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Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

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Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#31

Post by cft »

kristiandupont wrote: post #29
cft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's argue Reductio ad absurdum. Why does not Google pop-up similar warnings when you click on its search results? -Because Google is dependent on the richness and abundance of third-party websites, for its search to be meaningful. What is the objective of Facebook? - To suck users into facebook.com, and sandbox them there. Similarly, the smaller objective of Facebook Social plugins is to lift the userbase from thir…

Google scans for malicious sites as well. The difference is of course, that on FB people share links whereas Google can just decide not to include a link in the results and the user will never know.

If they had a limited objective of stopping malicious sites like Google does, they could reject the malicious domains at the moment they are attempted to be posted, instead of scaring users from leaving facebook.com each time they try to navigate away.

I happen to run a well known service, and we encountered the malicious links problem. It has never even crossed our mind to display those pop-ups, instead we stop malicious links from being posted after a domain is reported or detected otherwise.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#33

Post by billybob »

iamandrus wrote: post #24

The only way to stop Facebook is to protest and boycott it. It worked in 2006 and 2007 (News Feed and Beacon, but Beacon might have been 2008) and it'll work again.

I agree with your first sentence. Whether it worked in the past is arguable, since they continue to do slimy things. But one thing is sure: they can't abuse your data if you don't give it to them.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#34

Post by jerhewet »

nomdeplume wrote: post #30

I applaud the author's use of detailed documentation and the ability and willingness to dig deeper into the technical side of what he believes to be the problem. As soon as I had installed the Firefox addon Noscript I began to notice the facebook scripts put in place on many sites having nothing to do with Facebook. Their real interest is not in being nice by providing you with a free service, but in using data aggre…

The Ghostery plus RequestPolicy addins. Don't leave home without 'em.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#35

Post by aj700 »

I am no great fan of facebook. The timeline sucks.

I think the warnings fb use are necessary, there's so many worms and spam wall postings. You can debate the wording and motive. Many users need paternalism.

You can AUTOMATICALLY have posterous post a link on your wall every time you write a blog post. It doesn't use the notes system at all. It sounds like fb are stopping people using notes for something they weren't designed for.

If he's saying every dumb aol/xp/ie6 user will be too scared to ever leave fb for the rest of the web, wouldn't that be the end of the Eternal September, which some would welcome?

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#37

Post by anildash »

HalSF wrote: post #28
chc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for expressing this so cogently and calmly. It's easy to get defensive when somebody starts flinging wild accusations like Anil does here, but informative and level-headed responses like this are much better at keeping the conversation on track.

It’s hardly calm and cogent — in fact it’s sort of a wild accusation — to describe a post as “flinging wild accusations” when it does nothing of the sort. Yes, Anil’s post is sharply argued and it’s definitely a polemical pushback against Facebook’s practice, but it’s a valuable part of the debate (especially with the added value of the comments below it), not a flame.

Appreciate the support, HalSF -- I try very hard to be intellectually honest even when making an obviously strongly-felt point.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#38

Post by lbrandy »

cft wrote: post #22
lbrandy wrote: post #13

I work on the team that generated the warning that seems to be the crux of this post. I am pretty convinced that it is a bug. His central theme, though, is a bit misguided. I don't understand why 1) using opengraph, or 2) using a like button implies facebook should trust your link and whitelist it. Even pages with those integrations can be malicious. In this actual case though, the notification link (generated from t…

Let's argue Reductio ad absurdum. Why does not Google pop-up similar warnings when you click on its search results? -Because Google is dependent on the richness and abundance of third-party websites, for its search to be meaningful. What is the objective of Facebook? - To suck users into facebook.com, and sandbox them there. Similarly, the smaller objective of Facebook Social plugins is to lift the userbase from thir…

You seem to be under a collection of interesting misapprehensions...

1. Google does warn in various ways when it detects possible badness. As it should.

2. We don't gate ALL links through such warnings. This can be verified by going to your news feed and clicking just about anything.

3. This is about a specific issue with notifications generated from comment widgets (a very common spam vector).

4. Detecting all badness via the domain name at "write-time" is not a sufficient solution to the malicious link problem.

5. Whatever that was, it wasn't reductio ad absurdum.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#39

Post by anildash »

chimeracoder wrote: post #32

How ironic that this blog's own comment system relies on Facebook.

It's not ironic, it's deliberate. I want to make sure I'm making informed criticisms of Facebook based on actual usage of the service as both an individual user and as a publisher.

Re: Facebook is gaslighting the web. We can fix it.

#40

Post by anildash »

lbrandy wrote: post #13

I work on the team that generated the warning that seems to be the crux of this post. I am pretty convinced that it is a bug. His central theme, though, is a bit misguided. I don't understand why 1) using opengraph, or 2) using a like button implies facebook should trust your link and whitelist it. Even pages with those integrations can be malicious. In this actual case though, the notification link (generated from t…

I appreciate your thoughtful response and want to make clear: I'm not ascribing ill intent to you or to any of your individual coworkers. What I am suggesting, instead, is that the overall goals of Facebook as a company combine to yield this result, and that the overall result is a deliberate outcome of the company's strategy.

That being said, I'd eagerly await resolution of the bugs you've described.

I do not mean to suggest that use of OG or the like button should imply trust, but rather that crawling of a site by Facebook consistently over months or years should show whether it has ever been a bad actor, or whether it's ever been flagged by others as a site with ill intention; Indeed, that's exactly what Stop Badware et. al do.

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