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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

#81

Post by downandout »

orf wrote: post #69
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…

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.

The story isn’t that they used data obtained through the Facebook API to microtarget ads on Facebook? That’s the story I’ve read at every major media outlet.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#83

Post by IBM »

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 operated iAd before shutting it down. One of the former iAd execs said this to the WSJ [1]:

>“I don’t believe they are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,” Crawford said. “IAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law.”

So they crippled a potential new revenue stream because of their privacy policy.

[1] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/13/drawbridge-hires-app...

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#84

Post by grzm »

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.

The key issue (at least for me) is whether they've tried to benefit from marketing user-specific data. I can't recall any such effort, but will gladly to defer to someone more knowledgable. I'm not sure specifically why their multiple ad and social network efforts have failed, but it might be because they haven't been willing to do just that.

On a general note, I find it frustrating that a lot of the discussions around this area end up with people talking past each other. Some people are concerned about advertising, others about privacy, others about using user data, others about open source software/hardware, others about encryption. They've got some overlap when it comes to specific features, but often get conflated, making the discussion even more difficult. One thing I've appreciated about reading your comments is that you often are able to cut through that quite decisively. Thanks!

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#85

Post by timthimmaiah »

Not sure if this headline is 100% accurate. oAuth for apps that have already passed Login Submission is still functioning. For example, new users to an app that is already in the FB app ecosystem can still create accounts via oAuth.

However, apps that request scopes like "user_friends" or "pages_messaging" [1] may error out during authentication.

[1] https://messenger.fb.com/newsroom/messenger-platform-changes...

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#86

Post by downandout »

dannyw wrote: post #79
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_?

Why can’t we legislate access so that aggregate collection of public personal data requires _consent_?

If you can get enough people to agree with you, then great - go for it. But that’s not the point of my comment. It’s that even if they did collect the data, it couldn’t have been used to microtarget you through Facebook ads, even though that is exactly what all of these articles have said happened here.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#88

Post by orf »

downandout wrote: post #81
orf wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The story isn’t that they used data obtained through the Facebook API to microtarget ads on Facebook? That’s the story I’ve read at every major media outlet.

> The story isn’t that they used data obtained through the Facebook API to microtarget ads on Facebook?

Yes, that is exactly it. You seem to assume that the only way you can achieve this is by advertising to individual people by Facebook ID's and use this as the basis of your argument that the whole story is fraudulent and instead there is some media conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Can you see where your logic might be faulty?

There is a lot of information at your fingertips about how they actually used the data, you can go to your favorite search engine right now, type in "how did cambridge analytica use the facebook data" and read the answer. I'd do this first before calling the whole thing bogus and accusing Channel 4 of committing securities fraud.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#89

Post by nl »

ericflo wrote: post #54
nl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty related in this case, since the kind of security that is being discussed here is around access to private data (and I'd note that it was you that used the word security here, not the OP who made the more correct contrast between openness and powerfulness). One could equally make the point that Facebook is secure because no one has hacked their servers, and that it is open because it is free to join. T…

I should have used Monero as an example instead of Bitcoin, but I thought less people would have heard of it. Privacy can also be achieved with these primitives.

That's still not the point though.

How do I openly share social information with some people without sharing it with everyone? These principles are in conflict.

I did some work way back when FB got popular on the idea of using probabilistic data structures (ie, Bloom filters) to store contact lists, which could then be shared so that (in theory) only people who knew the same people would also know that they knew them. I built a FB app proving this could work technically.

But there are clear security issues with it - it gives a veneer of apparent privacy but doesn't stand up to attacks.

This is what everyone is talking about and the point you seem to be missing: you can't have this both ways. There is a conflict between privacy and openness.

Since you seem fixated on the crypto-payment thing: Monero mostly solves anonymous payments, but then what? Say I want to buy a pair of shoes with it - how do I stop someone knowing where to deliver it? Any attempt at solving this runs into the same problem: you have to tell someone the same thing you are trying to keep secret, and if that person is the attacker then the system falls to pieces.

Re: Facebook pauses app reviews, disables new user authorizations

#90

Post by coliveira »

ucaetano wrote: post #35
Method-X wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting tax avoidance strategy. Any idea if this is also what Bill Gates is doing?

His and his wife's is a proper foundation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundat... The money is out of their hands, and can't be distributed back to them.

Even in that case, he and his family will for a long time have the political benefit of deciding how the money will be spent. And political advantages usually translate into economical advantages, so it can also be viewed as a scheme at some level.
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