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Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

socialfixer.com

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Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#51

Post by avree »

orenbarzilai wrote: post #6
johnchristopher wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent deleted the message so your reply got me curious. Could you clarify ?

johnchristopher - I have deleted it because it's not working properly. mattkruse - TOMODO.com is a platform that enables anyone to modify any existing website by injecting JS/CSS. Unlike browser extensions the injection happens in server side so the client doesn't need to install anything, additionally it's supports all browser and platforms. Since the Mod was created using your original code but not by you, if you w…

These sorts of modifications are done client-side for a reason. If I want the page to look different, I'd make it look different. Doing it server-side opens up a whole ton of security concerns... Not to mention copyright issues, etc.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#52

Post by mbesto »

jasonlotito wrote: post #13
pdonis wrote: post #9

From the article: every user I talk to now seems to think that Facebook is going downhill and increasingly making decisions that benefit their stock holders rather than their users Why would you expect them not to? Facebook is a publicly traded company; they have to make decisions that benefit their stockholders or they will go bankrupt. Also, Facebook's users are not customers; Facebook gets its revenue from ads, no…

> 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.

> It's not true in any way.

Care to elaborate? This is pretty fundamental to almost every single business I have ever heard of...

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#53

Post by blibble »

ksrm wrote: post #48
blibble wrote: post #11

the solution to this sort of thing is to always wrap yourself in a limited company... company formation in the UK costs around £20 and then you're personally immune to this sort of legal bullying

How so?

so say a new shiny product (an extension) is produced by a newly founded company (smallco).

bullyco decides they don't like this and sues smallco.

what's the most the owners (shareholders) of the smallco can lose? their share capital (likely £1).

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#54

Post by yason »

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 had, they could also tell us not to distribute a browser that displays Facebook "badly". Or an operating system that does that. Or blueprints for hardware that does that. They could forbid using such a software in the account terms for each individual user but that would be highly unenforceable (as in as soon as the data gets to my computer, I can and will mangle the bits whichever way I happen to like).

What Facebook can do is to terminate the author's Facebook account: I assume he might have broken some legal terms regarding his own account. However, writing and distributing a piece of software is absolutely out of their limits. It's sad and disappointing to see Facebook use the legal card, a multibillion company threatening a one-man party with costly lawsuits.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#55

Post by lancewiggs »

blibble wrote: post #53
ksrm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

so say a new shiny product (an extension) is produced by a newly founded company (smallco). bullyco decides they don't like this and sues smallco. what's the most the owners (shareholders) of the smallco can lose? their share capital (likely £1).

And then they sue the directors. Limited liability is sadly inadequate in today's world. On the other hand it's also good to be able to go after the people behind companies that are truly fraudulent.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#56

Post by wpietri »

tedunangst wrote: post #42
javajosh wrote: post #38

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…

Doesn't Facebook have some right to choose what type of content they want to host? The only thing that's happened is Facebook has decided they don't want to host his page. [Er, oops. Ignore this part. Reading fail] I mean, seriously. FBI? What do they have to do with this?

And they have said things that he has interpreted as a threat of legal action. Which is why he's taking out the features.

Also, this is not a question of rights, so I think that's a red herring here.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#57

Post by wpietri »

pdonis wrote: post #9

From the article: every user I talk to now seems to think that Facebook is going downhill and increasingly making decisions that benefit their stock holders rather than their users Why would you expect them not to? Facebook is a publicly traded company; they have to make decisions that benefit their stockholders or they will go bankrupt. Also, Facebook's users are not customers; Facebook gets its revenue from ads, no…

> Why would you expect them not to? Facebook is a publicly traded company; they have to make decisions that benefit their stockholders or they will go bankrupt.

Citation needed.

Also, this is a false dichotomy. Nobody is splashing patchouli on their tie-dyes before marching on Menlo Park to demand that Facebook's servers be liberated for the masses.

The only dispute here is whether Facebook's short-term fixation on control is bad for the long-term health of their ecosystem, which is by far the company's largest asset.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#58

Post by wpietri »

mbesto wrote: post #52
jasonlotito wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's not true in any way. Care to elaborate? This is pretty fundamental to almost every single business I have ever heard of...

See, for example, "Maximizing Shareholder Value: The Dumbest Idea in the World": http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizi...

The "maximize shareholder value" chant is a piece of MBA dogma that, although accepted by many as an immutable law of the universe, is a relatively recent American invention. It's not a law, managers don't go to jail if they don't do it, other countries do it differently, and we used to do it differently as well.

Many make good arguments that it doesn't even work very well. American car companies are a good example. Thomas Murphy, a president of General Motors said, "GM is not in the business of making cars; GM is in the business of making money." Carmakers like Toyota, on the other hand, focused on making cars very well (and making customers happy), and kicked Detroit's ass. (The book Toyota Kata and the TAL episode NUMMI give good intros to why, and why it was the philosophy of American carmakers that prevented them from adapting.)

The problem with focusing on maximizing return on capital is that there are a zillion ways to make those numbers look great in the short term while screwing the company in the long. But hey, by then, everybody has cashed out. Except the suckers, and who cares about them? As an example, see what the MBA dogma did to Simmons Mattress: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons...

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#59

Post by oneshotreply »

babs474 wrote: post #50
ceol wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might have a point about naming, I don't know. In my defense a bunch of reddit tools do the same thing: metareddit.com, uneddit.com, redditenhancementsuite.com But I'm really curious about what you said regarding sidestepping delete functionality. How do you view search engines indexing and caching of reddit and other sites? Does the Barbara Streisand effect apply? I think that the issue is way more nuanced than…

Do something for the improvement of the human race instead.

If you can't, please stop releasing idiotic extensions that bring individual human beings more suffering than benefit.

Re: Facebook Requires Social Fixer Browser Extension to Remove Features

#60

Post by ceejayoz »

tedunangst wrote: post #44
ceejayoz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "we can force you into bankruptcy by suing you" all that less forcible than "the government will fine you"?

Is Facebook suing him?

It sounds like he caved at the C&D stage.

Refusing to do so risks bankruptcy, even if you're in the right, if the deep-pocketed company decides to sue.

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