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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

#351

Post by blandflakes »

Matheus28 wrote: post #244
amatecha wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I should have the legal right to access private messages addressed to me by family members via the service explicitly designed to facilitate private communication between friends and family members. I don't think I should be forced to see advertisements and be subjected to historically-unprecedented surveillance to read those couple hundred bytes of text from a family member. When a platform's primary purpose…

I disagree. No one has the right to use facebook/twitter/etc as they wish, or even at all. They're not necessary for modern western society. SMS and phone calls are always an option. We aren't like China where if you don't have WeChat you can't do anything.

On the flip side, then, no government organizations should use Twitter as their primary form of disseminating information. I should be able to get this information without creating an account on these platforms (looking at you, MBTA).

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

#352

Post by Shish2k »

int_19h wrote: post #178
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.

> 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? They're welcome to find a different business model. Why should we sacrifice interoperability for everyone for their sake?

If shops don’t like shoplifters, they should stop putting products on shelves where anybody can just take them and walk out - it’s dumb to get the police involved to keep sustaining this obviously-flawed business model.

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

#353

Post by selfhoster11 »

Matheus28 wrote: post #318
selfhoster11 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not be ridiculous. DOS is not use, it’s abuse.

And using their servers and resources without generating them any revenue is not abuse? They clearly don’t want you to run a third party app without ads, yet you feel entitled to it?

No, it's not. In this case, abuse is about intent: DOS intends to cause distress, losses and denial of service to others. Use with third party apps without adds intends none of this: the intent is to use something else to access the service in an otherwise normal (to the user) way.

Arguably third-party apps that are scrapers are somewhere in between these two in acceptability, but that's a question of "are scrapers morally fine and should they be legally allowed", not a question of whether third party clients are to be allowed at all.

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

#354

Post by danaris »

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…

> companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients

While, in cases like this, I agree with you, I think there needs to be nuance to a rule like this.

Consider what would happen in the reverse case. A competitor arises to some aspect of Facebook's services—say, an app that does something kinda like Instagram, but not quite—and becomes somewhat popular.

Facebook adds support for accessing this competitor's service from their own app—look how convenient! You don't need to download two apps, just our app!

They replace the ads from the service maker with their own, thus starving them of revenue...or they just wait until some critical mass of users access the other service through their app, then offer free and easy migration from the other service to their own. Then they start introducing UX problems with the other service—oh, but it's not their fault. It's because of changes to the API or ToS of the other app!

In short, if this sort of thing is mandated universally, it simply tips the scales back in favor of the behemoths already ruling the roost, who can afford to build support for a dozen competing apps right into their own, and use the good old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (or any similar playbook) to make sure the competitors die of asphyxiation.

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

#355

Post by userbinator »

Matheus28 wrote: post #203
userbinator wrote: post #201

I wonder how many who think Meta are in the right here are themselves using things like adblockers, other browser extensions that modify page content to their liking, even Reader Mode, or basically anything other than a "I'll bend over and take it" attitude towards everything they use, because you're a hypocrite if you do.

I think Meta is in the right, and I use an adblocker on my browser. If they stopped serving me content because I'm using an adblocker, I would have to accept it or disable my adblocker on their website. There's nothing hypocritical about this position. They allow me to use their content in this way so I will, if they didn't, I wouldn't. Working against their explicit wishes (circumventing anti-adblock) is what's wron…

Working against their explicit wishes

The companies want you to look at all their ads and be indoctrinated to them. They'd even get you to drink a verification can if they could. Is this the world you want to live in?

Part of personal freedom is about being able to do what you want on your own property, even if others don't like it.

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

#356

Post by userbinator »

TobyTheDog123 wrote: post #175

It is absolutely incredible to me that people are defending Meta in this thread. - Yes, Facebook had the right to do it. They're terrible for doing it, though. Meta is terrible? No way! - I'm extremely exhausted of the "tough luck, it's a private company" shtick when it fits someone's personal interests, but cry corporate capitalistic Hell when it doesn't. - There is nothing I've seen in the Apple Developer Guideline…

It is absolutely incredible to me that people are defending Meta in this thread.

Look at who some of the people here work for.

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

#357

Post by cortesoft »

nobody9999 wrote: post #295
cortesoft wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, an individual can do that. That is not the point. The person you replied to wasn't saying they know for sure they were stealing user data, just that Meta has no way of knowing they aren't, and even if they aren't right now, no way of knowing if they will start in the future. It doesn't matter what the app does at this moment, it can be changed at any point.

>That is not the point. The person you replied to wasn't saying they know for sure they were stealing user data, just that Meta has no way of knowing they aren't, and even if they aren't right now, no way of knowing if they will start in the future. But isn't such an application running on the end-user's hardware and making requests at the end-user's behest? If so, what does Meta have to do with it at all? Should the…

The user is risking more than their own data; they are also risking the data of their friends.

If I grant a friend permission to view my photos, I am not also granting some random 3rd party that permission.

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

#358

Post by simiones »

dylan604 wrote: post #330
hedora wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user wants to support the site, and doesn't want to see the ad. Why not have the browser /dev/null them, and click a few for the heck of it? It would be in the user's interest.

Isn't this what I stated in the original comment?

Doing that is borderline fraud - I believe that GP meant to highlight this. If it gets counted as actual clicks, it's actually explicitly defrauding the advertiser.

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

#359

Post by chaostheory »

Nextgrid wrote: post #334
chaostheory wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a threat because 3rd party clients like this circumvent payment for the service via ads. If you don't like the terms, don't use the service. There are plenty of alternatives.

If I'm allowed to close my eyes or mute the volume when an ad is playing why shouldn't I be allowed to get a machine to do this for me?

Because you can use another service where you pay in money instead of attention like Apple products and services. Let’s not pretend like there aren’t many other alternatives

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

#360

Post by chaostheory »

josephcsible wrote: post #294
chaostheory wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone with a phone still has access to SMS. Your personal choice is not Meta’s problem, nor does meta have a monopoly on communication. No one, especially in developed countries, is forced to use meta services. There are many alternatives. I use iMessage myself which is great

It's not just my personal choice. I can't choose to use SMS to communicate if the people I need to talk to don't also make the same choice. And iMessage falls back to SMS when you send messages to people who don't have it.

SMS is standard and available on every phone by default. Again people’s personal choices, many of which have alternatives, are not meta’s problem.
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