Is it possible to create an app that can easily remove personal info, and delete all posted content that is, say older than n days old? If so, is there a new demand for this kind of app?
Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
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Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#62The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
Ben Thompson talks about this towards the end
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.
The Facebook API is, now at least, a capabilities based system where you ask the user for permission to access various bits of information. The major problem these days is that people don’t read through the authorization dialogs because they want to see which Star Wars character they are.
To my knowledge, you're not able to reveal just your first name, or just a proof that you're a FB verified user. And once you grant access, it's forever. We may be at a global maximum for user permissions, but I doubt it.
The problem is we can't try anything new - since it's all stored in FB's servers, we have to wait for them to build new granular capabilities.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.
> The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access. Who has a financial incentive to build and maintain that system?
Cryptocurrency projects.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#65The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.
You're using "open" in different contexts, one applying to a platform (e.g. blockchain or facebook app api) and another in regards to access control.
As platforms, blockchain is more open than facebook and for access control it's less open. GP was referring to security being at odds with openness in the sense of access control.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#66Reading Facebook's PR as they try to fix "problems" that they previously leveraged to profit massively is like someone purposely tripping you and as you stand back up they spit in your face and say "Oh, sorry. I'll try not to do it again" in a condescending tone. [edited to remove things HN can't handle]
Wow man that's some top level hate. You do realize that Zuck has pledged away 99% of his wealth? Providing third party apps access to friends list was a strange permission. I have never used an app that asked for it. But there are plenty of dating, games and social apps that could only work with a permission like that. I think people are reading too much into this fiasco. We are better off fixing Facebook. It serves…
People tend to forget that pledging away 99% of your wealth makes you much more attractive to getting investments now. It is all a marketing gimmick.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…
You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces
I swear there is some kind of downvote bot on HN - reasonable posts are often down-voted grey within the first few minutes (like this one's parent), and then eventually climb up to a reasonable place, when, what feels like, the humans have had time to see it - has this been noticed or discussed before? I'd be curious to know if some accounts are serial downvoters, especially as soon as comments go up - does HN look for that kind of stuff?
Of course part of the answer is that new comments have no votes so a quick downvote will make them grey, but there are frequent strange cases.
One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right (and I think against the intent of a downvote), but that's a different issue.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#68The so-called "data breach" was always in reality a by-product of an open platform that hundreds of thousands of developers could easily build apps on top. You may err on the side of "more reviews" or "less powerful API", but in the end, those ideals are in tension. The more open the platform, the more open to this kind of "breach". People who believe in the idea in this kind of platform having an API should have lon…
This is buying into the idea that security and openness are at odds. Bitcoin is extremely secure, and also open to all. The way forward is people owning all their data encrypted, and revealing zero knowledge proofs about that data to services that want access.
>open to all
That's in direct opposition to security. When you grant people you don't even know much less trust access to your system, all bets are off. There's just no way to predict what is going to happen. You've lost the fundamental protection afforded by trust.
Today, computers are expected to be able to talk to and serve hundreds of thousands of random users. What if one of them has access to a 0day? They could own the machine. The world would be a lot more secure if servers dropped all incoming packets by default and talked to trusted users only.
Bitcoin is open to everyone and that's great, but it doesn't change the fact people managed to sneak a bunch of illegal pictures into its blockchain.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#69The Facebook API has been useless since 2014 when most access to friend data was cutoff. Since then, if your objective was data collection, that could be easily achieved by scraping publicly available information (many friends lists are public, there are many public posts, etc. - certainly enough to use in aggregate to formulate campaign strategies etc.). I suspect that will be the next “scandal,” since in 2018, peop…
It's not possible to target by specific user id, sure, but that's not the story and in no way makes the whole thing fraudulent. It's also not what CA was doing or how they operated.
Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple got this right from the beginning despite years of criticism about the "walled garden". They took arrows for years: all the "open always wins" from the FOSS types, all the press coverage of some app developer crying about App Store rejections or onerous rules. They didn't get it wrong because they know who butters their bread: customers. Developers are rightly prioritized last. Fun to give this Paul Graham essa…
You're comparing Apples to oranges (I'm sorry) Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering. It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators. FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces
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