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Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

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Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#51

Post by dendory »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You really don't want to mess with the Facebook police. They'll delete your life. I wish I had something more substantive to say here, but the problem is that we give Facebook an extraordinarily huge power in our personal lives. It's not just some random web service.

Delete our lives?! Oh noes.

Honestly, if you give one company that much power, then you're the foolish one. Same thing with a Kindle account, iCloud, SkyDrive, Twitter.. If you have valuable information in the cloud, back it up!

I personally tried to "delete my life" a while back and the only reason I still have an (unused) Facebook profile is because it got reactivated at some point.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#52

Post by jiggy2011 »

skymt wrote: post #50
jiggy2011 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few practical problems with creating that kind of legislation though. How do you decide who has to comply with it? Every time I build a website that collects any data from users at all, do I have to also create an API for accessing that data? Bigger companies such as FB and Google would most likely just move stuff offshore to get around this anyway.

It doesn't necessarily need to be a full API. How about a database dump, or even a .csv? Just some way to get the data out of one system and into another.

That's still a bunch of extra work for a small program, considering you have to worry about security and data protection. Making sure that you don't leak anybody elses data.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#53

Post by fleitz »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You really don't want to mess with the Facebook police. They'll delete your life. I wish I had something more substantive to say here, but the problem is that we give Facebook an extraordinarily huge power in our personal lives. It's not just some random web service.

It's a blessing in disguise being banned from Facebook would free up a lot of time.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#54

Post by dhimes »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #14
csmattryder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years old. No Facebook account. I 'deleted my life', and y'know what? Nothing changed. I still have the same friends I talked to before Facebook, still meet up for drinks on their birthdays, still arrange nights out, and still share what's going on in my life. The best thing about no Facebook? I know what information is out there, and nothing personal that Advertising Inc. can buy.

You have a much easier story. I'm 47. Because of the network effect, using Facebook I've connected with people I knew and cared about that I haven't seen in 30 years. Dozens of them. I barely remembered person A and B, found them and became friends. Then they knew person C and D. E and F were close behind. Pretty soon I have 200 friends from places scattered all over the world. Life sneaks up on you, and people stop…

$20 says your wife wins. :-)

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#55

Post by tsycho »

Swizec wrote: post #16
csmattryder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years old. No Facebook account. I 'deleted my life', and y'know what? Nothing changed. I still have the same friends I talked to before Facebook, still meet up for drinks on their birthdays, still arrange nights out, and still share what's going on in my life. The best thing about no Facebook? I know what information is out there, and nothing personal that Advertising Inc. can buy.

I'm 25. One of my friends uses Google+ instead of FB. It's really weird because the only way I can really get in contact with him is via the irc channel we all hang out on. I never get to see any of the photos he shares.

If you actually care about the photos that your friend is sharing on Google+, what's actually preventing you from seeing them? You don't even have to visit the G+ site, just set up email notifications if he/she shares anything with you.

Let's look at an alternative scenario: What if your friend posted the photos online to Flickr, Shutterfly, Picasa etc. and sent you a link via email? Would you still complain?

My point is not to evangelize Google+ here, I am using it only because you referred to it. My point is that the power that FB has over your online social life is entirely up to you, and you can choose to increase/decrease it at will.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#56

Post by tedunangst »

oharo wrote: post #39
mandeepj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ark only shows publicly available data from the people's profile at fb. If its not public then you cannot get it from ark.

you can find the exact profiles mentioned on demo day on piratebay.

And what does that prove? Are public profiles banned from piratebay?

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#57

Post by malandrew »

swalsh wrote: post #36
libber wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like this may interest you - https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467/ Facebook wraps up every status update, picture, etc in a .zip file that you can download.

I've actually setup a system where I download this zip file once every 3 months. My main point is that the barrier to entry for making a new social network/reader etc is not one of innovation. Search for instance is hard to compete with because the bar has been set so high. Facebook is impossible to compete with because of its walls. I don't feel this page brings those walls down.

A service that did this regularly (like once a week) and then made the data available via API for syncing with other services would be useful.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#58

Post by piokoch »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #8

You really don't want to mess with the Facebook police. They'll delete your life. I wish I had something more substantive to say here, but the problem is that we give Facebook an extraordinarily huge power in our personal lives. It's not just some random web service.

I think that FB influence is largely overrated. As a matter of fact FB provides more convinient way to interact with friends.

If one day FB disappear we can move to another social network. It is very likely that we have our closest friends' emails so we don't loose any actual connections. As far as not-that-close friends are concerned, many of us will be delighted that we don't have to keep them at social network any longer (I am speaking here about people who managed to gather together 500 friend and they don't really know 70% of them, but are just to polite to delete them).

I guess if Dropbox would disappear or Google/Gmail would disappear or Flicker that would be really harmful for many people, but Facebook... Marketing people would be upset for some time, but average FB user will move to G+ or Diaspora or something similar in no time.

In fact, we can see how good e-mail is, despite spam and phishing problems. The point is that nobody owns e-mail, it is open standard. In the IM space we have Jabber, which moves e-mail openess to IM world.

In social area we need similar thing, the closest one is Diaspora, but we need something better. If it will be available then any larger portal would have it's own version, similarly as most portals offer e-mail accounts.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#59

Post by 404error »

1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #13
csmattryder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years old. No Facebook account. I 'deleted my life', and y'know what? Nothing changed. I still have the same friends I talked to before Facebook, still meet up for drinks on their birthdays, still arrange nights out, and still share what's going on in my life. The best thing about no Facebook? I know what information is out there, and nothing personal that Advertising Inc. can buy.

25, no facebook account for over 3 years. Life's better without!

27, no facebook account...ever. For some reason I have never been able to make the time to use a social network.

Re: Followup to "I bought more than 1 million Facebook data entries for $5"

#60

Post by ryguytilidie »

short_circut wrote: post #26
loopdoend wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either this is an attempt at irony, or you are what is wrong with Facebook.

I fail to see how using facebook to reconnect with disconnected friends is what is wrong with facebook. As a tool that is exactly what it is for.

Personal sidebar ahead: by the way, my wife and I are having a competition to see who can get the most friends. As long as you're not selling anything, and I promise not to sell you anything, send me an invite! Right now she has 600 friends and I have something like 250.
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