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Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

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Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#11

Post by yanw »

kmavm wrote: post #7

Would anybody like to actually read the words, understand them, and engage with the argument they contain, rather than snark about how FB == teh hatez? The meat of it is: "Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. Email is different fro…

A friend won't care that you have their email address it's sorta expected, and one could also argue about whether an email address is even private information.

Or maybe Facebook could allow the export of some other friend identifier.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#12

Post by kmavm »

krschultz wrote: post #8
kmavm wrote: post #7

Would anybody like to actually read the words, understand them, and engage with the argument they contain, rather than snark about how FB == teh hatez? The meat of it is: "Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. Email is different fro…

He is talking out of both sides of his mouth though. If Facebook exports a list of friends, what do you get? A list of names with no links? That isn't really useful. You either need email addresses or Facebook profile URLs to actually make a graph. What if your list is Billy Bob, Joe Smith, John Doe, and Mike Collins. How many of those are there are facebook? Dozens? Hundreds? It is meaningless. If Facebook exports a…

The graph API provides exactly what you are asking for. It doesn't provide friends' names, but FBIDs. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=; is the user's profile, and http://graph.facebook.com/; is the public JSON for that ID. If you have an access token (on behalf of a logged in user), the graph API will also let you see other information for the user that you are entitled to see.

Have you ever used a Facebook Connect site, like Google's YouTube? Have you noticed you can find your friends on the site? This works because the service gets FBIDs of both logged in users and friends.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#14

Post by extension »

kmavm wrote: post #7

Would anybody like to actually read the words, understand them, and engage with the argument they contain, rather than snark about how FB == teh hatez? The meat of it is: "Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. Email is different fro…

That is a really fine line they are drawing there. You have access to the same information on both services and you acquire it in essentially the same way i.e. by the other party volunteering it. Facebook is effectively asserting that their users rely on the fine details of how the service works to maintain their privacy, even though Facebook has never had much regard for that principle themselves.

He is right about the "when it's convenient" thing though. If you want to adhere to a moral standard then great, do it, consistently. What other parties do is irrelevant.

And corporations morally crusading against each other is a complete joke. Corporations will slit your throat for a nickel. My stomach is not looking forward to the "who's less evil" war Google has started.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#15

Post by Zaak »

yanw wrote: post #11
kmavm wrote: post #7

Would anybody like to actually read the words, understand them, and engage with the argument they contain, rather than snark about how FB == teh hatez? The meat of it is: "Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. Email is different fro…

A friend won't care that you have their email address it's sorta expected, and one could also argue about whether an email address is even private information. Or maybe Facebook could allow the export of some other friend identifier.

If email addresses were rarely abused, then a private email address would be like an unlisted phone number.

Email address abuse is extremely common however, so public should not be the default.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#16

Post by kmavm »

btilly wrote: post #5
bradhe wrote: post #2

You mean Facebook, the company that has had a pretty rough PR year thanks to its deceptive privacy policies and practices?

Hey, a failure to respect privacy is just direct evidence of openness, right? (Disclaimer. I may be biased by working for Google. But I'm also not opposed to switching from a BSD to GPL strategy to encourage freedom.)

Laugh while you can. During the Buzz launch, I recall Google found it just as hard to negotiate the intrinsically tricky balance between privacy and openness. There is a real trade-off between the two in products that allow you to share information with groups larger than one.

Good luck with your new social product.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#17

Post by yanw »

Zaak wrote: post #15
yanw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend won't care that you have their email address it's sorta expected, and one could also argue about whether an email address is even private information. Or maybe Facebook could allow the export of some other friend identifier.

If email addresses were rarely abused, then a private email address would be like an unlisted phone number. Email address abuse is extremely common however, so public should not be the default.

But in this case emails are not being used to compile a list for spammers but to help someone find/invite their finding onto a new platform.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#18

Post by mikeryan »

Its been just about a year since I joined Facebook and started using it a lot. I have to say I'm kind of over it. I'm not closing my account or anything. I just think my usage is going to drop a bit precipitously.

I don't really trust Facebook anymore. I don't think they're evil, I just think at some point they're going to have to make some tough choices to live up to their valuation and the only real value they have (outside of ad eyeballs) is their user and graph information. Its going to end up in 3rd parties hands and I'm not very comfortable with that.

Anyway, not sure thats on point but it was something I've kind of been thinking about the last few days and this just drove a few points home.

Re: Facebook Slaps Google: “Openness Doesn’t Mean Being Open When It’s Convenient”

#19

Post by kmavm »

yanw wrote: post #11
kmavm wrote: post #7

Would anybody like to actually read the words, understand them, and engage with the argument they contain, rather than snark about how FB == teh hatez? The meat of it is: "Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends’ information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends’ private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends’ private photo albums. Email is different fro…

A friend won't care that you have their email address it's sorta expected, and one could also argue about whether an email address is even private information. Or maybe Facebook could allow the export of some other friend identifier.

Again, Facebook exports a unique identifier for each friend already, and has been doing so for years. This is the entire point of Facebook Connect.
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