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Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

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Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#111

Post by Johngibb »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #71
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/Chr…

Wow - I'd never heard of this guy before. What an amazing track record, thanks for linking!

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#112

Post by kmavm »

brown9-2 wrote: post #83
rryan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure about that? How does one access this info? If I go to " rel="nofollow">http://graph.facebook.com/ , the only data that is visible is: { "id": "...", "name": "...", "first_name": "...", "last_name": "...", "username": "...", "gender": "male", "locale": "en_US" }

Try, e.g.:

curl @gmail.com" rel="nofollow">https://socialgraph.googleapis.com/otherme?q=

Here's what they have to say about me, to anybody with a web browser, even though I've tried my hardest to opt out:

https://socialgraph.googleapis.com/otherme?q=facebook.com/km...

{"http://twitter.com/keithmadams:{attributes:{atom:http://twit... at Facebook, dad, cyclist.","exists":"1","rss":"http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/keithmadams.rss,ur...},"http://www.quora.com/keith-adams:{attributes:{exists:1,photo... Adams","url":"http://www.quora.com/keith-adams,profile:http://www.quora.co...

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#114

Post by fudged71 »

pstack wrote: post #90
zmmz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that the "head" has to be the CEO is taking it too far. In most large companies, you are only aware of the behaviour of the two levels of management above you. If you see your boss or your bosses boss behave in a certain way, you will think that this behaviour is acceptable. For example, the CEO of some bank might be very long-term, risk free, investement oriented, but if the boss of the trading desk only care…

That actually seems counter-intuitive, to me. I work in a company of about 140k people and I'm far more aware of the CEO than I am my boss or his boss. I don't even know who my boss' boss is or what he does, but I hear about the CEO on a regular basis (beyond just showing up in movies). It seems to me that in a large company, you're aware of your boss and the figureheads and everywhere in-between those two levels are…

I can't help myself trying to figure out what 140K-employee company has a moviestar CEO. Nevermind.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#115

Post by [deleted] »

jonnathanson wrote: post #100
pstack wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For there to be negative-PR blowback on this, the user-base will have to pull their heads out of their asses and stop playing FarmVille for five minutes. Even then, chances are they'll shrug and go back to harvesting self-esteem from their facebook "friends".

I think Farmville reveals a lot about the human condition. I'm totally serious. What it basically tells us is that, if left to their own devices, most people will just waste whatever time they've got. If Facebook or Farmville weren't around, it would be something else. Remember annoying email mass-forwards from your relatives and their friends? That's the kind of stuff that's no longer plaguing us because Farmville i…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#116

Post by tonfa »

AlexC04 wrote: post #82
maxklein wrote: post #29

Who cares? Facebook is a generic company. Google is a generic company. If they spy on each, smash each other, etc, it changes nothing. Neither for you nor for your startup or anything. Personifying these companies and then writing gossip stories about them is turning what should be real business into some kind of pseudo-fashion magazine. Just as little as I care for Snookie kissing JWoww, do I care about Facebook spy…

Honestly, I'm shocked my the downvotes being levied against all of these "who cares" type posts. How much face is really being lost by Facebook? The audience of Facebook users that will read about the "negative PR campaign" will be infantesimally small (compared to their near 500 million accounts). Then compare that infantesimally small number of users to the percentage who didn't already know that Facebook was dodgy…

Note that at least in France, this made the front page on the website of all major newspaper (Le Monde, Liberation, etc.). It's probably the same in many european country where Facebook is sometimes struggling to keep a clean image.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#117

Post by fudged71 »

michaelfairley wrote: post #88
brown9-2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? How does one access this info? If I go to " rel="nofollow">http://graph.facebook.com/ , the only data that is visible is: { "id": "...", "name": "...", "first_name": "...", "last_name": "...", "username": "...", "gender": "male", "locale": "en_US" }

https://graph.facebook.com/michaelfairley/picture?type=large for the picture. Friends can be accessed similarly, but require an access token (_any_ access token, not just the user's that you're inspecting. More details at Facebook's API docs: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/

Wow. I am shocked that information I explicitly block to users (such as profile picture) are publicly available through a simple URL trick.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#118

Post by amjith »

fudged71 wrote: post #114
pstack wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually seems counter-intuitive, to me. I work in a company of about 140k people and I'm far more aware of the CEO than I am my boss or his boss. I don't even know who my boss' boss is or what he does, but I hear about the CEO on a regular basis (beyond just showing up in movies). It seems to me that in a large company, you're aware of your boss and the figureheads and everywhere in-between those two levels are…

I can't help myself trying to figure out what 140K-employee company has a moviestar CEO. Nevermind.

Oracle.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#119

Post by pessimist »

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…

I'm pretty sure Facebook employees have been provided some rationalization about it - for example, "Google is pushing a creepy feature and stealing our content, we are just trying to make it public". Believe me, when you have $$$ riding on a side, believing their version of truth is extremely easy to do so, thats human psychology.

Re: Facebook Loses Much Face In Secret Smear On Google

#120

Post by nollidge »

jonnathanson wrote: post #100
pstack wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For there to be negative-PR blowback on this, the user-base will have to pull their heads out of their asses and stop playing FarmVille for five minutes. Even then, chances are they'll shrug and go back to harvesting self-esteem from their facebook "friends".

I think Farmville reveals a lot about the human condition. I'm totally serious. What it basically tells us is that, if left to their own devices, most people will just waste whatever time they've got. If Facebook or Farmville weren't around, it would be something else. Remember annoying email mass-forwards from your relatives and their friends? That's the kind of stuff that's no longer plaguing us because Farmville i…

For me, those annoying mass-forwards have just moved to Facebook. "Repost this on your wall if you hate cancer!" Ugh.
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