but point out the irony of this post that
| building an idol of a politician is considered an act of
| defiance against authority.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well it is being used as a tool in the literal sense. Who
| it applies to of all parties mentioned above in the
| perojative sense will be left as an exercise to the
| reader (as it is a matter of opinion).
| [deleted]
| TravisHusky wrote:
| Yeah; she had the permits. It was kinda funny from the
| outside because people kept complaining to the county and the
| county kept pushing back saying it was approved. That shed
| must've been inspected 3 separate times because of a couple
| of neighbors who didn't even live on the same street but I
| guess were just bored.
|
| The neighborhood has an HOA but the HOA actually had no
| actual rules because they were not properly registering with
| the county when they made bylaws (where my mom is all HOA
| rules have to be submitted to the state, otherwise they are
| not enforceable). Gotta love HOAs.
| smileysteve wrote:
| A much more related example of ignoring of ignoring a Cease and
| Desist is the one that Zuckerberg received from the Winklevoss
| twins as he and Eduardo were marketing The Facebook -- only it
| had some legal basis.
| blocked_again wrote:
| > My mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors
| didn't like it so they had a lawyer send a cease and desist
| with no legal basis
|
| > The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag
| out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives
| because they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone
| else.
|
| Convincing people that America is the land of the free, is the
| biggest trick the devil has ever pulled.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Nobody has ever been "free" but damn are we a whole lot more
| free than most humans in the history of civilization.
| int_19h wrote:
| Americans are so free that they have to pay $2,350 for the
| privilege of becoming non-Americans.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Even more ominous than a cease & desist is a cease & decease,
| which is how the article (presumably inadvertently) describes
| it.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _Stop it & die!_
|
| It would be an appropriate way for Facebook to phrase their
| C&D considering the forms that cyber-bullying take on the
| platform
| walrus01 wrote:
| Give the source code to the extension to a developer located in
| an impossible legal jurisdiction like Afghanistan. Let them
| publish it. Good luck to Facebook hiring a lawyer and trying
| its luck in the Taliban's court system. Even before the
| collapse of the previous government in Kabul it would have been
| a near impossibility.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Do you want a Facebook own-brand drone army? Because this is
| how you get one.
| jessaustin wrote:
| So the MVP drones will do what twenty years of trillion-
| dollar brutality couldn't do? Wow you seem to have an even
| lower opinion of the effectiveness of USA military than I
| do... I suspect Taliban would laugh at this idea.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Free clay pigeon shooting? Sure!
| notatoad wrote:
| Meh, given current Facebook PR trends I give it about a
| week before we learn they've already got one.
| [deleted]
| aaroninsf wrote:
| _Delivery drone can deliver quite a range of things._
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| "Our new fleet of stand-off delivery drones and
| inertially guided gliding packages can accurately drop
| your purchase onto your front lawn from 31,000 feet"
| int_19h wrote:
| https://www.maverickdrone.com/products/skynet-drone-
| defense-...
| manquer wrote:
| Even better fund organizations like EFF to take cases like
| this and make sure there is legal precedent that gives a
| strong footing to all developers.
|
| Hiding in other countries is a not sustainable solution, they
| are going to force extension stores to remove it etc payment
| gateway not to process you, pushing you as a dev to the
| fringes and silence others
|
| The chilling effect is the real aim, they are effectively
| signaling that they can come after anyone who pisses their
| business model of.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Oh yeah, find someone that wants to be a target of a major US
| corporation in Afghanistan/third world.
|
| You forget we have Guantanamo where people were "renditioned"
| with little or no legal basis either in the US or otherwise,
| and I believe there are people in Guantanamo that have no
| publicly provided evidence to be there?
|
| All it takes is waiting for some politically opportune reason
| to enact a little dragnet and getting someone on some CIA
| list with little evidence, and BAM, You're in something like
| Guantanamo or even worse (client torture security services,
| assassination, etc).
|
| Yes we withdrew forces, but we've been there a decade and
| likely have a large network of CIA contacts that would kill
| or injure a random Afghan civilian.
|
| The US Government is a very very very very dangerous entity
| to anyone in the third world should you get on their radar.
| They are dangerous to US citizens with the Padilla case,
| antiterrorism law overreach, no fly lists, and a variety of
| other harassment techniques.
|
| The state department and CIA are power extensions of the
| corporate elite in the United States. We have toppled regimes
| for oil... minerals... even bananas.
|
| Russia would be far better.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I have family there, let me know if I can help.
| dashtiarian wrote:
| I'm a developer in Iran willing to do this, email in the
| profile, just in case the owner wants to and reads this.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| This is so awesome! Is this the start of a new thing /
| movement I wonder?
|
| Such a plugin is beholden to the extension "marketplaces"
| so it would be good to include instructions on how to self
| install the extension if chrome bans it.
| davchana wrote:
| Isn't it that one can just unpack any extension? Unless it
| is doing something on server side too; all client side code
| is in extension itself?
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| Happy to donate for the cause as well. Please do this.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| I'll donate to this project.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Donating money to a project in Iran may be legally hairy
| for Americans. Check the situation before doing so. I am
| all for helping worthwhile projects financially, but
| international politics is a mess.
| [deleted]
| roozbeh18 wrote:
| ah, had a discussion with a friend about sending money
| with Iran in the comments. he said his poker buddies used
| to donate 10% of the winning for someone to help orphans
| in iran. in the paypal transfer he wrote "for the good
| work you do in iran". his account got banned and money
| never got returned. later his account was reinstated but
| money never was returned.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I've seen a case where somebody had their zelle or venmo
| account permanently removed for sending a small transfer
| to their friend with the description "for the cubans" -
| they were paying their buddy back for an order of
| sandwiches.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_sandwich
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| Paypal actually did this to me for hiring an indonesian
| kid to sketch a t-shirt design for $50.
|
| Before I clicked send, I verified that Paypal said they'd
| send the money without charging a fee. He received it,
| minus the fee they claimed they wouldn't charge. So, I
| tried to send another $10 to cover the difference and I
| got torpedoed into some black hole of no return.
|
| Now I can't use paypal to buy anything without submitting
| a bunch of documentation, which is super weird
| considering I _don 't_ have to send anything like that to
| use their competitors' services, so it's never going to
| happen.
|
| I assume it's some sort of regulation they're attempting
| to follow, but haven't thought through, but who knows?
| It's definitely costing them money, but maybe not enough
| to justify improving the UX.
| djrogers wrote:
| That sounds more like urban legend than a true story.
| Neither Zelle nor Venmo (and it's a strike that you can't
| specify) have an obligation to cancel accounts based on
| comments.
|
| If they did, half of the accounts in Venmo would be
| banned already - have you read the comments in the public
| feed? People know that feed exists, and use it to troll
| their friends all the time.
| short12 wrote:
| I've never seen a bank or credit card company put in any
| effort regarding cuban cigars. A few of the best shops
| are clearly illegal just because of the name alone. But
| they all accept visa and Mastercard
|
| You don't even need to bother with h dark web and
| cryptocurrency. It will just flat out show up on your
| bill without issue.
| mthoms wrote:
| I think they might have interpreted it as "please give
| this money _to_ the Cubans ". Which, AFAIK is (was?)
| illegal in the US.
| evolve2k wrote:
| And then we wonder if crypto has a real market.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Seconded.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Better yet: anonymous git hosting as a tor hidden service.
| Now there's nothing they can do but rage at all the
| "unauthorized" extensions giving users control over their
| little platform.
| Eikon wrote:
| And then, where to publish it? On a website based in an
| American jurisdiction? On some browser extension store?
|
| Great idea.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Individual civilian afghans are not embargoed by US law -
| it's not Iran. The Taliban are, of course, embargoed and
| listed in various things like the OFAC list.
|
| Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Afghans have gmail
| accounts, many companies use google workspace or office365,
| etc. For example.
| notatoad wrote:
| I think the point was that having an Afghani publish the
| source wouldn't really accomplish anything because
| Facebook could just go after whatever service was used to
| publish it, instead of the person who published it.
|
| An Afghani can access GitHub or the chrome extension
| store, but those are both run by American companies who
| will obey Facebook's takedown requests.
| 14 wrote:
| What about torrenting? Why not offer is somewhere a bit
| more decentralized?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Now you're into territory where yes, the extension is
| available, but nobody can find it and only the very
| technically astute will be able and willing to install
| it. FB achieves 99.9% of their goal.
| walrus01 wrote:
| At least that shifts the dangerous legal-financial burden
| onto google's lawyers, if they want to fight a takedown
| request to remove an extension from the extension store.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I doubt Google would fight it and would just take it down
| no questions asked
| jessaustin wrote:
| A takedown request is only binding on a well-capitalized
| firm like Google if it is based on some legal rationale
| that could survive a test in court. It isn't clear that
| the request under discussion has such a rationale. At the
| very least Google would take this to some court and force
| a judge to say something about it.
|
| Once a firm grows accustomed to following orders from
| their competitors, bad times lie ahead.
| int_19h wrote:
| But why would Google bother to waste time and resources
| figuring out if it's actually valid or not? They don't
| seem to do that on YouTube.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's actually... interesting. It's a well established
| tactic to go to another country and publish your stuff from
| there if you like to keep annoying a government or
| institution. You know, Snowden is in Russia, some Russian
| journalists are in EU countries. It happens all the time
| since ever.
|
| What if someone creates a Telegram group where developers
| from hostile countries(like US&Iran, UK&Russia, Japan&China)
| pass each other projects that are not obviously illegal but
| not feasible due to risk of persecution?
|
| In this case, If FB thinks it has a case can try its luck by
| sending Google a scary looking letter then proceed to compel
| Google to remove the extension by court order.
| lacker wrote:
| _The cease and desist seemingly has no real legal basis_
|
| It seems pretty straightforward to me - the Facebook terms of
| service say that you won't make scripts that interact with the
| Facebook site except through approved APIs, the cease and
| desist is telling him that he is breaking this agreement.
| There's no lawsuit involved, Facebook will just enforce this
| themselves by banning the account and making the script not
| work. It's not a big deal, this probably happens hundreds of
| times a day for various bots that people make that manipulate
| Facebook in different ways.
| asdff wrote:
| I feel like websites shouldn't be able to just ban scripting.
| What if I have a disability and a custom script is the only
| way I can interface with fb?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| If Facebook makes a change to intentionally make
| accessibility harder, then you can sue Facebook under the
| ADA if you are an American.
|
| There is a whole category of law where they just go around
| suing businesses for not being accessible enough. Quite a
| lot of money in it.
| quantified wrote:
| Browsers only automate user interactions with the
| underlying HTTP APIs. What defines "scripting" here?
| nickff wrote:
| If you have a disability, and you can't use the site,
| you're probably entitled to make an ADA claim against them.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I agree with you that they shouldn't be able to ban
| scripting... but they're only going to use it for things
| that they believe hurt the website. If there's a law that
| says "don't do it" they can sue the people they don't like
| and ignore the ones they don't care about.
| feanaro wrote:
| Agreed, but people seem to often miss this point. There is
| nothing special in _browsers_ that allows them to do
| something that "scripts" cannot do. They are both HTTP
| user agents.
| asdff wrote:
| I hate the whole song and dance too with how you have to
| fake your user agent and add human like delay to
| interactions whenever you make a useful script on the web
| these days. You aren't stopping malicious behavior since
| they know how to penetrate these systems trivially, you
| just make it harder for the average user who has to learn
| as they go how to rope around these issues and hope they
| don't get IP banned along the way for making a website
| slightly more useful to them.
| lacker wrote:
| Disabilities deserve special protection, but in practice
| companies seem pretty good about working with usability
| extensions. AFAICT almost all cases where companies don't
| support disabled users enough, it's unintentional. There's
| a little bit of extra work like providing alt image tags
| that companies neglect, or they don't think to test on
| color-blind users, that sort of thing, rather than banning
| usability extensions for violating the TOS.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Why do we need to appeal to the differently abled?
|
| If I own a general purpose computer, and I purchase a
| connection to the internet, I'm entitled to interact
| however I desire* with an internet service, or the
| information it chooses to send me.
|
| It is not entitled to have the information it sent to me
| displayed in a certain way, and it certainly isn't entitled
| to bitch when I _choose_ to interact with it in a way
| different than its preferences.
|
| If that's what it wants, then it's welcome to sell a sealed
| appliance that only interacts in allowed ways. And we'll
| see what choices people make.
|
| * With the exception of actions that impact others, e.g.
| DoS, authentication bypass, malicious hacking
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Why do we need to appeal to the differently abled?_
|
| Because it's the only avenue we have. Providing
| accessibility tends to require creating holes in
| otherwise user-hostile UX, and big companies can't give
| up on accessibility due to PR reasons - which makes it a
| perfect beachhead for people who just want a sane and
| respectful computing experience.
| ben_w wrote:
| > With the exception of actions that impact others, e.g.
| DoS, authentication bypass, malicious hacking
|
| It is very easy to DoS by accident with software; and
| while I'm in favour of totally breaking the economic
| model of FB in this way, doing so _definitely_ has an
| impact on others (specifically the Other which is FB
| itself).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| True, but the only way to prevent _that_ is by stripping
| users of autonomy.
|
| And in a choice between user autonomy and service
| stability, I can't side with the latter over the former.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| If everyone is entitled to interact with the internet on
| their own terms, then why would that not include a
| service being entitled to act in a way that's adversarial
| to your desires?
| cybernautique wrote:
| In my opinion, it does! However, on my machines, I am the
| arbiter. Facebook cedes control to me the moment any of
| their content hits my browser.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Except that when you signed up for a FB account you
| agreed to access the site on their terms, not yours.
|
| And let's be honest, and I'm the last person to defend
| FB, but they are not likely to be going to be going after
| a lone user who has automated something for his own
| convenience with Selenium or whatever...
|
| Once I decided I wanted to delete a lot of old email from
| a webmail account. There was no "select all" function so
| I wrote a one-liner in the javascript console of the
| browser. When that worked, I automated clicking the
| "delete" button, and then added a loop to do it over and
| over. This probably violated a TOS clause somehow, but
| nothing ever came of it.
| cybernautique wrote:
| I have not signed up for a FB account and yet they still
| try to deliver payloads to my browser, in the form of
| tracking buttons embedded in non-FB sites. They've
| likewise ceded all control of those buttons, and what I
| do with them, to me!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Agree with you there; my comment was in the context of a
| FB user interacting with the FB functionality.
| int_19h wrote:
| Given FB's near-monopoly position, any such "agreements"
| are effectively forced.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Because we share society with people who have various
| interaction difficulties and the larger community has for
| a long time accepted that we shouldn't deny access to
| daily goods and services for those people. It's like a
| mandate that a shop needs disabled access, it's totsllu
| reasonable
| amelius wrote:
| Except FB will just ignore your argument and detect and
| ban your automated service.
| nickff wrote:
| Is this a moral/ethical, polemical, or a legal argument?
|
| Why are you entitled to all these things? What gives you
| the right to demand that others act in accordance with
| your desires?
| drdeca wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it isn't meant as a legal argument.
|
| What entitles me to control of my computer? "My computer
| is mine, and you cannot have it.".
|
| That being said, I'm somewhat more open to the validity
| of restrictions for how to interact with the server.
|
| If someone e.g. is running an MMO with e.g. in-game items
| with real money value, and someone else is like,
| distributing cheats to get these items immediately, it
| seems fair that the MMO owner should be able to make them
| stop (though, like, ideally their game would just be
| secure?)
|
| But if users are permitted to interact with the server in
| a particular way, I see no reason to allow requiring that
| users actually touch their mouse and keyboard while doing
| things they are allowed to do using their mouse and
| keyboard.
| Talanes wrote:
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-
| every...
|
| The actual timeline of events doesn't match what you think
| would happen. They banned him and then used the threat of a
| lawsuit to get him to take down the extension/code.
| salawat wrote:
| They can't ban the account. The account would be the
| downloader's and presumably, would auto-generate unfollow
| actions just as a user in a browser would manually. If they
| break the script, they'll probably break the unfollow UI for
| legitimate human user's and create evidence that they employ
| dark UI practices as a core part of their business strategy,
| which would be a P.R. nightmare.
|
| Messing with this is a lose-lose for Facebook.
| lacker wrote:
| _If they break the script, they 'll probably break the
| unfollow UI for legitimate human users_
|
| _Messing with this is a lose-lose for Facebook._
|
| Nah, this sort of thing really happens all the time. Think
| hundreds of scripts like this automatically disabled each
| day. This one just flukily got some press attention. Large
| tech companies will have teams entirely dedicated to
| preventing scripts from doing things while keeping the site
| running as normal for regular users.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| If they could ban the account, they would have done it.
|
| Extension is more like a automated tool. Don't need any
| permission from Facebook. User can install the tool, and
| click on a button to unfollow your friends.
|
| Facebook could write TOS for his users not to run a script on
| their website.
|
| I write scripts (userscripts) all the time. I have a script
| for Gmail that I use it all the time. Gmail doesn't know
| that.
| UglyToad wrote:
| Yeah this is the problem more generally with the legal system
| both in my home country of England but especially in the US. As
| one hn user put it so perfectly recently "the process is the
| punishment".
|
| I think a lot of people in the software bubble don't realize
| what a huge sum even $100 is for the average person, the law
| only affords power and protection to the rich and already
| powerful.
| akudha wrote:
| _demanded that I agree to never again create tools that
| interact with Facebook or its other services._
|
| How is this legal in any shape or form? It is a browser
| extension, running on users' browsers, installed intentionally
| by his users. This is insane. The level of arrogance and
| entitlement here is mind blowing.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > How is this legal in any shape or form? It is a browser
| extension, running on users' browsers, installed
| intentionally by his users. This is insane. The level of
| arrogance and entitlement here is mind blowing.
|
| Google banned the Chrome extension "bypass paywalls" for
| doing nothing bad except annoying Google's friends.
|
| This is why walled gardens are bad. It's not Google's place
| or Facebook's place or Apple's place or anyone's place to
| tell me what programs I can run on my own computer.
| rmah wrote:
| It's legal in the same way it's legal for me to demand that
| you never eat tomatoes again. It's also legal for you to
| demand that your neighbor turn off his TV. Anyone non-
| government party can pretty much _demand_ anything from
| anyone else. It means next to nothing. Not trying to be
| snarky here. It 's just that I find it odd that so many
| people seem to think that the law is about what's permitted
| when it's really about what's not permitted. At least in the
| USA.
|
| Arrogance and entitlement on Facebook's part though, that I
| agree with.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Now add the ingredients that you have a vested interest in
| setting an example, and have infinite resources to do so.
| Say you set aside a billion dollar to hammer your neighbour
| with lawsuit after lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. You
| can run this way for years while consistently losing. It's
| not a matter of being right or wrong, it's a matter of who
| has the longest breath. Sure After several years the tables
| might turn and the judges may find it odd you're claiming
| such weird things, but then again you've been going at it
| for years already.
|
| So sure there might be a moral argument on what is right or
| wrong, but the law in practice does not work like that.
| Unless a judge sets an example by nipping this behaviour in
| the bud with excessive fees, but good luck seeing that ever
| happen.
|
| The only way I'd see the neighbour win is if a whale of an
| activist Party would side with him and make it clear that
| any legal fight will be taken up with the biggest defence
| possible, but this is equally unlikely to happen
| unfortunately.
| rmah wrote:
| I wasn't making a moral argument, I was making a
| practical one. The _demand_ , in and of itself, means
| very little. Being notified may matter, but the fact that
| it was couched as a "demand" rather than a "request" is
| irrelevant. And the notice will only matter in so far as
| you are actually in breech of a contract or there is a
| tort or you are breaking a law. As you illustrated, it's
| primarily the ability to punish non-compliance that
| actually matters (via procedure, public relations, etc).
|
| Through it all though, the fact that the other party
| _demanded_ something of you instead of politely asked "
| or humbly requested is not really relevant. What matters
| is that you got notice. That's it.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I guess it is all in the definition of "demand." I
| interpret the word -- at least in this context -- to mean
| it has legal teeth, so to speak.
|
| Even if they are enforcing their demand by way of banning
| users that don't comply, that may indeed be illegal. For
| instance, if Facebook made a demand that gay people may not
| declare themselves so on the platform or they will be
| banned, I'm sure they'd pretty quickly find themselves on
| the wrong side of the law.
|
| But really, right now, something like this just gives
| Congress new things to grill Zuckerberg on, next time they
| bring him in. (which is inevitable, I think)
| chemmail wrote:
| They think they own the internet. But in some countries they
| do.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _How is this legal in any shape or form?_
|
| IANAL, but have some experience with this from a business
| matter, resulting in obtaining advice of counsel.
|
| And, yeah this is not a criminal matter, but a civil one, so
| you're right that the developer isn't likely in civil breach
| unless they are using FB resources (e.g. API or SDK) that
| they access under agreement with FB and are violating.
|
| The irony is that if the FB standard user agreement prevents
| users from, say, using software to programmatically access
| the site, then it's the _user_ of the extension who would be
| in breach with FB.
|
| So, as long as the developer doesn't use the extension on
| their own FB account, then FB doesn't have much to stand on
| (and even then the C&D would only be applicable to the
| developer's use of the extension as a user).
|
| On a related side note, if the extension actually did
| something not related to a specific account (e.g. scraped a
| _public_ profile while not signed in), then even the user
| would likely not be in breach, as there is no affirmative
| assent (i.e. clickwrap) to terms of use required to simply
| visit the site.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I would suppose for any extension to work with Facebook the
| site it would need to be developed with knowledge of a
| Facebook page's DOM, as such the developer would need to go
| look at the page to be used and write code to do what the
| extension needs to do.
|
| Thus I guess one legal argument would be that the ability
| of the extension to work proves the developer's use of
| Facebook the service even though they have been banned. So
| maybe there is something from that they can build up an
| argument, although it starts to sound far-fetched enough I
| might expect a judge to not buy it.
| invokestatic wrote:
| There's actually a concept of tortious interference, which
| can make you liable for assisting other people in breaking
| a terms of service, even if you never broke it yourself.
| zja wrote:
| Sounds similar to what happened when Blizzard sued a
| company for selling World of Warcraft hacks.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(bot)
| invokestatic wrote:
| Funny you should mention. I only know this cuz I used to
| sell cheats for games.
| polynomial wrote:
| Browser extensions don't kill FB accounts. People kill FB
| accounts.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > The level of arrogance and entitlement here is mind
| blowing.
|
| Yeah. They put a server on the internet but we're not
| supposed to talk to it. We can only do it on their terms.
| Gotta control those users so they don't hurt a billion dollar
| company's business interests.
|
| I remember the pirate bay's responses to legal threats.
| That's exactly the kind of reply Facebook deserves.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Streisand effect in action. Installing extension now.
| Thanks FB legal team!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
| quenix wrote:
| What were the pirate bay's responses, if you don't mind?
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| They were quite fun to read at the time.
|
| Here is an old archive link to some: https://web.archive.
| org/web/20111223101839/http://thepirateb...
| akudha wrote:
| _Please don 't sue us right now, our lawyer is passed out
| in an alley from too much moonshine, so please atleast
| wait until he's found and doesn't have a huge
| hangover..._
|
| _The problem here seems to be that the material is
| unreleased? If that is the case, you can easily fix the
| problem by releasing it. We 'll be more than glad to help
| you distribute it - free of charge! - to our users._
|
| Thank you for the link. Their responses are hilarious,
| haha
| noptd wrote:
| And their responses have aged brilliantly to boot.
| radmuzom wrote:
| If you are interested in a more detailed story, listen to
| this Darknet Diaries interview with one of the co-
| founders of PirateBay.
|
| https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/92/
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this
| extension or Facebook's decision, but the premise of your
| comment --- "we put a service up on the Internet but you
| can only talk to it on our terms" --- that is actually how
| things work, and how they should work.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > that is actually how things work, and how they should
| work
|
| I don't think so. Users simply don't have the power to
| negotiate these contracts. These "take it or leave it"
| deals are abusive. Especially since many times these
| platforms have network effects so strong you _need_ to be
| part of them in order to not fail at life. Under these
| conditions, nobody can truly consent to anything. These
| "terms" should not even apply. Nobody even reads them, it
| doesn't matter what they say because it won't change the
| fact they _need_ to be on Facebook because of family,
| work, school, whatever. They click "agree" not because
| they agree but because the sign up form won't submit if
| they don't.
|
| So technology that lets us alter the deal is very much
| welcome indeed. They don't want us using this stuff but
| their permission is not necessary. Software is gonna
| interoperate with their site whether they want it or not.
| They should not even be able to find out that we're doing
| anything out of the ordinary. From their perspective,
| they should simply see a normal user agent issuing normal
| HTTP requests.
|
| Adversarial interoperability. If they refuse to make the
| site work like we want it to, we'll do the work for them.
| This should be considered a form of legitimate self
| defense against their abuse.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The nuance of how "we put up a service ... talk to it on
| our terms" is enforced is what is deeply concerning to
| me. Is that up to Facebook to use technical means to
| enforce their terms or is the force of law behind them?
| Where is that line drawn?
|
| If I modify the DOM with an extension to hide content I
| don't like am I running afoul of the law? How about using
| Lynx instead of Chrome?
|
| What constitutes "talking to" a service? Is it data I
| send to that server, or is it how my computer processes
| the data I receive and how I interact with it?
|
| Different people are going to have wildly different
| opinions, and some of them are very troubling to me.
| Committing fraud is one thing, but simply using a service
| without exceeding your authority in a way the service
| provider doesn't prefer seems like something the service
| provider should handle without the force of law behind
| them.
| tptacek wrote:
| It is up to Facebook to use both technical means and
| enforceable contract law to draw lines around how their
| service can be used, the same way it is up to any of us
| to do the same with services we stand up on the Internet.
|
| There are limits to both tools, and legislatures can
| enact new restrictions in response to public demand. But
| none of that is in play in this story.
|
| If the argument upthread was "we should demand laws that
| prevent Facebook from locking out extensions to their
| platform", I wouldn't have a rebuttal (I might or might
| not support those restrictions). But the sarcastic dunk
| that was actually made, that it was somehow ridiculous
| that Facebook would have some say over the terms of how
| their platform was used, was weird and worth commenting
| on. It's not only not ridiculous, but actually the world
| as it exists today.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> [they said] it was somehow ridiculous that Facebook
| would have some say over the terms of how their platform
| was used_
|
| It's less about FB's right to set boundaries, and more
| about what FB does when they feel the boundaries have
| been violated. In this case, they've perma-banned the guy
| and initiated threatening legal action. That action's
| extreme demands are NOT in FB's TOS, and reflect on FB's
| attitude of entitlement.
|
| One argument against this is that FB is just doing the
| "standard legal thing" of demanding everything up-front,
| and then negotiating. That is true, but I don't think
| that just because every lawyer tries to bully their
| clients enemy means they should. And in this case FB is
| Goliath, swinging hard and fast at David.
|
| And you know what? Fuck Goliath.
| threeseed wrote:
| You don't know the full story here.
|
| It's quite likely that Facebook sent the person an email
| asking him to stop violating their Terms of Service and
| he refused.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Consider it by analogy: let's say I have a fax machine at
| my house, and someone keeps sending me faxes on it even
| though I don't want them to.
|
| I _could_ set up some technical mechanism to stop it,
| such as blocking their phone number. But, if it 's easy
| for them to switch phone numbers, then that won't work
| well. And I may not be able to just block a whole area
| code, because there may be people I want to let fax me
| coming from that area code as well.
|
| My other recourse, then, is threaten to sue them, and, if
| they continue, to actually sue them. And I would argue
| that I should be able to do that. Sending me faxes costs
| me financial resources and ties up my fax machine, so
| it's hardly zero cost to me, and it makes sense to have
| some third party to sort out the dispute and decide where
| the line should be drawn.
|
| I can imagine other worlds with gentler, more even-handed
| approaches to sorting out these kinds of issues.
| Unfortunately, most those approaches fall under the
| general category of "regulation", and the country I
| reside in, the USA, decided a long time ago to eschew
| that kind of approach in favor of one that relies heavily
| on lawyering up and lawsuits.
| csydas wrote:
| Analogies are always risky business ;)
|
| Facebook has a public service and one of the options is
| to Unfollow; someone wrote a browser extension to do this
| automatically for all items.
|
| Fundamentally, what is the difference between automating
| this process and doing it manually?
|
| In your example of a fax machine, arguably fax numbers
| are a private entity; there is no requirement for
| publishing fax numbers nor is fax automatically publicly
| listed for everyone to see. A malicious spammer would
| need to either obtain the fax number from a listing
| somewhere or brute-force the number, and similarly, the
| only way to __know__ that a fax has gone is ambiguous.
| obtain the fax number from a listing somewhere or brute-
| force the number, and neither is really analogous to what
| a browser offers.
|
| I think your analogy conflates a few concepts
| incorrectly, namely that there is some unexpected or
| undue financial consequence to Facebook for publicly
| allowing users to Unfollow Groups; if the extension
| __needlessly__ generated traffic, this is closer to your
| analogy. But as I can see how the extension works (based
| on archived copies found on shady sites), it's not undue
| traffic, it's just expediting the process of manually
| Unfollowing groups.
|
| Facebook shouldn't have a recourse here as I see it; the
| automation causes no undue burden on facebook that isn't
| possible by manually clicking, an arbitrary review of the
| extension suggests there is no undue stress on the
| servers that differs in any way from the traffic one
| might generate if they manually unfollowed groups.
| Automating the process indeed might be undesirable for
| Facebook in some way, but fundamentally the same result
| is achievable with manually clicking, and I think a more
| substantial evidence of damage is required from Facebook
| to justify such a threat.
|
| If we take it to a logical comparison, should Facebook
| have the right to block a mouse + keyboard automation
| tool that I script to react at human speeds but is pixel-
| perfect to unfollow groups?
|
| If the answer to this from Facebook is "yes", then the
| natural question is "what is the similarity between these
| processes?"; if the answer is "automation", then the
| natural question is "why is this damaging to Facebook as
| opposed to me just manually unfollowing??", and I'm not
| confident Facebook has a reasonable/strong answer to
| this.
|
| If Facebook is fine with the slower method, then the
| question becomes "what is the real concern with the
| faster method? I will skip the logical follow-ups here as
| the response is already long.
|
| Facebook should __not__ have the right to sue just
| because they don't like an activity; no one benefits from
| this; quite the opposite, smaller parties are actively
| harmed by such behavior as they lack the financial
| resources or confidence (or both) to respond to such a
| legal challenge, and this was never the intent of law.
| One should not need heavy financing to secure their
| natural rights; if Facebook wants to position that the
| extension is somehow illegal as per terms of service, I
| think the duty is on them to demonstrate how it's
| significantly damaging and how it differs from a
| dedicated person armed with a cup of coffee and an hour
| of free time; if Facebook cannot make a significant
| distinction outside of convenience for the person, then I
| don't see a basis for legal recourse.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| what if there is only one brand of fax, they are selling
| your phone number to advertisers and they demand you
| receave the faxes?
|
| or say you have to listen to robocalls or els you cant
| use some unrelated monopolistic service or product?
|
| i like the analogy but the real story is who would use
| such a tool. if someone feels they need such extreme
| measures i wouldnt dare deny them this. who in there
| right mind?
| White_Wolf wrote:
| That is exactly how it works even with the extension. By
| building what ammounts to a GUI to a glorified database
| you are deciding on the interaction level with the
| database.
|
| The fact that the extensions helps automate some tasks if
| a different matter. If it were an industrial level
| scraper that scraped anything public... that could be
| considered malicious and can cause tangible financial
| losses.
|
| This extension on the other hand... You can't really
| justify sending a threat like that. You can come up with
| excuses but that is it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. Imagine sending a C&D to an extension developer
| because their software is helping people break free from
| their social media feed addictions. Can't have that, it's
| reducing ad impressions!
|
| It's like Facebook _wants_ people to hate them.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Please elaborate.
|
| I understand certain terms (such as saying you can't hit
| the server more often than a reasonable amount), but much
| beyond that I push back. If the laws allow them to make
| such all encompassing demands of how I use their product,
| well, laws can be changed, and I vote.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can vote much more forcefully by simply not using
| Facebook. Many of my friends have made exactly this
| decision and they seem fine.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I disagree. I don't think that solves the problem, at
| all.
|
| One: Facebook is currently being accused of damaging
| democracy via misinformation and their "anger promoting"
| algorithm. That affects me, and my leaving Facebook
| doesn't solve that. Two: there is the monopoly issue (if
| that is the right word.... the issue I am concerned about
| lies on a spectrum, unlike many people's usage of
| "monopoly"). Prior to Facebook having dominance, I used
| to be in the loop of what my friends are doing, because
| they used phone, email, etc. Now they all use Facebook
| and my choice to not use it (which I don't, actually)
| results in my not being included in a huge number of
| things. In that sense, I think Facebook has become like a
| utility, like the phone company of old. I can't just find
| a social network product that I prefer, and use it
| instead.... my friends are not on it and other social
| networks are not interoperable with Facebook. (as phone
| providers and email providers are interoperable with one
| another)
|
| Teens who use Facebook products are known to be harmed.
| Maybe you think they should just not use these products.
| That will cause even greater harm to their social lives
| than it causes to mine, since all their friends are using
| it and being connected with friends is very important to
| teens. Again, their simply not using the product doesn't
| address the problem. (and MY not using it especially
| doesn't help)
|
| I think your comment is like saying "if you don't like
| constant robocalls, just cancel your phone plan rather
| than encourage laws to curtail them." Kind of throwing
| out the baby with the bathwater.
|
| So yeah, I'll exercise my right to vote by actually
| voting. Luckily, many representatives are in agreement
| with my perspective on this.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Teens who use Facebook products are known to be harmed
|
| There is nothing special about Facebook products that
| make them harmful.
|
| It's a glorified message board which facilitates the
| exact same harmful social interaction that is prevalent
| on other sites e.g. TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat.
|
| This idea that you can ban Facebook and Instagram and
| suddenly the internet is safe for kids is just
| ridiculous.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > There is nothing special about Facebook products that
| make them harmful.
|
| Sure, there is. Addiction. People are addicted to this
| stuff. They're addicted to likes, reactions, seeing their
| follower numbers increase. They're addicted to the
| algorithmic content feeds. Facebook is actively working
| towards keeping it that way. They probably want to make
| it even more addictive. They want people using their
| software at all times in order to collect data and serve
| ads.
|
| Why else would they C&D an unfollow extension developer?
| They want people to keep following so they get addicted
| to the infinite content plus ads feed.
|
| Also, nobody is excusing any of the other sites you
| mentioned. There's plenty of things wrong with them as
| well and we'll condemn them for it. We're just focusing
| on Facebook right now because it's the subject of this
| particular thread.
| feanaro wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think the line is this clearcut, and
| in the wrong direction at that, but this gets murky
| really quickly.
|
| You don't get a say in how I'm using my computer. If
| you're exposing your HTTP server to the world _and_
| letting users access it using their web browsers, you
| _don 't_ get to tell me my choice of web browser (that
| is, HTTP agent) is not to your liking.
| threeseed wrote:
| The line is crystal clear.
|
| You can do whatever you want with your computer.
|
| But when you use your computer to access a remote service
| you need to comply with their terms of service.
| feanaro wrote:
| And this is in no way transgressing their terms of
| service since it's doing the exact same thing any HTTP
| agent would do. They don't get to choose _which_ agent I
| use.
|
| In other words, either the action is disallowed
| completely or it's allowed regardless of my choice of
| user agent.
| threeseed wrote:
| It's irrelevant how you violate their Terms of Service
| only that you do.
|
| If I attempt XSS or SQL Injection against a website it is
| still illegal regardless of whether the HTTP request uses
| the same user-agent or is similar to other requests.
| feanaro wrote:
| You're missing a crucial point, which is that an XSS or
| SQL injection requests are _different_ requests from
| those made during regular use. The intent of sending such
| a request is also different.
|
| In this case, we are dealing with the _same_ requests
| with the same intent, just made with a different browser.
| As stated previously, you cannot force my choice of
| browser.
|
| Now please tell me which (real or imaginary) ToS clause
| this violates and how it could possibly violate it, even
| hypothetically.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If their terms of service say "thou shalt not reverse-
| engineer", and I want to connect my Facebook to my
| Friendica, UK law says that I'm allowed to do so, and
| Facebook is _not allowed_ to have a problem with it - any
| clause in a contract that says otherwise is to simply be
| deleted.1
|
| 1: Technically, I think "ignored" is more accurate; if
| you're prohibited from reverse-engineering _in general_ ,
| the general prohibition would still apply even though it
| has a specific exemption. I'm not a lawyer, though.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Similar situation here. I also have certain rights that
| Facebook tries to deny me through their contract clauses.
| I consulted a lawyer and was told those could be ignored.
|
| Apparently it's a thing in the US. People can sign their
| rights away to these companies. Needless to say, those
| counter-rights clauses have become standard in every
| contract. Read one of these abusive contracts and you've
| read them all. "We reserve all possible rights while you
| promise not use any of yours" summarizes every terms of
| service out there.
| int_19h wrote:
| That depends on the terms - not everything goes. For
| example, they don't get to say that you must only use
| Facebook while naked.
|
| And in this case, I would argue that this is a case where
| they should not have the ability to restrict this kind of
| interaction. If the law disagrees, then the law needs to
| be changed (and in the meantime, ignored to the extent
| possible).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But when you use your computer to access a remote
| service you need to comply with their terms of service.
|
| The only moral obligation is to not crack the server and
| take control of it. We won't make the server's processor
| execute our code. That's the line. Your computer runs
| your code, my computer runs my code.
|
| Anything else is fair game. Server responds to my HTTP
| requests, so obviously anything I can do with HTTP
| requests is allowed. It doesn't matter what I use as user
| agent since it's the company's own code that's handling
| those requests.
|
| Ironically, taking over control is exactly what big tech
| is doing with _our_ computers. They take control away
| from us and give it to the copyright industry, to the
| advertisers, to everyone who would very much prefer that
| we users remain mere passive consumers just like in the
| days of television. Our computers are slowly becoming
| appliances.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Web Browser is called User Agent for a reason. It is not
| Corporate Agent or Facebook Agent. It should grant every
| right to the user with regards of look and feel of web
| sites, and none to the website being browsed.
|
| Web site may merely suggest how it is best served.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agee completely. This also extends to HTTP requests and
| all kinds of automation. We should be able to make a
| custom Facebook client if we want to. There's no reason
| their client must be the only one allowed to talk to
| their servers. Competition in this is space is obviously
| good for us. User agents should do what's good for us,
| not what's good for some company. If subverting their
| business interests is good for us, that's exactly what
| the software should do. We are its masters.
|
| Really, the user should have all the power. These
| companies already have what, billions of dollars? That's
| power enough for them.
| feanaro wrote:
| > There's no reason their client must be the only one
| allowed to talk to their servers.
|
| In a lot of cases it's also not _their_ client in any
| sense of the word. Firefox, Chromium, Safari are not
| Facebook 's.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. Their overreach in that case is even more
| offensive. The whole notion of Facebook having any say in
| the matter is absurd. Who are they to say which
| extensions or scripts people should or shouldn't be able
| to use?
| thriftwy wrote:
| At least, every browser should include a grabber which
| will mirror all information it sees to store locally/in
| the cloud.
|
| Facebook bans you? You still have all your data intact.
|
| I wonder if Facebook is legally still obliged to provide
| all its information to the user in the EU even after
| banning the user, and if they comply.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I wonder if Facebook is legally still obliged to
| provide all its information to the user in the EU even
| after banning the user, and if they comply.
|
| If they aren't, they should be. Facebook's contracts
| aren't above the law which says people have a right to
| their data. Does the law care that the user was banned? I
| don't think so. Nor should a banishment somehow
| invalidate someone's rights.
| threeseed wrote:
| > They put a server on the internet but we're not supposed
| to talk to it.
|
| Just because a company offers a service doesn't give you
| the right to (ab)use it any way you want.
|
| If that were the case hacking would be considered legal.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| If I exploit a vulnerability in order to crack their
| security and run my own code on Facebook servers, I've
| committed a crime.
|
| Sending an HTTP request to the Facebook server is not a
| crime. Facebook code is still in control. It can ignore
| my request.
| throwoutway wrote:
| The requests are authorized, by authenticated users.
| Facebook could just deny the requests or rate limit. Or
| stop offering the unfollow feature (which they keep
| moving and hiding).
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _Just because a company offers a service doesn 't give
| you the right to (ab)use it any way you want._
|
| Didn't the US Supreme Court say it _did_ , actually? I
| know that GDPR and the UK's Copyright Act have something
| to say about the matter.
| threeseed wrote:
| There is no law anywhere in the world that grants you
| permission to use any internet service for any purpose.
|
| It's always subject to the conditions the service
| provider sets.
|
| Otherwise again it would legalise hacking.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> How is this legal..._
|
| In theory, legality is the Judge's opinion of the law applied
| to circumstance. To even approach this state is extremely
| expensive and takes a great deal of time - on the order of
| years.
|
| So, for the most part we're all on our own. And in that
| context, legality doesn't matter. At all. What does matter is
| leverage. The justice system itself is, ironically, most
| often used as leverage, not as a service for determining
| legality, but as a threat of the expense and time of getting
| to that determination.
|
| It's sickening, but that's how it is.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > How is this legal in any shape or form?
|
| Are you asking how it's legal that you can demand someone to
| do something?
|
| How is anything legal? Because there's no law against it.
| There's no law against demanding something. You can demand
| (almost) anything of anyone you want.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| what if you have some kind of leverage over them?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Yes that's usually legal. Again - what law are you
| thinking of when you ask if it's illegal?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Would this be considered a SLAPP?
| bathtub365 wrote:
| It's impossible to tell since there isn't a lawsuit
| cyral wrote:
| Not a lawyer but I believe that only applies to actual
| lawsuits. Anyone can send you a C&D and you can choose to
| ignore it. It will cost at least $300 to consult with a
| lawyer to even write a response. If the other party really
| believes they are right, they will sue you.
| bityard wrote:
| I can't find it now because google is garbage these days
| but years ago I once ran across forum thread or blog post
| from a small business owner who semi-regularly received
| random bogus patent infringement and other claims with
| offers to settle matter out of court for thousands of
| dollars.
|
| He had a lawyer but after burning through a lot of money
| with carefully-written objections, he decided to just start
| ignoring them altogether. Which generally worked. These
| lawyers (and their clients) were just trolling for easy
| cash and never actually wanted to go to court because their
| claims were bogus and they would almost certainly lose.
|
| Sometimes, however, the other party's law firm would call
| him on the phone to follow with their demands. He would let
| them yammer on for a few minutes, ask some innocent
| questions, and then finally interrupt them with something
| like this. "Here is what I have to say to your client's
| claim... you have a pen and paper ready? I need you to
| write this down. Okay, good. Here it is: 'Fuck you.' No
| wait, I'm not done yet. Just let me speak. I want you to
| also add, 'and go to hell" please. That is my official
| legal response. Have a nice day." And slammed the phone
| down.
|
| Take the story with a grain of salt, but he said it worked
| 100% of the time.
| xxpor wrote:
| C&Ds are also specifically protected speech under the
| first amendment, under the theory they're really a threat
| to petition the government.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| "I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram".
|
| https://prunescape.fandom.com/wiki/The_Reply_Given_in_Ark
| ell...
| c2h5oh wrote:
| That would require a lawsuit IIRC, but it does have a some
| legal ramifications - I remember reading somewhere that C&D
| would make it easier for the recipient of it to sue.
|
| It definitely doesn't help their image or any antitrust
| lawsuit FB might be facing.
| rglover wrote:
| Can anyone who works at Facebook speak anonymously about what's
| going on over there? They seem like they're in full authoritarian
| meltdown mode...
| streamofdigits wrote:
| We have a serious information overload problem and the level of
| control provided by that extension is infinitesimal to what
| should be routinely available to all users.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > a tool that unfollows all connections automatically,
| potentially making the social network less addictive and
| depressing.
|
| Having done this manually, I can attest to the increase in the
| quality of my feed. Every now and then, I need to do the manual
| work again.
|
| I'm glad that Facebook has streisand effect this extension, I'll
| look into installing it.
| rytill wrote:
| As someone who doesn't have Facebook, what actually appears on
| your feed at all when you've unfollowed all connections?
| Wouldn't your feed be empty?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Groups, pages and family members that I have not blocked.
|
| Some of the posts Facebook shows to everyone and the ads.
|
| The video widget list that shows what is pretty much embedded
| Instagram videos.
|
| And quickly enough, the "you've reached the bottom" message
| and end of scroll. I can't remember its exact wording, but
| the way it's displayed makes it seem like a bug or glitch. It
| shows that they did not expect users to get there.
| rytill wrote:
| Ah, so it's like "unfollow by default" instead of "follow
| by default"
| Danielsauck wrote:
| Ok
| iainctduncan wrote:
| FWIW, I just do this by never going to the feed. Ever. I open FB
| on my messages, check my handful of groups (who I sure wish were
| on forums, but aren't...) and never see the crack flavoured
| candy.
|
| Also, a wonderful tool is Stylebot. You can make CSS overrides to
| hide auto suggestions, "you might need this dopamine rush",
| "other addicts got addicted to this" and all that crap. Makes
| reddit actually usable.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Contrast this action with this paragraph from Zuckerberg's
| statement 2 days ago:
|
| > At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we
| prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not
| true. For example, one move that has been called into question is
| when we introduced the Meaningful Social Interactions change to
| News Feed. This change showed fewer viral videos and more content
| from friends and family -- which we did knowing it would mean
| people spent less time on Facebook, but that research suggested
| it was the right thing for people's well-being. Is that something
| a company focused on profits over people would do?
|
| This ban is the answer the rhetorical question in the last
| sentence: Yes, this is exactly something a company focused on
| profits over people would do. Whatever corporate-speak tweaks
| Facebook makes to the news feed, the one thing it can't abide is
| people actively choosing what they experience on the site.
| asdff wrote:
| I can barely stand reading any quotes from that man. So
| blatanly two faced.
|
| >Is that something a company focused on profits over people
| would do?
|
| This is like BP patting themselves on the back for barely
| cleaning up an oil spill they themselves caused, and saying
| "see, we aren't evil, we did the bare minimum necessary to get
| some puff pieces in the press for us"
| [deleted]
| akersten wrote:
| A ban? Fine, whatever, their house their rules.
|
| A cease and desist for making a browser extension that automates
| a process that any user could themselves do with no special
| "hacking" required? Absolutely absurd, I hope there is no legal
| basis for this threat.
| e9 wrote:
| It's probably because extension was recording usage of
| Facebook. They are cracking down on any type of user data
| collection even with user consent. Which is ironic but in some
| way makes sense to avoid another Cambridge Analytica.
|
| Edit: to clarify confusion, author of the extension worked with
| university to collect user data to use for study:
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every...
| lowkey_ wrote:
| I imagine it's more so, at least according to the article as
| well, that this extension is automating user interactions.
|
| As an example of automated user interactions: It's clearly
| not allowed to use an extension that will automatically
| follow on Instagram in order to increase your follower count.
|
| Sadly, although this extension should morally be categorized
| differently, it falls into the same category per their rules
| -- automatically following is treated the same as
| automatically unfollowing. (In fact, a common feature of
| automatic follower bots is to automatically unfollow
| afterwards).
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Facebook is an ad platform. The guy wrote a plugin that
| removes their ability to display ads. Now he's banned. It's
| pretty straightforward.
| akersten wrote:
| With the disclaimer that I haven't looked too closely into it
| - that does make things sound a little sketchier from a user
| privacy perspective. I probably wouldn't use the extension
| myself. I'm still curious how Facebook has standing just
| because data is being recorded about the user's browsing
| which happens to include (maybe exclusively) their website.
| Most browser extensions are capable of exfiltrating page
| content - are they all in target for FB to say "nah, we don't
| like that" on behalf of someone who goes to facebook.com with
| the extension installed? I would think (hope) not.
| burkaman wrote:
| No, the letter is here:
| https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-
| cease-a.... It's because the extension "automates actions on
| Facebook". Why do you say it was recording usage?
| e9 wrote:
| The author of the extension admits he worked with
| university to collect user data for some study:
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-
| every...
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| > Fine, whatever, their house their rules
|
| When they are the de facto form of communication for a
| significant percentage of the population, it starts to go from
| "their rules" territory to "society's rules".
|
| Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 years
| ago because you were selling answering machines?
| krapp wrote:
| >When they are the de facto form of communication for a
| significant percentage of the population, it starts to go
| from "their rules" territory to "society's rules".
|
| Facebook is nowhere near the de facto form of communication
| for a significant percentage of the population, as evidenced
| by the fact that the world didn't crash to a halt when it
| went down a few days ago. It's merely popular, but being
| popular doesn't mean it controls society or dictates its
| rules.
|
| >Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 years
| ago because you were selling answering machines?
|
| That would be a valid comparison of Facebook owned the
| infrastructure of the internet, but they don't. It's
| _trivially_ easy to communicate without Facebook.
| pengaru wrote:
| Facebook isn't a monopoly, as evidenced by their recent
| outage resulting in 70M new Telegram users overnight.
|
| Even so, as others have pointed out, the telcos did have
| arguably reasonable restrictions placed on what one could
| connect to the network.
|
| But to put glorified web sites in the same class as
| government-sanctioned monopolies utilities tend to
| necessarily be is asinine. Your telco had to run physical
| wires across the land, gas company physical pipes everywhere,
| there was no practical means of a free competitive market,
| it's a completely different situation.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| There are multiple other ways to contact people. I haven't
| used facebook in almost a decade and have zero issue
| communicating with people
| bragh wrote:
| If you do not like the rules set by them, you can always
| build your own social network.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| This is like saying if you don't like the rules you can
| build your own multinational telephone network. There's a
| reason telecoms are subject to common carrier rules and I
| don't see why tech monopolies should be any different.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The crucial difference is lack of a right of way. The
| thing which creates an actual monopoly instead of the
| language degradation of monopoly to mean "But it is big
| and I don't like it!".
| Imnimo wrote:
| My understanding of common carrier rules is that they
| want to avoid a situation where a railroad or telephone
| operator who controlled the only available line could
| charge exorbitant rates to customers who had no
| alternatives. I don't really see how the same concern is
| true for Facebook - we have lots of options to
| disseminate information online.
| bragh wrote:
| I think you are seriously and intentionally
| misunderstanding the point. So far it was completely fine
| for Facebook to ban whoever they wanted and it was
| justified by them being a private company. Anybody who
| complained about it was told that they can build their
| own social network/cloud provider/payment provider.
|
| Somehow now this is bad... Ridiculous.
| munk-a wrote:
| Facebook is a utility that should be nationalized - it
| has grown too big.
| riffic wrote:
| > Facebook is a utility
|
| hardly.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Facebook is a utility that should be nationalized - it
| has grown too big.
|
| This can't happen to utility monopolies:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/06/telegram-
| says-...
|
| If your claim were true, everyone would just be stuck
| suffering and beholden to Facebook's ability to fix their
| service for lack of options.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| It's fine if you're a small or medium size business that
| commands at most single digit % of the market. Facebook
| dominates ad spending and reach to the point that you
| can't just build your own, because they have a de facto
| monopoly/oligopoly over digital ads.
|
| Let me ask you this: do you think Apple should be allowed
| to ban whoever they want from their platform justified by
| them being a private company? If you say no, then you
| should also say no to Facebook being allowed to do so.
| Otherwise you're just twisting the facts to support your
| political position.
| macksd wrote:
| Different people on the Internet will say different
| things. You can't really assign one collective motive to
| everything on the Internet and then say it's
| hypocritical.
| postsantum wrote:
| If you don't like this privte outrage, just ignore it or
| start your own
| macksd wrote:
| And your own social network will fail because of network
| effects. If Facebook can be as terrible as they have been
| and retain their users, it's really because of their users
| that they're being propped up with a successful business. I
| gotta say at that point even I start thinking they owe
| their users more than a free market exchange would imply.
|
| Not to mention we're talking about them sending a pretty
| formal legal threat. Would you philosophy in this case not
| be "if you don't like their browser extension, don't use
| it?"
| riffic wrote:
| > network effects
|
| If you're building a new social network today, it makes
| sense to tap into an existing social graph so you can
| bootstrap your network with an existing ecosystem.
| Michelle Lim made a great case for this in her post here:
|
| https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/
|
| These protocols exist today. This is a W3C recommendation
| as of 2018-01-23:
|
| https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/
| new_guy wrote:
| > And your own social network will fail because of
| network effects
|
| Speak for yourself. Not everything needs to be 'planet
| scale', I run a few social networks and they do just
| fine.
|
| And I agree with Facebook in this case, if you have
| someone come into your house with the sole intent of
| burning it down, of course you're going to kick them out.
| It's no different than dealing with trolls or other bad
| actors.
| macksd wrote:
| Burning down Facebook? What on Earth are you talking
| about? It makes it easier for users to remove their own
| accounts across multiple services. It's a common
| interface to features the social networks themselves
| provide. This is the opposite of a bad actor.
| munk-a wrote:
| If you don't like the rules of English you can always
| invent your own language - sure you won't be able to talk
| to anyone but isn't that freedom enough?
| willis936 wrote:
| This argument gives the platforms more credit than they're
| worth. It's been obvious for half a decade that social media
| is bad for mental health. I've cut it out of my life. I tell
| others to cut it out of their life. No one's under the
| impression that these platforms are good for anything.
| They're popular now, but they are not important.
| lsb wrote:
| Cigarettes are obviously bad for people's individual
| health, but we don't rely on individual responsibility to
| ensure children don't purchase themselves cigarettes.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I cut facebook out of my life almost 5 years ago before it
| was "cool" to do so. Its like junk food or cigarettes or
| anything else that is net bad for a person. I would say let
| people decide for themselves if they want to use it and you
| hope they make the smart choice of just saying no to
| facebook and all its toxicity that comes with it.
| yosito wrote:
| > they are not important
|
| They are important because they contain a significant
| portion of many people's address books. When Facebook was
| offline a few days ago, I had no way of reaching about two
| thirds of my contacts. And I'm someone who's made a
| significant effort to move off of Facebook. There were
| people I wanted to contact that day that the only way to
| reach them would have been to ask mutual friends for other
| contact details. And there were a few people that I either
| don't have mutual friends with or who our mutual friends
| were also only reachable via Facebook. If legislation aims
| for some form of "interoperability" the main condition
| should be that, if Facebook were to disappear again, I
| would still have the ability to reach all of my Facebook
| contacts via another network.
| listenallyall wrote:
| I loathe Facebook and am hesitant to take its side on any
| issue. But if you cannot be bothered to ask your
| "contacts" for a phone number, email address, Telegram,
| whatever, I don't see why it is Facebook's responsibility
| to ensure you have access to these people 24/7.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's a social issue, not a Facebook one.
| Interoperability is an _insane_ ask that has absolutely
| no precedent, and I say that as one of the biggest FOSS
| enthusiasts this side of the Mississippi. There 's simply
| no way that the United States government could force a
| private company's hand like that, and _even if they did_
| the fallout from that would be insane. Where do we stop
| with interoperability? Do all browsers need to share the
| same history storage format? Do all cloud storage
| providers need to use the same app? Do all of us need to
| use the same operating system, communication protocols
| and news outlets?
|
| No, because we're different people. Some people are drawn
| to Facebook's firehose feed, and there's not really
| anything you can do to stop them in a free world. It's a
| disgusting, albeit perfectly legal exchange of goods and
| services. Microsoft and Apple fought long and hard to
| make sure consumer protection laws like that never saw
| the light of day.
| [deleted]
| slx26 wrote:
| Yeah, I always defend there should be a "law of scale". When
| you start making your own project, taking a risk, spending
| hours and hours working on something, it's fair for a single
| individual to have the right to make any calls in what they
| are doing. But when it expands to thousands of workers and
| millions of users (or even much, much less), your
| responsibilities and reach can not be the same anymore.
| Saying "I built it" is no justification. The growth and the
| contributions that are making something possible, users
| included, do not support the logic of "my house my rules"
| anymore.
|
| This wasn't particularly related to this specific case, and
| visions and missions of companies should still be respected,
| but society does have a very warped concept of "property"
| when it involves their work or ideas.
| retrac wrote:
| > Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40
| years ago because you were selling answering machines?
|
| Yes, actually. It was illegal to connect any equipment beside
| Bell's equipment to the US telephone system. Not only would
| you be disconnected and possibly fined by your phone provider
| for doing so, but American law also made it illegal to sell
| such devices as well for use on the phone network. If you
| wanted to use an answering machine not sold by Bell, you had
| to get it custom rewired by Bell and pay a monthly rental fee
| for the privilege:
|
| > AT&T, citing the Communications Act of 1934, which stated
| in part that the company had the right to make changes and
| dictate "the classifications, practices, and regulations
| affecting such charges," claimed the right to "forbid
| attachment to the telephone of any device 'not furnished by
| the telephone company.'"
|
| > Initially, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
| ruled in AT&T's favor. It found that the device was a
| "foreign attachment" subject to AT&T control and that
| unrestricted use of the device could, in the commission's
| opinion, result in a general deterioration of the quality of
| telephone service.
|
| It was challenged and the seller of the amplifier device
| ultimately won in federal court:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-
| Phone_Corp._v._United_S... (Even then, you couldn't actually
| electronically connect a device, you could only acoustically
| couple it. Direct connection of modems wouldn't be legal
| until the 1980s.)
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> It was illegal to connect any equipment beside Bell's
| equipment to the US telephone system. Not only would you be
| disconnected and possibly fined by your phone provider for
| doing so, but American law also made it illegal to sell
| such devices as well for use on the phone network.
|
| Which is the exact thing which gave rise to phone phreaking
| and getting around the limitations on Bell Systems.
|
| "Exploding The Phone" by Phil Lapsley is a great book that
| examines these early hackers:
|
| https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-invisible-
| playground...
| rektide wrote:
| Sounds like you can imagine the law permitting something
| horrific & ghastly.
|
| I too can imagine that. But the restraints the law allowed
| to be imposed on our freedom sound absurd, sound outlandish
| to me now. We were in a situation that de-legitimizes the
| law & the legal system, and eventually we fixed that.
|
| > Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40
| years ago because you were selling answering machines?
|
| Also, it was illegal to sell connecting equipment, sure,
| but AT&T didn't go nearly as far as what we see today. They
| didn't do anything this bad. The question posed wasn't
| about the legality or ability to interoperate, to make
| devices.
|
| The question was about the reprecussion. Hush-A-Phone &
| other companies did not have their corporate phone numbers
| dropped, did not lose their ability to make phone calls
| when the started making a device AT&T didn't like. AT&T
| took them to court & tried to get them to stop making
| devices, but they didn't retaliate by kicking their
| corporate entity off the network. AT&T also didn't search
| for people using the phone system to talk about using other
| means of communication & kick them off the phone network
| (something we've seen repeatedly, recently with Mastodon,
| although those policies may/may not have been improved
| recently). Facebook is acting far more like a bully than
| AT&T did, in my view.
| cycomanic wrote:
| But they didn't ban the seller from using the phone system,
| they banned people from attaching a different machine to
| the system. That's like the Facebook trying to detect the
| extension and trying to block it. That's similar to some
| websites blocking ad blockers, while it would not go down
| well with Facebook users I think it's very different to
| what Facebook does here.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| > It was illegal
|
| It wasn't an arbitrary choice by a private company. That's
| a big difference.
|
| A stupid rule by a highly regulated monopoly is very
| different from a stupid rule by an unregulated monopoly
| (maybe member of oligopoly).
| tshaddox wrote:
| Right, the point wasn't whether you can literally imagine
| that happening. The point is that it's obviously bad.
| [deleted]
| bduerst wrote:
| > It was illegal to connect any equipment beside Bell's
| equipment to the US telephone system.
|
| Right, but IIRC Bell was considered a common carrier.
|
| That means Bell could enforce this because they already had
| to give equal play on their network. Facebook is not and
| does not.
| djmips wrote:
| Facebook wants to think it is
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I wonder how much of the ban was from concern of poorly
| regulated voltage related device damage. Now at least FCC
| regulations alone protect against the worst because
| anything that cheap also tends to output significant noise
| on reserved spectrum(s).
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| I said 40 years for a reason ;) But yes, those laws were
| horrible, and stifled innovation.
| RNCTX wrote:
| +1 and this mentality persisted all the way through the
| Lucent bankruptcy, prior to which their business model was
| to sue everyone who had ever talked on a phone, right on up
| to the previous presidential administration which involved
| trying to place former telco execs on FCC regulatory boards
| to rewrite rules which aren't really rules.
|
| But what they don't address is that HBOMax is already the
| worst streaming app on my TV, and therefore it doesn't
| matter how much money AT&T throws at politics. Their stuff
| sucks because they're AT&T, not because of some political
| misfortune.
| riffic wrote:
| the existing AT&T is not the previous AT&T.
|
| edit: sources
|
| * Current AT&T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
|
| * Old AT&T:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation
|
| * History:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T
| Retric wrote:
| The existing AT&T is just a zombie formed from 5 of the
| original 8 fragments of the old AT&T. I can't help but
| wonder how many former coworkers at AT&T in 1981 where
| reunited in 2014 without ever having left the fragments.
| toast0 wrote:
| At least some of the fragments were doing a lot of
| pushing out of older employees in the 2000s, so probably
| not a whole lot left, but I like the concept.
| RNCTX wrote:
| Oh but it is. Culture doesn't tend to change,
| particularly with ridiculous "rebranding" exercises.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| No, it's the previous AT&T with some parts factored out
| (most notably, Verizon). It also apparently managed to
| remerge several parts of itself over the years, which is
| mind boggling (how that didn't trigger immediate court
| action is beyond me):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _Even then, you couldn 't actually electronically connect
| a device, you could only acoustically couple it. Direct
| connection of modems wouldn't be legal until the 1980s._
|
| In the late 90s, I remember watching the scenes in WarGames
| (which came out in 1983) where Matthew Broderick's
| character is using a modem where you had to place the phone
| cradle on top of it and thinking why would you ever design
| a modem that way?
|
| And of course the reason was to work around this stupidity.
|
| https://youtu.be/zb1r_uKOew4?t=49
| foobiekr wrote:
| Acoustic couplers also existed because most homes were
| pre modular phone jacks and the phones were connected
| with screw taps.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I didn't know this was the case. Interesting!
|
| From [1]
|
| > It was not until a landmark U.S. court ruling regarding
| the Hush-A-Phone in 1956 that the use of a phone
| attachment (by a third party vendor) was allowed for the
| first time; though AT&T's right to regulate any device
| connected to the telephone system was upheld by the
| courts, they were instructed to cease interference
| towards Hush-A-Phone users. A second court decision in
| 1968 regarding the Carterfone further allowed any device
| not harmful to the system to be connected directly to the
| AT&T network. This decision enabled the proliferation of
| later innovations like answering machines, fax machines,
| and modems.
|
| From [2]:
|
| > After the ruling, it was still illegal to connect some
| equipment to the AT&T network. For example, modems could
| not electronically connect to the phone system. Instead,
| Americans had to connect their modems mechanically by
| attaching a phone receiver to an acoustic coupler via
| suction cups.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-
| Phone_Corp._v._United_S...
| josephg wrote:
| Australian here. I remember that scene, and I've always
| wondered what that was about too. I was using modems in
| the mid 90s and I never saw anything like that cradle
| device! Thankyou. That makes horrible, awful sense to me
| now.
| djmips wrote:
| Yeah, looks like acoustic couplers were mostly a
| seventies thing
| salamandersauce wrote:
| It's not entirely stupidity. Acoustic modems also made
| sense for portability. Reporters in the 80s used to use
| things like TRS-80 Model 100 + an Acoustic modem to send
| stories back to the office over public telephones rather
| than have to hunt down a phone jack somewhere.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| All these large technology platforms are as ubiquitous as
| utilities, as powerful as governments, and as unregulated as
| can be. Their network effects and access to capital gives
| them unusually strong protection from competition, and also
| the ability to just copy smaller competitors with impunity.
| After all, what legal action could a cash-tight startup take
| up against a behemoth with a war chest in the tens of
| billions of Dollars? Given their size, scope, and the lack of
| healthy competition, they need to be reigned in. We need to
| treat social media platforms like we treat telecom services -
| as common carriers. And we need to treat other large tech
| platforms as public utilities as well.
|
| Clarence Thomas on treating social media as common carriers:
| https://reclaimthenet.org/justice-clarance-thomas-big-
| tech-p...
|
| Eugene Volokh on treating social media as common carriers:
| https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/16/conclusion-social-
| media...
| root_axis wrote:
| Nah. Nobody needs to use FB to communicate, there are many
| dozens of available communication platforms, you can't even
| sign up for FB without a phone number anyway, this idea that
| FB is some critical communication infrastructure is totally
| false.
| croes wrote:
| For some countries Facebook, Instagram and WhatApp are the
| internet. Official entities and company use them as the
| only form of communication with the citizens and customers.
| root_axis wrote:
| Sure, this exists, but it's extremely rare, it's more of
| a talking point than an accurate representation of
| reality.
| riffic wrote:
| lol, ma bell did exactly this and more.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's probably for using the Facebook name or logo.
|
| They could even potentially argue that the names of the
| "unfollow" buttons and associated URL's (which are in the code
| of the extension) are copyright facebook. The source code has
| things like: getElementsByClassName("oi732d6d
| ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 qv66sw1b
|
| Which are very much on dodgy ground...
|
| Even a very weak legal argument is enough to win when you're
| fighting someone who doesn't have the budget or desire to even
| show up in the courtroom.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The full cease and desist is posted here:
| https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a...
|
| It's not strictly about automating API requests. He was also
| using Facebook's trademarks (easy target for valid C&D
| requests). He was also using the plugin to collect data from
| users, including some very detailed data for a subset that
| opted in to a study. Facebook doesn't take kindly to people
| making extensions that use their trademarks and collect user
| data, no matter how trivial.
| James-Livesey wrote:
| > A copy of each and every version of any software code You
| have developed or used to interact with the Facebook websites
| and/or services, including any libraries, frameworks, ...
|
| Couldn't one maliciously comply with this particular order?
| Especially 'used to interact with', which could be
| interpreted as 'used in the process of development to
| interact with'. I feel like if I were them, I would in this
| case send a whole copy of the Linux source code (seeing my PC
| runs it); Chromium (to 'interact' with Facebook); WebKit (or
| similar browser-side dependencies that your extension somehow
| interacts with) etc. Not forgetting to send every version of
| the aforementioned software!
|
| Might be bending the rules just a bit (/s), but hey, at least
| I'm on the safe side by including absolutely everything!
| jjulius wrote:
| >Facebook doesn't take kindly to people making extensions
| that ... collect user data, no matter how trivial.
|
| The hypocrisy here is absolutely hilarious.
| akersten wrote:
| > He was also using Facebook's trademarks
|
| Seems like the only potentially legally valid part of it. And
| even then, if he's not misrepresenting his product as made by
| Facebook (just "compatible with Facebook" or "use while
| you're on Facebook") I think it's still a stretch. Can a
| cottage industry survive without ever being allowed to even
| name the companion products for which the extension is
| designed?
| MereInterest wrote:
| To my understanding, the original purpose of trademarks was
| to protect the buyer. If I buy a bicycle listed as being
| from X, I can expect that it was manufactured by X, or at
| the very least endorsed by X (e.g. Kirkland products). If a
| different manufacturer Y labels their product as X, then I
| no longer have that certainty.
|
| But corporations have taken that and gone way too far on
| it. If I describe a product as being "compatible with X" or
| "fits on an X", that in no way makes a claim that it is
| manufactured by X. Like how tv manufacturers should be able
| to say "Perfect for watching the Super Bowl this weekend.",
| but avoid doing so for fear of being sued. There's no
| endorsement at all there, nor any dilution of the
| trademark, and yet it gets treated as though the words
| themselves are protected.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I believe it is an implicit "you make them look shoddy"
| if your product doesn't work after they change something.
| Self-produced ones at least they can check for backward
| compatibility but they have no way of guaranteeing any of
| their changes would break any fly-by-night or obscure
| adaptors.
|
| Rather overkill in practice for a legal doctrine. But I
| can see their concern, and why a company would dislike it
| over the sheer tech support call volume alone. Their
| first response being "stop it!" makes sense in that
| light.
|
| Open standards are a good way to prevent issues while
| keeping both sides happy (notably it also keeps company
| names out of it except in deniablenways such as say
| listing GMail as an example of a POP3 user - it doesn't
| equate the two). Open standards aren't automatic or free
| though and there may easily be gaps because they never
| thought to specify a given portion for interoperability.
| topicseed wrote:
| What if they don't reply _WITHIN 48 HOURS_? It 's a big
| decision to take, would a judge later down the road look at
| this in any way?
| lelandfe wrote:
| IANAL. You probably know this already, but C&D's are not
| legal documents - just scare tactics. The result from
| ignoring it for >48hrs would simply be Facebook
| escalating... if they decided to.
|
| I have worked for places that have completely ignored C&D's
| with no repercussions.
|
| That being said, Facebook can use this down the road as an
| example of them providing ample warning and notice to the
| developer - which, yes, is something that a judge would
| consider. There just aren't, say, specific legal outcomes
| to ignoring this C&D's (totally arbitrary) timeframe.
| [deleted]
| croes wrote:
| Not so fast. What if you bought games in the Oculus store? You
| can't just ban someone and remove his access to paid software
| because of a browser extension. What about my computer, my
| browser my rules?
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| > I hope there is no legal basis for this threat
|
| Does that really matter? If a malicious company like Facebook
| wants to ruin your life and drown you in lawsuits, they are
| able to do so. By the time it is determined that the person
| under attack by Facebook is actually in the right, the damage
| will be done.
| NotPractical wrote:
| If there is a legal basis for this threat, I guess most browser
| extensions are at risk.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| What I want to know is how do we keep making things worse for
| Facebook?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Well we could all tell everyone we know about the extension.
| Chuck it in your slacks #random
|
| Edit: I chucked elsewhere on social media and will slack it on
| Monday.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| "This is so upsetting. I am going to continue to use Facebook,
| Instagram and Whatsapp, then buy an Oculus VR headset. That will
| teach them"
|
| - Average Facebook user
| annadane wrote:
| I don't like this line of reasoning and you see it all the time
| on Reddit: "Oh, you dislike Facebook but I bet you still use
| Instagram lol!"
|
| The existence of a company being scummy shouldn't lead to
| consumers being blamed. This is ridiculous. If anything it
| should be a GREATER cause for regulators to break them up
| immediately
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(page generated 2021-10-08 23:00 UTC)