Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#151

Post by Shared404 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #129

mFixman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot verify that the researchers won't change the plugin to malware in the future.

You cannot verify that Facebook will not change its product to malware in the future. That it to say, at some point, you trust the software publisher in the same way you trust the service operator.

> You cannot verify that Facebook will not change its product to malware in the future.

I apologize for wasting peoples time, but I can't resist taking the low hanging fruit here.

Facebook is malware.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#152

Post by mszcz » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

traek wrote: post #127

rizpanjwani wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a strawman dressed in false dilemma. With Cambridge Analytica debacle, as I understand it, it was a facebook quiz hosted by facebook and the data collected from facebook directly and used for nefarious purposes. This is a an extension developed by researchers asking users to install it on their machines and used exactly as advertised: scrapes advertisement data that facebook shows them.

CA data was from a quiz, developed by a researcher at Cambridge University, hosted by that researcher, which scraped FB APIs after being authorized by a user. This data is from a browser extension, developed by researchers at NYU, hosted by those researchers, which scrapes the FB site after being installed by a user. IMO the situations are pretty analogous.

In CA scandal the data collected was about users.

Here data is collected about what Facebook does, what a corporation does.

They don't seem similar.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#153

Post by senectus1 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:19 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #34

> The researchers (w/ the help of others) are responsible for a browser plug-in called Ad Observer, which allows FB users to voluntarily share very limited and anonymous data about the political ads that FB shows them. You can read about Ad Observer here: https://adobservatory.org ================= Absolutely preposterous takedown demand. Facebook doesn't get to dictate what software I run on my own client devices, i…

sounds to me like they dont want to be held accountable by a third party.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#154

Post by ricardo81 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:32 AM UTC

ninth_ant wrote: post #122

walrus01 wrote: post #34

> The researchers (w/ the help of others) are responsible for a browser plug-in called Ad Observer, which allows FB users to voluntarily share very limited and anonymous data about the political ads that FB shows them. You can read about Ad Observer here: https://adobservatory.org ================= Absolutely preposterous takedown demand. Facebook doesn't get to dictate what software I run on my own client devices, i…

A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what they are doing here, and you are labeling “absolutely preposterous”. Which way is it? Should they let people do whatever they want with their accounts as you suggest, and risk a repeat of the CA fiasco? Or try to proactively stop it like they are now?

>A lot of people felt Facebook should do more to proactively stop people from scraping and aggregating data from their site after the CA debacle. Which is what they are doing here, and you are labeling “absolutely preposterous”.

Maybe not the best usage of the word scraping.

CA had access to the data without having to scrape the front end.

For this extension, it is by consent of the user

For scraping, I agree. Facebook should try their best to stop people accessing personal data of people they don't know. They do make reasonable attempts, it's less than trivial to set up fake accounts on scale but not impossible. Their "bulk uploads" feature is designed in such a way that it doesn't link email addresses to profiles (or at least as easily), unlike LinkedIn and Twitter. Saying that, it's up to the user to set their privacy settings but I would much prefer the defaults (if they still aren't, I don't use FB) were automatically set to non-public. I've seen an implementation that used headless browsers and thousands of FB accounts to scrape millions of profiles.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#155

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

Permit wrote: post #46

Lendal wrote: post #36

Wait so Facebook can collect data about its users but Facebook users aren't allowed to collect data about Facebook?

If I’m your friend on Facebook should you be allowed to go to my page and give all the information I’ve shared with you to another 3rd party? You trust NYU, OK fine. Can I give the same information about you to pro-Trump researchers?

Something can both be a shitty thing to do, and still be allowed because we'd be worse off if we tried to ban it.

(Usually because detection and enforcement is absolutely unreasonable)

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#156

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:01 AM UTC

adtac wrote: post #113

xg15 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, why is it ok for Facebook to have that data? Why is it ok for Facebook to scrape my address book?

Not that I want to defend Facebook, but that person entered into an agreement laid out by Facebook's terms of service and privacy policy (lol), not the privacy policy set by this plugin.

The ToS can't guarantee what other users will or will not do with the data displayed to them, though.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#157

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:05 AM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #133

maest wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different field, but GeForce Now received a lot of cease-and-desist letters from a bunch of game publishers for allowing people to run games on their platform. For context, GFN lets you essentially rent a virtual machine in the cloud, where you can log in with your own Steam account and play the games that you've already purchased. For whatever reason, game publishers saw it appropriate to demand GFN to stop offering…

This is no different than cd.com back in the day. You could rip and upload CDs so you could play your own songs anywhere, and it was immediately shut down by the RIAA. The argument is that streaming doesn't have a doctrine of first sale, even for items you have supposedly "bought" at full price, so publishers get total control over anything that is streamed. The government and the courts have agreed.

In this case though, the license on Steam follows your account on the platform and not a single time downloaded digital or physical copy.

So the lack of license argument doesn't make sense. At best they can put an explicit term in the license that the game can't run from servers you rent access to, or equivalent. But then that has to already be in the license.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#158

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #150

maest wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different field, but GeForce Now received a lot of cease-and-desist letters from a bunch of game publishers for allowing people to run games on their platform. For context, GFN lets you essentially rent a virtual machine in the cloud, where you can log in with your own Steam account and play the games that you've already purchased. For whatever reason, game publishers saw it appropriate to demand GFN to stop offering…

I don't remember the name of the company but there was a video streaming service that worked similarly a decade or so ago with remotely playing DVDs. They were sued out of business despite going to extreme lengths to follow copyright laws. That legal precedent was probably used here to block GFN.

The one I recall was about streaming OTA transmissions captured from individual antennas, one per user, essentially renting remote access to the antennas. The court essentially said relaying the stream is a new broadcast and needs its own broadcast license.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#159

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #94

root_axis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this repeated often, but it's totally incorrect, they do not resemble utilities at all, not even a little bit. I think everyone agrees these companies need more regulation, but the idea that they are in any way comparable to utilities is absurd.

> they do not resemble utilities at all, not even a little bit. I think that these large communication platforms absolutely resemble other large communication platforms that are currently covered by common carrier laws. Specifically, a lot of the functionality that these platforms provides, fulfills a usecase that is similar to the phone network. And the phone network is both a large communication platform, and is al…

All of this assumes an equivalence in function and access that just isn't there.

If my phone company decides who I can call, then I got issues. I can't trivially change carrier however I want.

If a website arbitrarily bans all kind of people it will soon be their own problem as people leave with a single click.

More specifically, I do not need linkedin, Facebook and co at all to communicate with people over the internet, stuff like P2P software never went away.

Re: Facebook has sent a cease-and-desist letter to researchers

#160

Post by Natanael_L » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 8:25 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #95

scbrg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I use some Google services. At the same time, I have no relationship with the non G:s of FAANG, which arguably is 80% of them (though perhaps not 80% of the influence). I'm not sure how they can really be considered public utilities at that point. None of the services they provide are essential.

> None of the services they provide are essential. I use online messaging and online communication more than I use the telephone network. To me, and many others, these online platforms are as or more essential than the phone system, which is already covered by common carrier laws.

Utility regulation doesn't depend only on importance. It depends on importance plus access.

That's why your local grocery store can ban you even if food is necessary for your survival, because you didn't lose access to other sources (stores).