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Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

nbcnews.com

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Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#41

Post by knzhou »

dang wrote: post #32
jsnell wrote: post #12

The Facebook blog post would probably be a better source, since it explains the nature of the data: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2019/11/05/changes... I.e. apps added to a group by an admin could get some metadata about members of the group. (That blog post would also have been harder to mis-interpret than the NBC article. Half the early comments seem to think that this was about Facebook engineers impro…

If we do that, people will say that we're trying to protect FB by replacing a news article with a corporate press release. Is there a better third-party article?

Obviously there isn't!

I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code.

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#42

Post by pengstrom »

knzhou wrote: post #38
sdan wrote: post #33

Regardless of how many developers have "improperly accessed user data", you can do a lot of stuff as a regular person such as tracking how long all your friends sleep: https://github.com/sqren/fb-sleep-stats After I found one of my friends doing this, I quit FB (this reason among others).

You could find much much more personal information about your friends before social media, the old fashioned way -- stalking. Both stalking and this kind of data scraping have the same response: get better friends.

Sitting in the comforts of your own home is very different from having to go outside to reach the victims.

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#43

Post by knzhou »

pengstrom wrote: post #42
knzhou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could find much much more personal information about your friends before social media, the old fashioned way -- stalking. Both stalking and this kind of data scraping have the same response: get better friends.

Sitting in the comforts of your own home is very different from having to go outside to reach the victims.

And blocking social media stalkers is much much easier than stopping real ones. It is indeed a different game, but I don't think it's qualitatively worse.

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#44

Post by randomb_1979 »

knzhou wrote: post #41
dang wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we do that, people will say that we're trying to protect FB by replacing a news article with a corporate press release. Is there a better third-party article?

Obviously there isn't! I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code.

>>I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code.

In other words, if you don't know how to code, you are probably not intelligent enough to write about a technical topic?

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#45

Post by knzhou »

randomb_1979 wrote: post #44
knzhou wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there isn't! I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code.

>>I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code. In other words, if you don't know how to code, you are probably not intelligent enough to write about a technical topic?

No, there are intelligent people everywhere. But intelligent people are often catastrophically wrong when writing on a topic about which they know nothing.

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#46

Post by randomb_1979 »

knzhou wrote: post #38
sdan wrote: post #33

Regardless of how many developers have "improperly accessed user data", you can do a lot of stuff as a regular person such as tracking how long all your friends sleep: https://github.com/sqren/fb-sleep-stats After I found one of my friends doing this, I quit FB (this reason among others).

You could find much much more personal information about your friends before social media, the old fashioned way -- stalking. Both stalking and this kind of data scraping have the same response: get better friends.

I have never seen a comment which is so ignorant of Facebook's past behavior.

Are you aware that Facebook at one point unilaterally decided to allow people to see and comment on photos of friends of friends (i.e. 2nd degree connections)?

Just in case you are not clear on what actually happened: this "feature" didn't initially exist, so you behaved in a certain way one day. And the next day, they added this feature and you had no way to opt out of it.

Am I now supposed to also monitor and choose the friends of my friends? And then also study Facebook's API to know what level of access is provided to first degree connections? And then second degree connections? And are you suggesting everyone who uses Facebook is supposed to learn about all this stuff?

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#47

Post by randomb_1979 »

knzhou wrote: post #45
randomb_1979 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code. In other words, if you don't know how to code, you are probably not intelligent enough to write about a technical topic?

No, there are intelligent people everywhere. But intelligent people are often catastrophically wrong when writing on a topic about which they know nothing.

The key word, of course, is "often" and not "always".

How would you know the difference?

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#48

Post by fit2rule »

knzhou wrote: post #45
randomb_1979 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I don't know what goes into running this site, but personally, if I know I'm guaranteed to get a totally one-sided take, I'd rather have the one from the people who actually know how to code. In other words, if you don't know how to code, you are probably not intelligent enough to write about a technical topic?

No, there are intelligent people everywhere. But intelligent people are often catastrophically wrong when writing on a topic about which they know nothing.

People who think they always know best are often catastrophically wrong when it comes to writing about the topic they think they know better than anyone else.

At some point, you've got to let people decide for themselves what is true. A single source of information is an unreliable source.

Re: Facebook says one hundred API users may have improperly accessed user data

#49

Post by crematoria »

knzhou wrote: post #43
pengstrom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sitting in the comforts of your own home is very different from having to go outside to reach the victims.

And blocking social media stalkers is much much easier than stopping real ones. It is indeed a different game, but I don't think it's qualitatively worse.

It can be automated and packaged into a solution for anyone to use. IRL stalking is hard and dangerous, and it's going to be that way for the foreseeable future. Is that "qualitatively" worse enough?
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