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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

#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.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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So I should be able to steal from my neighbor because that's true freedom? Because you're using their resources and servers in a way they didn't authorize.

It's not stealing if they gave you the data.

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

#203

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 wrong.

I'm unable to block their ads on my phone app, so I use it less, but when I use it, I have to see ads.

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

#204
post #93
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn’t competition though. This was straight up theft of resources/services. What? “extra-legal”? Don’t mix this with other behaviors Meta/Facebook/Instagram engage in, I hate them for all the bullsht they get away with too. However, this isn’t that, this is someone trying to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform explicitly against their terms of service and without reimbursing them.

It's hard to be sympathetic to a company that operates morally dubious amounts of data harvesting. If a program enables you to gain more privacy while using the internet, it's a moral good. I don't consider it to be stealing any resources or services. It's little different than an ad and tracker blocker on a browser. Any client-side user agent should have the right to act on behalf of the user. If it's not illegal to…

I’m with you almost all the way. I’m just not going to say that any of us our entitled to the resources of someone else.

I believe in what’s best for the commons, but not at the expense of stealing what’s not mine. Sure, take possession of what’s yours, your information, your privacy, your property. But don’t give it all away to receive some benefit, then insist on seizing it all back and keeping the benefit.

The transaction you make with Meta is that you’ll give them a piece of your property, in exchange you get to use their machines. If you don’t want them to occupy your property, stop using their machines.

I choose not to use Facebook/Instagram because I’m not so self important as to share my daily life with “friends” I only talk to out of convenience and lack of something better to do. I don’t feel like the benefit Facebook offers is worth the toll they exact. I don’t want my land to be part of their machine, and similarly I don’t feel entitled to it.

When someone sends me a Facebook or Instagram link and I’m asked to login, I just let them know I can’t view that link. If I’m blocked from Instagram content, or increasingly Twitter content, because of my adblocker, then I just accept that the content isn’t available to me.

I host content I want to share with friends and family on services that I either host or pay for so that I don’t have to subject them to that. So they don’t have to sign away their privacy to view my kids having fun at the park.

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your access to their API is conditioned on an agreement not to use unauthorized clients. You are free to use the software of your choosing in conjunction with your own computers, but not necessarily with everybody else's.

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This kinda is how freedom works though. You're free to use whatever client you want, and Meta is free to implement API in a way that will not allow your client to call it.

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

#206

Modern ad-funded software is less a "bicycle for the mind" and more a "hamster wheel for the brain". Of course third party clients would be seen as a threat - they empower the user.

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.

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

#207
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should check out Apple App Attest —- this just isn’t true any more for mobile. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicecheck/valida...

I haven't read it thoroughly, but given the App Attest service runs on the OS, why can't someone just find the certificate for it hidden somewhere and use that to sign fake attests in userland? This is just an extra layer of obfuscation. It doesn't prevent someone from faking api calls with no app (or phone) involved.

Given that this only runs on certain Apple hardware, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Secure Enclave holds that certificate and can confirm at an extremely low level that it is being used only to sign a hash of of the app code itself and a shared secret with the app developer.

Brilliant, in a scary way. In a way it makes data portability regulations all the more important.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I should be able to steal from my neighbor because that's true freedom? Because you're using their resources and servers in a way they didn't authorize.

It's not stealing if they gave you the data.

They don't though. They're giving the data to the original client, not to the third party one. They're free to choose who they're giving the data to and you accept those conditions by using their product.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#209
post #98

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.

The 3rd party is not making the API request though. I am, just using software that didn't come from the platform vendor. Many 3rd party twitter clients have expressed a willingness to display ads if provided an API to do so. As someone who has lost precious accessibility capabilities because of restrictions on 3rd party clients, I unfortunately have to point out that I don't really have a choice of what platforms I d…

Let me offer you a question then: Do you know how much data the OG App is taking from you while you authorize it to work on your behalf? How do you know it's not reading through your entire message history? Or building its own network graph of your friends to sell? How about security? How do you know it's securely storing your credentials? Or that it's not selling said credentials as well?

Like in this scenario to Facebook it is in theory effectively you. Not the app operating on behalf of you with a limited set of permissions.

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

#210
post #108
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy, just a dummy link That’s not true at all. They have a privacy policy linked at the bottom of their page. It opens in a new tab by default which is probably blocked by our adblocker.

According to the source code, the link is broken for desktop (class="footer_component desktop"), but not mobile (class="footer_component mobile"). Privacy Policy is a non-functional link.

Probably has some javascript handler or something?
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