Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#71

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

klochner wrote: post #61

Kudos to Christopher Soghoian[1] for releasing the email[2] instead of accepting the offer for cash + high-profile smear publication. It makes you wonder about the existing op-eds slamming social circles[3,4,5] [1] http://www.dubfire.net/ [2] http://pastebin.com/zaeTeJeJ [3] http://www.switched.com/2010/08/09/google-shows-off-how-well-it-knows-your-social-circle/ [4] http://marketing.about.com/b/2011/03/31/google-wan…

Shit, it was Christopher Soghoian? Whoever thought that he would participate in a pay-for-editorial job should be fired. Actually, they have almost certainly already been fired. He's practically built a career on exposing corporate bullshit. If they bothered to read his wikipedia page, they'd note that he has a history of releasing private corporate correspondance that is sent to him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#72

Post by Apocryphon » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

bluedanieru wrote: post #15

bad_user wrote: post #13

Wow, just wow! I wonder how employees feel about it - is it just business as usual? For that matter, I wonder how would-be investors feel about it. Google defeated competition from Microsoft and Yahoo with innovation and hard work, not with slimy tactics. They dazzled the world by being open, provocative, fast and effective, forward-thinking, pushing web apps to their limits, giving customers what they wanted. Is thi…

Facebook is the next, I don't know, Oracle probably. Google is the next Google.

How does Groupon or Twitter fit into this schema?

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#73

Post by calloc » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:16 PM UTC

pemulis wrote: post #55

vacri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, I've never seen that before - you comment through your facebook login? That's... that's just evil.

You can also use Facebook Comments with a Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail account. But not - notice - a Google account.

Yeah ... and that is why I can't leave comments =)

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#74

Post by yuhong » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC

paxswill wrote: post #49

hessenwolf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Facebook have an import gmail contacts feature?

Not anymore. It was removed after Facebook wouldn't share data back to Google.

Yea, if you look up "google facebook contacts" on say TechCrunch you will see several articles on the entire story.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#75

Post by sid0 » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:20 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #57

The only chink in Google's armor is privacy so facebook had no other option. But as the saying goes - The sun cannot call the stove hot.

That's an interesting variation of the saying. If you don't mind my asking, is that translated from a different language, and if so, what language?

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#76

Post by yalogin » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:22 PM UTC

Where is the link to Facebook in those emails? What am I missing?

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#77

Post by lotusleaf1987 » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:24 PM UTC

sunchild wrote: post #69

grovulent wrote: post #10

Good ol' Arrington... he's got the courage to call em out. To really stick it to the big guys. It takes guts to say "No More!" to the corrupt and the wicked, even when such a stance might cost you personally. I was going to comment as such on his blog... ...but I don't have a facebook account. ;)

Wait a minute – this story broke on a blog, and then got picked up by the Daily Beast, and then by Arrington. I guess you could give Arrington credit for spreading this story to his audience, but he doesn't deserve credit for calling Facebook out in the first place.

I think your sarcasm meter may need some tuning. ;)

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#78

Post by rryan » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:27 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #66

kmavm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you don't explicitly allow Google to import the data. Google does the following: a) scrape Facebook.com; b) notice that someone named "Roderick Evans" on Facebook is friends with someone named "Danielle Benson" on Facebook; c) notice that someone named Roderick Evans' GMail account has someone named Danielle Benson in his contacts; d) they're done. Your permission is not part of the process. Your Facebook i…

Doesn't the Facebook user need to allow their connections to be publicly accessed via the Graph API in order for it to be scrape-able in the first place? The main point here is that Google isn't doing anything with the "Facebook data" that the original user of that data (who actually owns it, let's be fair about that) hasn't approved of in one way or another.

Not sure about the Graph API, but your name, your profile picture, and your contact list are all fully public information and you can't control their visibility.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#79

Post by orijing » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:29 PM UTC

EDIT: I know you are all downvoting me because I open with "I was an intern", expecting some fuzzy comment in Facebook's defense. No, someone asked what Facebook thinks about this, and I offered my views: I am as confused as the rest of you. I hope the PR firm gets fired, and whoever instructed the PR firm to try this. Give me a break, guys. Stop with the Facebook hate.

I was an intern at Facebook last summer, so I had a great time there. Color me naive, but I don't feel the executives' personalities were "sneaky," probably because I interacted with them in person. I didn't see anything that suggested they would endorse this type of tactic.

With that said, I'd like to believe that it was all a misunderstanding, that perhaps this John guy isn't really affiliated with Facebook (his email is @bm.com), or that this was the mistake of an individual. I sincerely hope that it wasn't an organizational effort to smear Google, because I don't see why they'd need to.

When I was at Facebook, they were supremely confident about being able to snip Google's entry, that they would demoralize Google and make them cry. After all, I was in a sea of brilliant engineers, many of whom understand Google intimately through years of service, and we just needed sheer engineering and better products to win.

Perhaps Facebook just thought it was unfair that it was getting all of the negative light on privacy and wanted to share the blame with someone. But I really don't know, and I'm waiting for an official answer.

I really hope it's good, because I am surprised by this maneuver, to say the least. Maybe the answer is "Google does this too!" But then I would just be doubly disappointed.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#80

Post by ericdschmidt » Thu, May 12, 2011, 4:31 PM UTC

I don't think what Facebook did was unethical. It's certainly legal. They catch a lot of flack over privacy issues and they want to remind the media about their competitors' privacy issues and influence them to cover those more, so that they don't look as bad in comparison. That sort of work is done by PR firms, so they hired one to do it. In fact, they may not have even asked the PR firm to do it; the PR firm may have acted independently as part of their service.

As for the PR firm's offering to help write an article... Well, I would call it bad/unethical journalism if such an article were published as reporting. If it were published on some opinion page or like a tech blog, that would be fine.