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Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

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Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#61

Post by cloudking »

yieldcrv wrote: post #47
minimaxir wrote: post #8

It's worth noting that the app received $1M in preseed funding: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-... It's also worth noting that the Instagram API is extremely locked down for typical users (which is the reason why there hasn't been a clone like this) as it is limited to Businesses and Creators, but the app demonstrates features not available by the official API: https://developers.facebook…

> It's worth noting that the app received $1M in preseed funding Guess the investors should have stuck to real estate

Great due diligence on this deal. Who thought it was okay to rip off the old UI and reverse engineer the API?

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#62

Post by vachina »

voidwtf wrote: post #38
seba_dos1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere The question is - how do we even allow it do be legal? Not being able to reverse engineer applications running on your own devices is some kind of bullshit dystopia, tolerated only because average citizen is not technical enough to realize how dystopian it is.

Listen, I really didn’t like the way your machine consumed your resources, so I built my own machine that consumes your resources. You should totally let me do this because it’s what your users want. Oh, and I also told your users to stop paying you because that’s anti consumer. Meta is wrong in a lot of ways, but this isn’t the right way to fix the problem. Just remove Meta from the equation entirely.

I fail to see how this is different from augmenting a website with Adblock and userscript.

If you don’t want to leak info then don’t expose it on the API, private or not.

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#63

Post by ummonk »

amatecha wrote: post #60
ipsum2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? Yes, the app is downloading private user messages (ostensibly to show a modified messaging interface) and private photos, according to their feature list. This isn't a simple DNS-level ad-block, its acting as a proxy where the app developers can intercept and see all data. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy, just a dummy link: https://www.theogap…

What evidence do you have that this application was acting as a "proxy" where the developers can "intercept and see all data"? That's a pretty big claim to make without providing any supporting evidence.

That’s how any third party interface works. It’s a proxy that ostensibly just formats and displays the data to the user but there is no way to guarantee they don’t upload it to their own servers or something, as Cambridge Analytica did (which got Facebook in trouble)

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#64

Post by amatecha »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #49
amatecha wrote: post #45

Oh wow, this app got pulled from everything because it's an unofficial 3rd party client for Instagram? I'll say it again, companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients. They don't have to explicitly support them, but taking action to explicitly thwart them (and writing ToS that forbids them) should be outlawed. There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and ad…

Without control of the client, it gets much harder to fight abuse.

If you've ever worked on an online service, you might realize that what you ship for the client is almost irrelevant -- it can all be reverse engineered and an unofficial client can _always_ be created. This happens for all online services, even if it's just someone's data-mining app running on a local machine. The number one rule is "never trust what comes from the client", because it's trivial to create carefully-crafted network calls to basically do whatever the API allows (and sometimes more than what was supposed to be allowed).

So, obviously 3rd party clients are thus able to perform malicious acts, but existing laws already forbid this.

My suggestion to ensure 3rd party clients are always legally permitted isn't mutually exclusive with existing laws protecting the creators of services and software. :)

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#65

Post by notjtrig »

voidwtf wrote: post #20
tarakat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company retaliated against their employees through unrelated services it happens to also own? Is this the kind of free market we want? Turf wars?

Each employee willingly participated. I understand the feeling, but these weren’t random people that had nothing to do with a company action. These were all individuals who took part in the act. I agree it’s petty, and yes this is what many free market proponents want (unless free market is just a convenient guise to get what they want).

If a comedian is deplatformed should they ban the production team, ban Alex Jones' sound guy maybe, what about the people who voted for Trump, willing participation?

I could imagine certain protests being demonized and their attendants removed from meta for violating terms of service.

The real question is do they virtually round up the avatars for public deletions, or do they just disappear them?

I think a lot of people would enjoy virtual public executions, if anyone from meta is listening.

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#68

Post by xvector »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #41
ipsum2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? Yes, the app is downloading private user messages (ostensibly to show a modified messaging interface) and private photos, according to their feature list. This isn't a simple DNS-level ad-block, its acting as a proxy where the app developers can intercept and see all data. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy, just a dummy link: https://www.theogap…

An app downloading on behalf of the user isn't a privacy issue. Are their servers acting as a proxy? Whether that's a privacy issue depends on how they configure/limit/audit their servers.

That is a naive view. If/when the app devs go malicious, it will be Meta on the legal hook for users' "stolen data."

The press and users will blame Meta, not the developers of this app, or the users that unwittingly handed over their data. The headlines will say "X million Facebook users' data leaked," or "X million Facebook users hacked."

Meta is acting in an entirely reasonable manner for a company under such regulatory and press scrutiny.

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#69

Post by amatecha »

ummonk wrote: post #63
amatecha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have that this application was acting as a "proxy" where the developers can "intercept and see all data"? That's a pretty big claim to make without providing any supporting evidence.

That’s how any third party interface works. It’s a proxy that ostensibly just formats and displays the data to the user but there is no way to guarantee they don’t upload it to their own servers or something, as Cambridge Analytica did (which got Facebook in trouble)

There is in fact a way to verify whether the application sends the data elsewhere.. The most basic of network monitoring tools will immediately indicate what external hosts are being communicated with. If all the network activity is strictly with Instagram's servers, it's plainly clear that the app dev is not siphoning off user data.

So, this is why I ask. It's actually really easy to find out what network hosts a piece of software is interacting with. If the dev really is stealing user data, it should be trivial to prove. This is the evidence I am asking for, otherwise that person's claims are completely baseless speculation.

Re: Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

#70

Post by xvector »

amatecha wrote: post #64
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without control of the client, it gets much harder to fight abuse.

If you've ever worked on an online service, you might realize that what you ship for the client is almost irrelevant -- it can all be reverse engineered and an unofficial client can _always_ be created. This happens for all online services, even if it's just someone's data-mining app running on a local machine. The number one rule is "never trust what comes from the client", because it's trivial to create carefully-c…

"Never trust the client" is true, but in practice, some control over the client still helps reduce abuse if you make third party clients a lot harder (eg remote attestation.)
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