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Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

headsoup wrote: post #53
IBM wrote: post #49

Earlier 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

> Apple doesn't have a social network.

They tried, and failed.

> They also don't rely on advertising

They tried that, too.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#72

Post by thomble »

negamax wrote: post #18
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #7

Reading 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…

> Zuck has pledged away 99% of his wealth?

They will actively ignore problems that deal with public health and security, but promise to "cure all disease" through philanthropy. Please.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#73

Post by alasdair_ »

downandout wrote: post #58

The 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…

>Facebook advertising cannot be targeted by user ID anymore

This doesn't matter much if you can do essentially the same thing by targeting with extremely specific location and demographic data.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#74

Post by grzm »

thinkloop wrote: post #67
headsoup wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Similar behavior appears to happen with quality of comments. Initial comments on a story are often insubstantial, knee-jerk low-quality comments. With time, things generally get better.

From what I gather (but I don't have any comments at hand), the mods do pay attention to voting behavior, both to detect up-voting rings and to penalize those abusing downvotes. Their usual recommendation, when coming across a comment you think is unfairly downvoted, is to silently apply a corrective upvote.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#75

Post by downandout »

alasdair_ wrote: post #73
downandout wrote: post #58

The 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…

>Facebook advertising cannot be targeted by user ID anymore This doesn't matter much if you can do essentially the same thing by targeting with extremely specific location and demographic data.

You can’t “essentially do the same thing” in the way you mention though. You are bringing up a second issue, that is also not allowed. You cannot, for example, use specific GPS coordinates to target a house or even a group of houses. Anything less specific than that and the effect gets watered down significantly, and the platform simply doesn’t allow anything close to that kind of “extremely specific” location targeting. Same with demographic data (which can easily be obtained through other places, where the data is much more accurate than you would get from Facebook - see Acxiom).

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#76

Post by troygoode »

madrox wrote: post #56

This is a bit out of left field, but since the height of Farmville I've argued that Facebook should offer cloud services. I know these days everyone wants you to build on their cloud and it's a bit oversaturated, but a very easy way for Facebook to make data available to developers while maintaining security is to run the code that operates on that data on their servers. Seems like such a no-brainer I'm surprised the…

I think that is what the Parse acquisition was about. Obviously didn't work out for some reason.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#77

Post by misiti3780 »

downandout wrote: post #58

The 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…

That is what I thought also but how did CA get this friend data?

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#78

Post by seem_2211 »

ucaetano wrote: post #25
negamax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You do realize that Zuck has pledged away 99% of his wealth? He hasn't. He has pledged to donate 99% of his wealth to a private, for-profit organization that he owns. I also pledge to donate 99% of my wealth to my bank account.

I'm also happy to give away every dollar I earn, once I have $440m in my bank account.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#79

Post by dannyw »

downandout wrote: post #58

The 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…

Is it really the layman that is wrong? You can put something backyard of your house, and reasonably expect that it’s not going to end up used in a database to profile you.

Why DO we have to accept that “public” means big data? Why can’t we legislate access so that aggregate collection of public personal data requires _consent_?

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#80

Post by duskwuff »

dragonwriter wrote: post #71
headsoup wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Apple doesn't have a social network. They tried, and failed. > They also don't rely on advertising They tried that, too.

> They tried, and failed.

What are you thinking of -- iTunes Ping? That was never really intended as a general-purpose social network.

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