71–80 of 103 posts
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Yup! That is what I finally fell back to. At first I was worrying about all the stuff that I will miss but realized that as long as I was worrying I will never stop using Facebook. Btw, do you still use Facebook?
I haven't had an account in years. I stopped when they started playing games with their privacy settings.
This story should cause outrage among the users and developers (and any potential users and developers) of any software that is like Social Fixer, that is, any software that stores, manipulates, and presents proprietary data in ways that the "owner" (e.g. Facebook) of said data did not intend, for the use of a first party. The thing that makes the FB legal threats against Social Fixer different, and more troubling th…
The only alternative is to "stop using Facebook."
The Facebook Terms of Service are an agreement that you can simply choose not to accept.
You have every right.
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> they have to make decisions that benefit their stockholders I wish the meme that this is the only thing a public company can do would die. It's not true in any way.
I too wish the meme would die, but not because it's not true, rather because it's overused a lot as a reply. As I understand it these companies do in fact have a fiduciary responsibility to make every move be one that benefits their shareholders. Can you please voice your thoughts on how that is not true?
Can this meme die too?
http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-com...
This isn't a Facebook app. This isn't using Facebook API. It's effectively as if he had written a custom browser that displays the Facebook page in a way he likes: a script like that is basically a functional rather than visual stylesheet. Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. If I understood that correctly then Facebook has absolutely no say about that piece of software. Because if they…
This is completely false.
Facebook is a business. That means they have the legal right to do a lot more than transmit data.
This is such a basic, obvious, fact that I find it difficult that so many people seem to not understand it.
Facebook is not a data transmission service. They're a business. They have a product that they offer. If you want to use that product, they ask that you agree to a set of rules. This is very, very, normal. It is the foundation of society: The ability to make agreements.
Whether or not this software violates the agreement Facebook asks of its users is another question.
But, they absolutely DO have the right to do more than "push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers."
This isn't a Facebook app. This isn't using Facebook API. It's effectively as if he had written a custom browser that displays the Facebook page in a way he likes: a script like that is basically a functional rather than visual stylesheet. Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. If I understood that correctly then Facebook has absolutely no say about that piece of software. Because if they…
This story should cause outrage among the users and developers (and any potential users and developers) of any software that is like Social Fixer, that is, any software that stores, manipulates, and presents proprietary data in ways that the "owner" (e.g. Facebook) of said data did not intend, for the use of a first party. The thing that makes the FB legal threats against Social Fixer different, and more troubling th…
You are absolutely right. The only alternative is to "stop using Facebook." The Facebook Terms of Service are an agreement that you can simply choose not to accept. You have every right.
My life is definitely no worse not having a facebook account.
This isn't a Facebook app. This isn't using Facebook API. It's effectively as if he had written a custom browser that displays the Facebook page in a way he likes: a script like that is basically a functional rather than visual stylesheet. Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. If I understood that correctly then Facebook has absolutely no say about that piece of software. Because if they…
> Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. This is completely false. Facebook is a business. That means they have the legal right to do a lot more than transmit data. This is such a basic, obvious, fact that I find it difficult that so many people seem to not understand it. Facebook is not a data transmission service. They're a business. They have a product that they offer. If you want to u…
On top of that, there is a reason contracts of adhesion are treated specially. An agreement between a billion dollar corporation and someone that wants to post cat photos isn't a true meeting of the minds. It can only make demands that are sufficiently ordinary* Requiring a website to be browsed in a specific way is rather out of the ordinary.
* As defined by libraryfulls of precedent.
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What makes you say that?
You used their trademarked brand name in a product and URL for that product. That's a huge mistake. Plus there's the whole issue with your app sidestepping reddit's "delete", "remove", "edit", and "private subreddit" functionality. Those things exist for very good reasons and are nothing like what Social Fixer did.
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it would be easy for Facebook to say "we think there's long term value in delivering the best possible experience to users, and if for some users that means using an extension that's fine with us" It would be easy for them to say it, but first they would have to believe it, and second they would have to believe they could convince investors of it. it's a good faith business decision, why would they get ousted or sued…
> It would be easy for them to say it, but first they would have to believe it, and second they would have to believe they could convince investors of it You're moving goalposts. That's a completely different statement. Whatever it is they truly believe is totally different than "they have to make decisions that benefit their stockholders or they will go bankrupt". > It's not a question of being sued, it's a question…
How is this relevant to what I said in the particular statement you were responding to here? I wasn't saying anything in that statement about what FB does believe; all I was saying is that, judging by their behavior, they don't believe that "there's long term value in delivering the best possible experience to users, and if for some users that means using an extension that's fine with us".
As for what I think they do believe, see below.
this has nothing to do with fiduciary duty
Which was exactly my point: saying that FB won't get sued if it lets third-party developers change its UI is not at all the same as saying that FB thinks its stockholders will benefit if it lets third-party developers change its UI.
for-profit companies do not have some kind of Sword of Damocles hanging over them, waiting for them to make a decision that costs stockholders value.
I wasn't saying they do; nothing in what I said requires that a single decision is all it takes. I didn't specify any time frame in which FB has to benefit stockholders or go bankrupt. If you read other posts of mine in this sub-thread, you'll see that the strategy I think FB is following is not one aimed at maximizing short-term return on capital, but that doesn't change the fact that they have to benefit stockholders on some time horizon that is relevant for the stockholders.
This isn't a Facebook app. This isn't using Facebook API. It's effectively as if he had written a custom browser that displays the Facebook page in a way he likes: a script like that is basically a functional rather than visual stylesheet. Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. If I understood that correctly then Facebook has absolutely no say about that piece of software. Because if they…
> Facebook only gets to push some HTML, CSS, and JS to its customers. This is completely false. Facebook is a business. That means they have the legal right to do a lot more than transmit data. This is such a basic, obvious, fact that I find it difficult that so many people seem to not understand it. Facebook is not a data transmission service. They're a business. They have a product that they offer. If you want to u…
The recipient is free to enlarge the font if they have poor vision, they're free to pass the content it through a text-to-speech engine if they're blind, they're free to strip out all the Q's and J's, they're free to turn down the volume on videos, etc.
Facebook can try to impose their will, but all they'll end up doing is looking like a bunch of empathy-deficient, user-deaf nincompoops.