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A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

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Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#61

Post by zardo »

whybroke wrote: post #51
athenot wrote: post #32

The elephant in the room is that facebook wants to directly engage with their users in order to control the advertising aspect. This startup uses the side-effect of Facebook (platform for friends to share stuff) while cutting out the business value proposition (advertising). This is sad because I'm increasingly getting annoyed at Facebook's positionning between me and my friends. It's promoting behavior that is diffe…

>It's promoting behavior that is different from real life as they stand to gain from stoking outrages and heated discussions: more active user engagement! This undoubtedly has very serious consequences beyond merely being annoying. Trending untrue news stories, encouraging post-true controversy and providing an echo chamber for these things to intensify and become ingrained. And doing these things on a enormous scale…

I've recently started seeing what I can only call christian jihadi propaganda on my newsfeed.

The Clintons assassinated Scalia and they are going to force you to renounce God or put you on the cross.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#63

Post by dalke »

ghurtado wrote: post #31
kazinator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very bad metaphor, because the "spammer" term is thrown around casually in IT and is often false. For instance, someone might be called a "spammer" if they post a lot to some forum, by someone else who disagrees with them. If you equate "rapist" with "spammer", you might be regarded as trivializing "rapist" accusations as being usually false and frivolous in the same way.

> If you equate "rapist" with "spammer", you might be regarded as trivializing "rapist" accusations as being usually false and frivolous in the same way. I don't think he was equating the two at a legal or moral level, just presenting an analogy with regards to: - The likelihood of false accusations being similar in both cases (higher than the norm) - The devastating social consequences of falsely accusing someone of…

Even when considered only as an analogy, and not the serious point about trivializing "rapist", it's a lousy analogy.

Consider a panhandler asking you for money on the street, someone passing out fliers in a mall, a street hawker, or even someone asking for directions. These can all be unwanted physical interactions.

Think also of the religious people who go door-to-door asking very politely if you've found everlasting life, or historically (thinking now of the Hare Krishnas and the movie 'Airplane') at an airport terminal.

Or for that matter, someone working in a boiler room call centers.

I submit that spamming is much closer to these unwanted public interactions than anything like rape.

Furthermore, calling someone a spammer does not have "devastating social consequences", despite what Vachani said. For example, stand up at a conference and yell "the speaker is a spammer!" What devastating social consequences might the speaker face? Is it as devastating as calling someone a speeder, a pot smoker, a thief, a rapist, or a murderer?

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#64

Post by sjg007 »

War_Machine wrote: post #43
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

Orin Kerr is the country's leading attorney on Computer Crime Law(1) and The Volokh Conspiracy writers are a powerhouse in Constitutional Law generally. Its almost certainly too late for Vachani and Power Ventures; Facebook have destroyed them, and any ruling is only symbolic, but for the rest of us, a correct ruling is essential for the future of a free Internet. Here is Orin Kerr writing about Power Ventures: https…

After Power's IP addresses were blocked by Facebook, couldn't Power use the user as proxy to access Facebook instead? In other words, have the user (through some Power provided tool I suppose) access Facebook and feed Power the information it wants to send.

You could probably do so with a browser extension.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#65

Post by ghurtado »

dalke wrote: post #63
ghurtado wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you equate "rapist" with "spammer", you might be regarded as trivializing "rapist" accusations as being usually false and frivolous in the same way. I don't think he was equating the two at a legal or moral level, just presenting an analogy with regards to: - The likelihood of false accusations being similar in both cases (higher than the norm) - The devastating social consequences of falsely accusing someone of…

Even when considered only as an analogy, and not the serious point about trivializing "rapist", it's a lousy analogy. Consider a panhandler asking you for money on the street, someone passing out fliers in a mall, a street hawker, or even someone asking for directions. These can all be unwanted physical interactions. Think also of the religious people who go door-to-door asking very politely if you've found everlasti…

> I submit that spamming is much closer to these unwanted public interactions than anything like rape.

None of those things are illegal, so you've already failed the most basic test for the analogy. Furthermore, you still seem to be missing the point that this is not an analogy between spamming and rape, but between falsely accusing someone of spamming and falsely accusing someone of rape.

> Is it as devastating as calling someone a speeder, a pot smoker, a thief, a rapist, or a murderer?

In your contrived hypothetical, any of that name-calling (because nobody could seriously call that an "accusation") would have the same consequences: none whatsoever for the target and being laughed out of the room for the "accuser". I'm sure you already realize that.

Of course, this is not at all what anyone is talking about. We're talking about falsely accusing someone of spamming, in a credible manner, and from a position of authority, which is exactly what happened to the individual in the article. If you don't think this had any consequences for him, then may I suggest that you read the article.

Surely you understand that there is a very big difference in consequences between yelling "spammer!" at the next person you see vs a multibillion dollar corporation suing you for being a spammer and sending their hordes of lawyers after you.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#66

Post by HillaryBriss »

sctb wrote: post #50
happyslobro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will phrase it differently in the future, but I stand by the sentiment.

That phrasing is certainly more incendiary than other possibilities, but just a watered-down version of that sentiment is problematic too: it doesn't teach us about anything other than how you feel, which is not part of our shared reality that is the basis of conversation. That's why we ask that comments not only be civil, but substantive, so that they're contributing to the discussion.

I think that particular comment is inappropriate for HN because it is uncivil and unnecessarily offensive/rude to a specific person.

To object to the comment because it "doesn't teach us anything other than how you feel" is to say that any statement which conveys only "how you feel" is inappropriate for HN.

Is that really the way it works here?

What if he had said "I wish Zuck all the best!" -- would the moderators have come out against that too?

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#67

Post by yunruse »

Facebook is not appealing the spam decision and, the spokesperson points out, it has won on hacking so far.

The wording of 'won on hacking' is extremely worrying, if it is verbatim. Facebook seem to act here as if they can steamroll over power-users who stray too far from the 'norm', so to speak, without consequence: while it is true that all companies must try to save face, accusing an app developer of hacking and spamming is too far.

I guess not appealing the spam decision is some small humility, but treating a lawsuit like a competition to 'win' has certain implications on Facebook's strategy.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#68

Post by sctb »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #66
sctb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrasing is certainly more incendiary than other possibilities, but just a watered-down version of that sentiment is problematic too: it doesn't teach us about anything other than how you feel, which is not part of our shared reality that is the basis of conversation. That's why we ask that comments not only be civil, but substantive, so that they're contributing to the discussion.

I think that particular comment is inappropriate for HN because it is uncivil and unnecessarily offensive/rude to a specific person. To object to the comment because it "doesn't teach us anything other than how you feel" is to say that any statement which conveys only "how you feel" is inappropriate for HN. Is that really the way it works here? What if he had said "I wish Zuck all the best!" -- would the moderators h…

No, certainly not. Just that such things can often safely be omitted, but should definitely be omitted when they would disrupt the conversation by being insulting, inflammatory, off-topic, etc.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#69

Post by wwwdonohue »

ghurtado wrote: post #65
dalke wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when considered only as an analogy, and not the serious point about trivializing "rapist", it's a lousy analogy. Consider a panhandler asking you for money on the street, someone passing out fliers in a mall, a street hawker, or even someone asking for directions. These can all be unwanted physical interactions. Think also of the religious people who go door-to-door asking very politely if you've found everlasti…

> I submit that spamming is much closer to these unwanted public interactions than anything like rape. None of those things are illegal, so you've already failed the most basic test for the analogy. Furthermore, you still seem to be missing the point that this is not an analogy between spamming and rape, but between falsely accusing someone of spamming and falsely accusing someone of rape . > Is it as devastating as…

Many municipalities have laws against panhandling. NYC has one against "aggressive forms of panhandling." It just tends to not get prosecuted, kind of like rape.

Re: A Man Who Stood Up To Facebook

#70

Post by gwbas1c »

lucb1e wrote: post #41
xseven wrote: post #37

I wish all the articles had an unbiased TLDR attached to it. I came here for the clickbait, not the story!!

Dude realized "hey, you own your content, not Facebook, even after you post it on Facebook. So with users' consent, I can download their data from Facebook and display it on my own website, right?" Thus he wrote something where people would enter their Facebook and other social network logins, and the site would aggregate their data. Basically a cross-platform social network. Facebook was the only website to respond…

Maybe they were scraping or abusing an API? That's a bit of a stretch of "hacking."
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