Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information” • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#71

Post by pclark » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 8:48 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #24

moultano wrote: post #18

Kudos. This fixes my biggest criticism of Facebook. I'm going to be a lot more comfortable using it now. The moving target privacy policies are a bit of an issue still, but I'm willing to give them a half pass on that as the price of innovation.

I think you are living proof their PR department is on top of their game again.

You know, what exactly can Facebook do to make people like you happy?

Facebook has to make money to do this they have to have users to do this they have to make a good product to do this they have to hire good engineers and to do that they have to make money, oh and if they're super evil no one will want to work for them, let alone use their product

Facebook really isn't as evil as most of these comments make out, and the fact Facebook lets you download your data isn't good enough makes you, whatever the opposite of a fanboy is, to Facebook.

Can I download my data off Google? Flickr? Any other major consumer site? Amazon doesn't hold my hand if I want to move to another service.

If you assume anything non-evil that a company does is "because the PR says so" I pity your outlook on the world.

Here's what I think. I don't think Facebook is evil. I think Facebook is young and they're pushing the boundaries of the web, and sometimes - sometimes - they over step a line and do something wrong. And what do Facebook do? They apologize. They change the features. And it doesn't make any difference to people like you.

Oh and by the way, normal users don't give a shit about any of this.

Haters gonna hate, indeed.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#72

Post by moultano » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

pclark wrote: post #71

jacquesm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are living proof their PR department is on top of their game again.

You know, what exactly can Facebook do to make people like you happy? Facebook has to make money to do this they have to have users to do this they have to make a good product to do this they have to hire good engineers and to do that they have to make money , oh and if they're super evil no one will want to work for them, let alone use their product Facebook really isn't as evil as most of these comments make out, a…

>Can I download my data off Google?

Yes. In nearly every product, and the rest are on the way. www.dataliberation.org/

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#73

Post by Qz » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

jlgbecom wrote: post #70

frisco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. How much of that overlaps with Facebook? Approximately 500 million? Also, they're measuring total registrations: FB has probably close to a billion registrations on their 500 million actives. All that statistic tells you is that FB has room to grow.

Let's assume there's total overlap, meaning everyone who has a non-FB account also has a FB account. Now let's assume all of those smaller, but substantially sized, networks started inter-communicating. Who would stay on Facebook? Why would you stay on the centralized network with 500 million people when you can spend all your time on the open network with 1.5 - 2 billion people? As for active versus registrations, w…

500 million vs 1.5 billion is a meaningless metric regarding which social network people will use. They will use the one their friends are using, and no one has near enough friends for those gigantic numbers to have any relevance.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#74

Post by moultano » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:07 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #64

moultano wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but isn't the purpose of critics to be quelled?

No: the purpose of a critic is to provide critical insight - having criticism silenced is not part of that purpose.

If they don't want their criticisms acted upon, why are they criticizing?

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#75

Post by Parabola » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:19 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #19

avar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might leave Facebook if something comes along that's much better, and importing your data is one click away. The biggest advantage Facebook has is that it has your data, being able to export it changes the game.

You’ve got it backwards. The biggest advantage Facebook has is that 500 million people have an account. Facebook would be utterly useless if nobody was using it. Network effects make Facebook hard to beat, not your data. They need your data only to make money but they get your data because you and your mom and everyone else have an account.

So what happens when a social network starts that includes links to your friends current Facebook profiles but guarantees much stronger privacy? Think Friendfeed but more ambitious.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#76

Post by gecko » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:29 PM UTC

jlgbecom wrote: post #61

frisco wrote: post #7

People seem to be intepreting this as "OMG now we can build a new social network and convert users easily!" Users still aren't going to leave Facebook. Facebook realizes this, which is why they can do this now. Your mother's cousin is on Facebook. She won't be on Diaspora or (X). That said, this is pretty cool for its own reasons. Like waterlesscloud said, it looks like they "want to be the source of all social inter…

The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websi... Facebook has the most users in one place, but the dust is nowhere near settled on where everyone will end up. This bodes very well for a decentralized solution. I doubt Diaspora will be the first (I think Appleseed ( http://opensource.appleseedproject.org…

I don't want to take this too far off-topic, but: why Appleseed? I hadn't heard of them until just now.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#77

Post by jlgbecom » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:29 PM UTC

Qz wrote: post #73

jlgbecom wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume there's total overlap, meaning everyone who has a non-FB account also has a FB account. Now let's assume all of those smaller, but substantially sized, networks started inter-communicating. Who would stay on Facebook? Why would you stay on the centralized network with 500 million people when you can spend all your time on the open network with 1.5 - 2 billion people? As for active versus registrations, w…

500 million vs 1.5 billion is a meaningless metric regarding which social network people will use. They will use the one their friends are using, and no one has near enough friends for those gigantic numbers to have any relevance.

If it's such a useless metric, why is it always brought up as a clear example of Facebook's unmovable dominance?

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#78

Post by nphase » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:29 PM UTC

I wonder if they're going to provide all revisions of all data you've ever given them, or just the most recent version. It looks like it's only the most recent stuff.

Just imagine the look on her face when your mother's cousin opens the zip file and sees every piece of profile text she's ever typed in it. Creeeeeeeepy.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#79

Post by jlgbecom » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:34 PM UTC

gecko wrote: post #76

jlgbecom wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websi... Facebook has the most users in one place, but the dust is nowhere near settled on where everyone will end up. This bodes very well for a decentralized solution. I doubt Diaspora will be the first (I think Appleseed ( http://opensource.appleseedproject.org…

I don't want to take this too far off-topic, but: why Appleseed? I hadn't heard of them until just now.

Tons of working features, a more well-defined roadmap, (much) more experience, and it's way easier to install (LAMP vs Rails). Also, Appleseed is a full social platform, that allows you to build components and extend it. Diaspora is more of a single application, it doesn't have any kind of modular framework to build off of. I don't think Diaspora will ever be dead in the water, but it just has so much catching up to do, and not small stuff, big architectural stuff that doesn't really benefit from the "many eyeballs" advantage of popular open source.

Re: Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”

#80

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Oct 06, 2010, 9:34 PM UTC

jlgbecom wrote: post #61

frisco wrote: post #7

People seem to be intepreting this as "OMG now we can build a new social network and convert users easily!" Users still aren't going to leave Facebook. Facebook realizes this, which is why they can do this now. Your mother's cousin is on Facebook. She won't be on Diaspora or (X). That said, this is pretty cool for its own reasons. Like waterlesscloud said, it looks like they "want to be the source of all social inter…

The combined size of social networks that aren't Facebook is over 1.5 billion people, probably more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websi... Facebook has the most users in one place, but the dust is nowhere near settled on where everyone will end up. This bodes very well for a decentralized solution. I doubt Diaspora will be the first (I think Appleseed ( http://opensource.appleseedproject.org…

Scanning your link,

It seems like the majority of the non-Facebook figure comes from Chinese language sites. Since social networking sites will quite likely be segmented by language for the foreseeable future, I don't think this really counts. In the English-language world, Facebook has serious network effect and you would be hard-pressed to combine all of FB's competitors into anything.

I agree dispersed social networking is coming... I'm not sure if "control" of data is the way to phrase the "problem"... Still, creating a dispersed network where each contributor controls where their data goes is a very hard problem.