Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

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…

> There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them.

You don’t! Just don’t use meta products at all!

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

#122

Post by slimsag » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #81

MattDemers wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this kind of thing happens I just remember how much bigger Twitter got with the help of third-party clients, and then implemented terrible login token limits to prevent any from becoming as good as their own offerings once traction picked up.

Yup! As a Twitter user since 2007 I've watched as 3rd party clients were superior by far (TweetDeck was still my favorite), and have now been left in the dust as Twitter leaves them for dead by cutting off API features to them. Twitter itself has never made a client as good as TweetDeck or TweetBot, and invariably never will.

> Twitter itself has never made a client as good as TweetDeck or TweetBot, and invariably never will.

tweetdeck.twitter.com exists and I use it regularly, what am I missing?

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

#123

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

xvector wrote: post #68

Dylan16807 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regul…

Does Microsoft get blamed every time credentials get stolen from a Windows box? Why would this be any different?

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

#124

Post by warent » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #87

voidwtf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What The OG App did was the equivalent of building and distributing a third-party telephone, rather than everyone having to use one rented from Ma Bell.

In this case, the third-party telephone is allowing unlimited free calls using Ma Bell's infrastructure...

I agree with you that Meta is ass for society. Simultaneously, these third-parties are parasitic. Ultimately everyone sucks here.

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

#125

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

Matheus28 wrote: post #116

josephcsible wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should phone companies get to force you to use phones you rent from them, instead of having the freedom to bring your own?

If that's their business model and they want to, sure. I'd guess that most wouldn't because it's not as profitable (they'd lose too many customers).

That's exactly what phone companies used to do, and they only stopped when the government made them stop. It was more profitable for them, at our expense.

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

#126

Post by Matheus28 » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #118

Matheus28 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should 3rd parties be allowed to make unauthorized api requests? Additionally, some apps are only monetized through advertisement, and 3rd party apps don't display them. How do you expect the 1st party to stay in business? I don't align with Meta on a lot of issues, but they should be able to control what apps interact with their platform. Don't like it, don't use it.

Why are first parties serving unauthorized API requests? If the API request is unauthorized, surely the proper response is "401 Unauthorized" and not "all the data you asked for, but then I'll find the people who helped you and get mad at them"? The problem here is that Meta wants to plug things into the internet and then control who gets to ask for those things. This is not how the internet works, at all. If you don…

I'm willing to bet the instagram app already signs their api requests to make sure they're coming from the app. Third party apps are reverse engineering that. If you try to send a request without those headers, it'll very likely give you a 4xx code.

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

#127

Post by amatecha » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

voidwtf wrote: post #90

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…

Ok, that’s fair, but how should the platform be compensated for the resources expended by the users or developers in question? Would you be ok with a usage plan? Something like $1 per 10,000 tweets read? I mean, the developer could save money by caching the most popular tweets and serving them from their cache, I imagine they’d have to charge for that infrastructure though and somehow they would pass the costs into t…

Sure, that's fine by me. Or even "video content is restricted to 240p unless you have a paid subscription, then you can see videos in 1080p". Right? It's 1000% possible to come up with totally fair business models that aren't so blatantly exploitative. Right now "the user is the product" on ANY free service.

Previously there was App.net, which was effectively "Twitter but you pay for access". It had a free tier which had very reasonable limits. It was actually super awesome, and it actually provided a whole identity platform, enabling 3rd party applications of different kinds (for example an Instagram-like, Favd[0]). Unfortunately it didn't pan out, not sure the whole backstory, but it was a really amazing platform and I would love to see more internet services like that.

[0] https://www.eriksoderstrom.com/p/favd-app-nets-gateway-drug

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

#128

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #110

Matheus28 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should 3rd parties be allowed to make unauthorized api requests? Additionally, some apps are only monetized through advertisement, and 3rd party apps don't display them. How do you expect the 1st party to stay in business? I don't align with Meta on a lot of issues, but they should be able to control what apps interact with their platform. Don't like it, don't use it.

Should phone companies get to force you to use phones you rent from them, instead of having the freedom to bring your own?

I don't think the same set of interests are in play there. Phone companies have a government granted monopoly on things like wireless spectrum and public rights-of-way for wiring and other infrastructure, not to mention subsidies and tax breaks.

I can't come up with a good justification why a private company on the Internet cannot dictate how you interact with them. Facebook isn't infrastructure.

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

#129

Post by witheld » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:43 AM UTC

Matheus28 wrote: post #116

josephcsible wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should phone companies get to force you to use phones you rent from them, instead of having the freedom to bring your own?

If that's their business model and they want to, sure. I'd guess that most wouldn't because it's not as profitable (they'd lose too many customers).

That was literally how phones worked on the beginning- AT&T had to be taken to court to stop it.

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

#130

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 4:44 AM UTC

warent wrote: post #124

josephcsible wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What The OG App did was the equivalent of building and distributing a third-party telephone, rather than everyone having to use one rented from Ma Bell.

In this case, the third-party telephone is allowing unlimited free calls using Ma Bell's infrastructure... I agree with you that Meta is ass for society. Simultaneously, these third-parties are parasitic. Ultimately everyone sucks here.

The solution to that is to fix your infrastructure to not trust the client, rather than trying to enforce use of a particular client.