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Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

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Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#51

Post by lazerwalker »

chc wrote: post #36
surfingdino wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He quotes "I must cease and not access the Facebook site(s) and/or services for any reason whatsoever." There is not EOL date in his statement.

It's not the "for life" anothermachine is disputing, it's the "banned." What he received sounds like a simple nastygram. I could send you a letter demanding that you give me your house, but that wouldn't mean that you are obliged to do so.

I don't think that's quite a fair comparison. As the proprietor of a brick-and-mortar business, you have the right to refuse service to anyone. Facebook is exercising their equivalent right here by refusing to let him use their online services.

The "stop distributing your browser plugin" is a nastygram cease and desist, yeah, but there's nothing wrong with Facebook banning him.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#52

Post by shadowmint »

ig1 wrote: post #38

Facebook terms of usage https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms Section 3.2: "You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission." Seems writing a bot that automatically takes actions on a user's behalf would clearly violate the Facebook terms. Banning bots is perfectly reasonable behaviour…

Have you ever read the Facebook TOS fully?

I challenge you to find a single game on the site that does not violate one of their extremely vaguely worded clauses.

This is basically just a "We can, for any reason, at any time, ban you. Suck it up."

That's why I've lost all interest in the Facebook platform.

Too much of this nonsense going on.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#53

Post by lazerwalker »

What's really funny about telling him he's not allowed to use any Facebook services is that, short of blocking all connections between his computer and Facebook's servers, he can't. Even if he never goes to facebook.com again, he'll still encounter Like buttons and other FB social plugins on many, many sites.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#54

Post by feralchimp »

1. FB's lawyers sent him a letter asking him to stop. No more, no less.

2. Being 'banned from FB' is not really a legally defined classification for human beings, and HR organizations are paid to care about actual legal reality.

3. If he's not using FB APIs or other licensed information, how are FB's options for "further escalation" anything more than a louder brand of saber rattling? All it takes is one good lawyer looking to stand up to Goliath pro-bono, in a case that we know would be very highly publicized, and suddenly all the downside to a court battle is on FB's end. On what legal theory could FB hope to receive damages?

4. Despite all of the above, sometimes knuckling under and running for cover is the right move. A good programmer knows his limitations, and he's under no obligation to stick his neck out.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#55

Post by shadowmint »

mbell wrote: post #43
MBCook wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of the plugin before, but it looks like it did some of the tedium of clicking on the game status updates for you. (If someone can give a good description, I would love to see it). My guess is that FB doesn't like the software doing this because it means the users aren't doing it themselves, and thus aren't able to see the ads they would have otherwise, cutting down on revenue. The only other reason I…

>The only other reason I can think of that would make any sense is that the games servers might have had load issues (since the plugin could act faster and on more things than a human). However, I would put my ad theory above as far more likely. Also consider that many facebook games operate with a micro-transactional model where you CAN buy stuff with in game currency earned by the 'tedious clicking' but if you want…

The key issue here is that is was a plugin that acted like a robot on the site.

Effectively they only thing that Facebook can do about that sort of application is ban people using it.

However, just like the Wow Glider saga they chose to pressure the developer instead. However, unlike that, it was just a browser plugin. No magical API calls, or anything like that.

I couldn't care less about micro-transactions, ad views and the spamware Facebook applications: Facebook is doing this because they can't take the bitter pill of banning _users_ who violate their TOS; instead they will attack the developer of said tool.

There is no justifying their actions.

fail.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#58

Post by mbell »

shadowmint wrote: post #55
mbell wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only other reason I can think of that would make any sense is that the games servers might have had load issues (since the plugin could act faster and on more things than a human). However, I would put my ad theory above as far more likely. Also consider that many facebook games operate with a micro-transactional model where you CAN buy stuff with in game currency earned by the 'tedious clicking' but if you want…

The key issue here is that is was a plugin that acted like a robot on the site. Effectively they only thing that Facebook can do about that sort of application is ban people using it. However, just like the Wow Glider saga they chose to pressure the developer instead. However, unlike that, it was just a browser plugin. No magical API calls, or anything like that. I couldn't care less about micro-transactions, ad view…

Sorry but this post reeks of of personal hatred toward facebook and contains little value.

Regardless of the method chosen to attack this issue at the end of the day this hurts both their bottom line and their app developer's bottom line, which hurts the user base as a whole. Clearly your not a facebook user, so frankly, your opinion doesn't matter to them as long as your the minority.

Of course they would go after the source of the issue instead of their profit center (users). Are you really arguing that Facebook is evil for not attacking their users? I mean really its terrible of them to focus on their users and their profit centers over a singular third party developer, absolutely terrible.

I have a feeling if this article was titled "Facebook bans 50,000 users" you would have come here and made the same "I hate Facebook" argument.

Re: Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

#60

Post by killerdark »

vectorpush wrote: post #22
cookiecaper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background checks ping public records for things like convictions and residence history. There is no way a "ban from Facebook" would show up on one of these.

Background checks these days pretty typically include your name being googled, especially if it's in tech.

No it doesn't. Source: Living in CA, had several Background checks (CA allows the subject to receive a copy of the background check).
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