and by liberate they mean spam.
Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#52Uh, exporting your address book from Google and uploading it to Facebook is perfectly within any user's rights - it's a textbook example of data liberation. Now if only I could export my facebook pictures and easily import them into Picasa, or sync my facebook wall with my Buzz stream...
Beyond the script from derferman, you can download a copy of all of your photos (and videos, wall posts, etc) as a zip file directly off of Facebook from the bottom of your Account Settings page.
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your photos are easily accessible using the Graph API[1]. I wrote a python script which downloads all your photos and saves them to your computer[2]. However, I agree that Facebook doesn't make it easy for other web services to access stored data. [1]: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/photo [2]: https://github.com/derferman/scrapebook
genuine question (this sounds a little smarmy but I know nothing about Graph API or web dev at all really): How is it not easy for other web services to access this stored data when a random guy can easily throw a script on GitHub to do it?
It is perfectly easy for other web services to access the data of a logged-in Facebook user, provided that the user has granted permission via Facebook Connect. This is how Facebook's "Download your Data" product[1] works; it is entirely implemented through publicly available graph APIs.
What Google is insisting on is "download my friends' data." This is where Facebook currently draws the line; we make it easy to retrieve your own data programmatically, while retrieving your friends' data programmatically is harder.
And, whatever Google says, Facebook is right to draw the line somewhere, and probably at friends' contact info. Consider an immediate consequence of doing what Google is insisting on: Zynga (e.g.) will spam all of their users' friends' emails. Because now they can retrieve them in bulk via a Facebook API. If you use Facebook, and tomorrow you started getting reams of email from applications you do not use, would you think, "How wonderful that Facebook has finally liberated my data!"? Or would you, maybe, be annoyed, and wonder why Facebook would ever consider making such a boneheaded decision?
[1] https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php -> "Download your Information"
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
genuine question (this sounds a little smarmy but I know nothing about Graph API or web dev at all really): How is it not easy for other web services to access this stored data when a random guy can easily throw a script on GitHub to do it?
Not sure if this is the right answer, but a guess: it's easy for other web services to access this stored data if the user provides them with their Facebook login and password, which no self-respecting service would ever ask for. Even if Google did at one point get users to give up their facebook credentials, the API's they access will probably block IP's that try to access multiple users' data in a short amount of t…
With the Facebook API, the user doesn't have to provide any third party his credentials to allow the third party to access his data. Facebook uses OAuth to securely pass an access token to the third party while protecting the user's credentials. See http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ for more info.
(I work on the Facebook platform.)
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your photos are easily accessible using the Graph API[1]. I wrote a python script which downloads all your photos and saves them to your computer[2]. However, I agree that Facebook doesn't make it easy for other web services to access stored data. [1]: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/photo [2]: https://github.com/derferman/scrapebook
genuine question (this sounds a little smarmy but I know nothing about Graph API or web dev at all really): How is it not easy for other web services to access this stored data when a random guy can easily throw a script on GitHub to do it?
The Facebook API allows 3rd party applications to access most of the user's data, including the user's email, if the user grants the application the required permissions. More details are at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissio....
(I work on the Facebook platform.)
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
genuine question (this sounds a little smarmy but I know nothing about Graph API or web dev at all really): How is it not easy for other web services to access this stored data when a random guy can easily throw a script on GitHub to do it?
It is perfectly easy for other web services to access the data of a logged-in Facebook user, provided that the user has granted permission via Facebook Connect. This is how Facebook's "Download your Data" product[1] works; it is entirely implemented through publicly available graph APIs. What Google is insisting on is "download my friends' data." This is where Facebook currently draws the line; we make it easy to ret…
Ridiculous. Facebook could whitelist only the user, not any proxy, to download whatever data friends already make available to users inside the boundaries of privacy controls. This is only sensible since it's already exposed to the user. If the user dedicated human time to archiving a bunch of web pages, they could reconstruct their contacts. But it's much simpler for the computer to do it.
The user could sell out their friends to a third party if they chose to (opt in). But Zynga would only get access if the user said so.
The reason Facebook won't do it is that it would commoditize the social graph and allow straight head to head competition on features. I think no one, even Facebook, knows how that would turn out...
Except for Google, who clearly decided to make it happen.
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if this is the right answer, but a guess: it's easy for other web services to access this stored data if the user provides them with their Facebook login and password, which no self-respecting service would ever ask for. Even if Google did at one point get users to give up their facebook credentials, the API's they access will probably block IP's that try to access multiple users' data in a short amount of t…
With the Facebook API, the user doesn't have to provide any third party his credentials to allow the third party to access his data. Facebook uses OAuth to securely pass an access token to the third party while protecting the user's credentials. See http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ for more info. (I work on the Facebook platform.)
Ah, but if I remember correctly, the terms of that OAuth usage explicitly state that while data may be accessed and used, it can't be stored indefinitely (with good reason, sometimes I don't want some app toy to indefinitely store all the information I trust Facebook with). So if a third party uses that API as an export mechanism, their API access should be (rightfully) shut down.
BUT - what if I actually want to export all of my photos into SomeApp.com, and I want to give SomeApp the right to store my photos indefinitely? Is there an API they can use to pull it from Facebook directly?
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if this is the right answer, but a guess: it's easy for other web services to access this stored data if the user provides them with their Facebook login and password, which no self-respecting service would ever ask for. Even if Google did at one point get users to give up their facebook credentials, the API's they access will probably block IP's that try to access multiple users' data in a short amount of t…
With the Facebook API, the user doesn't have to provide any third party his credentials to allow the third party to access his data. Facebook uses OAuth to securely pass an access token to the third party while protecting the user's credentials. See http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ for more info. (I work on the Facebook platform.)
@andreyf:
When Facebook switched from their old API to their new OAuth-based API they also removed restrictions on storing data.
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#59Some points that are getting lost in the discussion below. I work at Facebook.
1. Facebook lets you export your data. It has been possible to do so ever since the graph API debuted in April '10. Since the market wasn't filling the gap, we even built a "download your information" product (https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php -> Download Your Information). It gives you a zip file with all your contact info, photos, video, status updates, wall posts, etc. If somebody would like to write an importer for Diaspora, or Google Me, or even a non-vaporware competitor, they are well within Facebook's ToS, imho.
2. Facebook allows other sites programmatic access to the social graph. Yes, the supposed "crown jewels." That's exactly what Facebook Connect is for. You can see it in the wild on Pandora, Netflix, Yelp, Quora, and literally millions of other websites that are already doing what Google claims it wants to do: identify your Facebook friends.
3. Most importantly, what Google is insisting on is completely insane.
The ability to export my friends' email sounds good, but as with so many social product ideas (e.g., themed backgrounds for profiles), it stops sounding so good when you realize everybody has the same power. Think of it instead as: all of your Facebook friends can export your email to anybody who writes a Facebook app. Those spam quizzes? Every farm simulation knock-off flash game? The day Facebook does this, every Facebook user will wake up with their inbox crammed solid with spam from random Facebook applications that they do not even use.
What Google has not explained is why they need friends' email addresses, per se. Why couldn't whatever message they want to transmit be transmitted via Facebook messages, or wall posts, which send email notifications to almost all users anyway, and are already available via third-party APIs? This entire "not open enough!" straw man is a set of moving goalposts that Google will use to justify whatever competitive maneuvering they find convenient.
Facebook is in the right here, people. The product decision Google is asking Facebook to take would be a disaster for Facebook users. Meanwhile, the lever Google is using to attack Facebook comes entirely at the expense of GMail's users, who before this episode were voting with their feet by the millions to import their contact data to Facebook, and no longer have that option. Google is making its users' lives worse, in an attempt to make Facebook make its users lives worse.
Re: Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the Facebook API, the user doesn't have to provide any third party his credentials to allow the third party to access his data. Facebook uses OAuth to securely pass an access token to the third party while protecting the user's credentials. See http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ for more info. (I work on the Facebook platform.)
Ah, but if I remember correctly, the terms of that OAuth usage explicitly state that while data may be accessed and used , it can't be stored indefinitely (with good reason, sometimes I don't want some app toy to indefinitely store all the information I trust Facebook with). So if a third party uses that API as an export mechanism, their API access should be (rightfully) shut down. BUT - what if I actually want to ex…
It used to be the case that apps could only store your data for 24 hours, but we removed this restriction in the last f8 conference.
You can definitely export all your photos into SomeApp.com using the graph API and they can store your photos indefinitely. These APIs are documented at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api.