Social Fixer Falls Victim To Facebook Legal Threats 194
rueger writes "The author of the very excellent Social Fixer browser plug-in is bowing to legal threats from Facebook and removing the core functionality that made his tool so great. I like Social Fixer a lot. It makes Facebook at least three or four times more usable. The author, Matt Kruse, says 'Any threat of legal action is a big deal. I am a one-man operation. If I were sued for whatever reason, I would find it very difficult to defend myself, even if it was without merit. I would be risking my personal life to maintain a tabbed news feed for users. As much as I'd like to be your Robin Hood, I just can't do that to my family.' Bizarrely, when he asked Facebook why they don't also threaten Ad-Block, the Facebook rep claimed to have never heard of it." Kruse has some surprisingly nice things to say about his interaction with Facebook, too. Reader Daniel Dvorkin points out this commentary at BuzzFeed which points out Twitter's similar policies.
Open Source the Tab Code (Score:5, Interesting)
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Previous status:
- Matt gets small donations for his pet project, uses Facebook happily, has a Facebook fan page with 200,000 followers
Current status:
- Matt is under threats he can not financially challenge (see reasoning in article), so he has to make a choice. Facebook demands removal of a few (key) features.
Option A:
- Fight legally. Costs: Facebook can ban Matt, keep his fan page removed, and destroy his life.
Option B:
- Comply. Matt gets his fan page back, and can continue
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The Tab code could be spun off as a separate open source project, which is what I suggested, not that he open source the entire thing.
Additionally who says open source can't ge
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A list of URLs that cannot be shared on Facebook? Are they blocking all the URL shorteners?
Re: Open Source the Tab Code (Score:3)
No but facebook (and twitter I think) resolve the short link, check for HTTP forwards, and check the forward URL against the block list.
I don't know if they check recursively or not, however.
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Re:Open Source the Tab Code (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, open source fixes everything. Except, you know, legal threats.
Legal threats only work where there is some way to get them enforced. If someone picks this up in a country where legal threats from Facebook means bupkis, then yes, Open Source does fix this.
--
BMO
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Unless US goes after people in other countries, like someone running MEGA something, or someone named Julian, or I dunno, spying on other countries and their diplomats?
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Case in point: x264, libavcodec, mplayer, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Examples of this working are x264, libavcodec and mplayer, for example. All of these probably break large numbers of patents and are quite high profile and I'm sure they are a thorn in the side for the video and audio format cartels. But they are doing just fine, and have been doing so for a long time. If they had been closed one-man projects by somebody in the USA, they life expectancy would probably be much shorter.
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It started as a GreaseMonkey script, why can't that particular functionality be open sourced? The few times a month I'm forced to go on Facebook I make sure my Social Fixer is up to date, especially since I want to be signed out of chat automatically. Having all the games and apps on a separate tab is nice too. - HEX
Sure, open source fixes everything. Except, you know, legal threats.
The threats have nothing to do with the browser extension itself, which Facebook cannot control any more than they can control Firefox or Chrome. They can only control a web page on Facebook about the extension. Apparently, the author of the extension wants to have that page so badly, he's willing to cripple the extension. I don't someone that weak-willed deserves much sympathy.
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Read the article. He says that if it was just losing the page he would continue, even though he hates that. The point is they have threatened him with legal action if he continues. Specifically, they've threatened to involve the legal department (but it's possible that once involved, the legal department would choose to do nothing).
Re:Open Source the Tab Code (Score:5, Insightful)
So he open sources the plugin, publishes it somewhere else for free.
They can't sue the totality of git-hub or Source Forge.
As long as he puts nothing on Facebook's website they can't touch him.
I'm sure there are several dozen sites in the EU that would host his project for free.
Facebook's legal department would know better than to try. Most lawyers have heard of the Streisand effect.
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I agree with you, but as long as Matt is contributing code to the project, he's a target for Facebook. If he retires, open-sources it, and lets the community take over development, he's personally off the hook and the project will most undoubtedly continue.
Personally I want to see the EFF agree to become his legal representation and Matt agree to keep the extension intact in the face of Facebook's threats.
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Matt is done for. He accepted the EULA when he signed up for Facebook and they know it, and that mistake paints him into an impossible to escape corner. I'm actually glad. I couldn't trust his one-man operation anyway, but his code good enough that most people were unwilling to work on an alternative as long as SocialFixer was available.
I think that keeping this running will take a clean room style approach. One group of people describes the latest ads; someone who hasn't signed up for Facebook publishe
Adblock already kills them, doesn't it? (Score:3)
I don't see any advertisement on facebook at all, and I'm just using Adblock Edge + the rule facebook.com##div[class="ego_column"]. SocialFixer does more than just block advertisements, but if all you want is to get rid of then adblock already does a very good job at it.
Re:Open Source the Tab Code (Score:5, Insightful)
How could anyone capable of writing code be incapable incapable of using Google or Bing or Yandex?
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If I can download an open source version and run it on my own, then yes it fixes the issue.
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it fixes legal threats in some cases.
it changes the situation from suing an admin of a service to suing all users of the program.
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If an open source Social Fixer clone shows up, who they gonna threaten?
Maybe a reverse class-action suit? The difference being that the defendant is the class of all people who think Facebook sucks but occasionally want to be able to use it without having to get that Facebook stink all over.
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Legal threats won't work in this case. The threats work against Social Fixer because of the reason the developer pointed out on his blog: they can close his Facebook account (which he actually uses), they can sue him for violating TOS, and they mark socialfixer.com as being a "spam" site.
If the code (or something like it) is open source and out on github or something, there's really nothing FB can do about it, as it's just code for a browser extension. They can try to go after the person who owns the gith
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I'd just like to add that, if you plan on doing something like this that is likely to piss off a big corporation, you have to keep it anonymous, completely separate from your personal identity and accounts, so they can't make life miserable for you by suing you or going after your other activities/accounts.
Not fast enough (Score:2)
I didn't jump on this fast enough--is there a way to get a fully functional copy now?
LLC (Score:3)
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Only if you have enough lawyers. LLCs and Corporations for one-person entities have a very, very thin corporate veil.
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LLCs for Corporations have never been pierced.
LLCs for sole proprietorship have only rarely been pierced.
Your Personal finances are pretty safe behind an LLC, that is after all precisely what they are for.
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You could call it rarely, but when you look at the subset of "low grossing individuals who starts an LLC in order to shield himself from this sort of attack" rarely becomes often.
Re:LLC (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a great theory, which will survive about 5 seconds when an army of corporate lawyers come after you under the United States' legal system. Corporate shields are good for some things, but they are not completely judgement-proof, and the US does not have a general loser-pays policy to guard against bringing cases of questionable merit against people without the resources to defend themselves effectively.
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" but they are not completely judgement-proof,"
Unless some sort of financial malfeasance can be sufficiently proved the corporate veil works. Look at what happened with TheScoGroup . You'd think that IBM would have the power to pierce the corporate veil and nail Microsoft for champerty. They didn't.
--
BMO
more lawyers than programmers, one tester (Score:2)
Based on the products they put out, I don't think it's equal. Some significant functionality appears to have never been tested. It's probably patented, though.
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>Of course Microsoft is untouchable
The corporate veil was TSG's. TSG vs. The Nazgul (ibm lawyers). Who would win, typically?
--
BMO
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"You might have missed the "people without the resources to defend themselves" part"
You might have missed the 'prior legal precedent' part. Bigger corps have successfully defended themselves and made that established. There's no going against it. That means the smaler person without the moeny to defend themselves simply points to that for defense.
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The problem with "loser pays" is that if they are "bringing cases of questionable merit against people without the resources to defend themselves effectivelly", and they have a strong legal department, they will likely be able to outlast the party they are attacking, and thus win by default. So you will be required to pay their expenses.
IOW, it's not a solution. A solution might be to limit the amount each side can pay to a mutually agreed limit...but I can't imagine the corporations agreeing to that, as
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That is only true if the loser is guaranteed to pay, which isn't strictly the case in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with (though IANAL and YMMV). Where I am, as I understand it there is effectively a presumption that the loser will cover the costs of both parties in most cases. However, the judge still has to actually award those costs as part of the process and they can exercise some discretion in the sort of situation you're describing where the two parties have wildly different resources available.
For ex
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Okay. Look, what you do is set up or buy TWO incorporated entities. For software, you release it BSD open sourced, i.e. closed source. Put source out on a website with a deep link anyone can get to.... but won't, since it's not in the site (or search) index.
First one gets sued, you drop it like it's hot. Bankruptcy. Keep trucking along with the 2nd corp, and acquire or create yet another entity. "... rest assured, this will be the sixth time they have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly
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Pay your own side, but you get reimbursement if you win.
Or we should just give up and concede that the rich will always win no matter what.
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That still doesn't stop someone from suing you in person.
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>It cost less than $50 to form an LLC in my state,
And $1000 to a CPA and $2000 to a lawyer annually, to stay an LLC. I only know this because we're in the process of changing the family business from a sole proprietorship to an LLC.
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Sure, and everything else is free because you can do the initial paperwork and annual filings yourself. If issues arise from an amateur completing complex IRS forms, you can also represent yourself in court. Any spare time remaining can be devoted to DIY dentistry and rerouting the local gas main so you can run a barbecue in your bathroom.
I was involved in a website that formed a foundation to manage the site, and the only reason it remained fairly cheap was because a tax attorney kindly volunteered his tim
THE Matt Kruse!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Whoa, that name was oddly familiar, and then it hit me - he ran the first ray-tracing competition, back in the great POV-Ray era.
http://www.mattkruse.com/raytracing/?bwf0d=12778 [mattkruse.com]
The first rule of AdBlock... (Score:3)
If they don't know what AdBlock is...wow, that's just sad.
Re:The first rule of AdBlock... (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, if I used FaceBook, this would inspire me to use adblock and block every ad they carry. Normally I just avoid sites that are too ad-heavy...this would inspire me, however.
Re:The first rule of AdBlock... (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Facebook and Adblock and block almost every ad they carry. Right now, that nukes the entire set from the right hand bar. Facebook knows perfectly well how many people block those easy to filter right hand side ads. It's low enough that they don't care, because they have a few ways to give you internal ads instead.
What they are doing now is putting more and more ads in the main section instead. If for example I click to "Like" a post from a group, the minute I do that it rewrites the page to add an inline "If you like that you might also like..." set of ads. These aren't blocked by Adblock because they're all internal links toward other pages on Facebook. As they get more an more infrastructure for that sort of thing, they don't have to leave their regular content to serve you an ad. That makes eliminating ads an increasingly tricky game of detection and rewriting the middle of the main page. And that's exactly the thing that Social Fixer did that Adblock doesn't try. That's why Matt Kruse is being targeted while Adblock isn't. He's the only popular source for code that can block all their ads, even the internally directed ones, and that they won't tolerate.
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Of course they know about AdBlock. Their claim was just a diversionary "no comment" tactic.
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Blocking on higher levels has some advantages too, though. For example blocking individual HTML elements. On facebook, I've needed this block facebook.com##div[class="ego_column"] to get rid of the last half of the advertisements. You're right that Adblock Plus sold out. That's why it was forked. I use the fork called Adblock Edge.
Just another reason not to use The Face Book (Score:3, Insightful)
As if we really needed another one. What a joke of a company.
Re:Just another reason not to use The Face Book (Score:4, Insightful)
They've designed an app that automatically jumps when Facebook wants their users to jump. It fixes nothing in the long term; quite the opposite, by making it marginally more comfortable to stay with Facebook, they're hiding and drawing attention away from the fundamental issue, which is Facebook's behaviour, business model and contemptious attitude towards its users. Only they have the power to change that, and they won't. The only solution is to encourage people not to use Facebook, and Social Fixer is a hindrance in that respect.
Social Fixer might seem helpful on the surface, but it's part of the Facebook ecosystem, and part of the problem, not the solution.
Re:Just another reason not to use The Face Book (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of logic is itself part of the problem. It presumes that people are engaged in the political dimensions of their life activities everywhere and always. Now perhaps you think the world would be a better place if this were true, and you might have the view—from within the confines of your evidently narrow and sheltered life—that we all have limitless capacity to politicize our every twitch and sneeze. But we don't, and it's not effective.
I have a range of issues where I'm especially well placed (though aptitude, knowledge, experience, and social connections) to speak out loudly and effectively. The rest of the time, like everyone else, I'm merely trying to get through life without succumbing to death by paper cut. Facebook is a cancer, so I don't go there at all, but if I did, I wouldn't regard Social Fixer as part of the problem. I'd regard it as a dry pair of socks, so I could live to hike another day.
But sure, if your boots pinch, burn your socks. It's true: you won't ever buy a bad-fitting pair of boots ever again. Too bad about those refrigerated vaccines you were trekking into a remote African village. Better luck next year.
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This kind of logic is itself part of the problem. It presumes that people are engaged in the political dimensions of their life activities everywhere and always.
It doesn't presume that at all. On the contrary, it rests on the assumption that the complete opposite is the case- that most people aren't that bothered about it in their daily lives unless the problem is clear.
If people were the way you implied I thought they were, by definition, this wouldn't be an issue.
Now perhaps you think the world would be a better place if this were true
I don't; you mistakenly assumed that I did.
from within the confines of your evidently narrow and sheltered life
This is only "evident" to you on the basis of words you put into my mouth, or at least beliefs you felt free to assume I held.
But sure, if your boots pinch, burn your socks. It's true: you won't ever buy a bad-fitting pair of boots ever again.
This is a poor analogy.
It's mo
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Facebook keeps me in contact with my friends and family in a way that no other option does. Period.
Well, the fact that you feel the need to keep in contact with friends and family by using garbage like Facebook certainly does not make you seem intelligent.
Pragmatism is a valid political doctrine in a world filled with rational people and you and all the other ideologues are welcome to be the internet equivalent of preppers and go live out on your digital "compound" with the other nutters.
People who are concerned about issues such as privacy are not "nutters"; you're just an imbecile.
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Well, as I said previously [slashdot.org], the problem with Social Fixer was that they *were* giving people a reason to use Facebook by making an app that *temporarily* alleviates some of the inconvenience caused by the latter's behaviour and policies without actually forcing- or even encouraging- them to change.
It didn't really fix anything. Why anyone would give any information to such a website is beyond me.
Social Fixer? (Score:2)
Don't mention what the fuck it does or anything.
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Don't mention what the fuck it does or anything.
But it's insanely great !!!
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Not a whole lot anymore. I have switched away when he added a lot of annoying crap. There are other greasemonkey scripts that do the same thing but faster now
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Don't mention what the fuck it does or anything.
Didn't you read the summary? It makes Facebook three to four times more usable. Which, given the specificity of that statement, we can assume to be scientifically measured and verified.
Retaliation (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is our legal system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly justice is denied when one party can use the threat of a lawsuit to compel another to capitulate, simply because they can't afford to defend themselves. Everyone knows it works this way. Why don't more people object?
Re:The problem is our legal system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't more people object?
For the same reason he doesn't; You learn early in life if you stand up for what you believe in, authority will make an example out of you. So you learn to fly under the radar, and cherish those precious few moments in life when you can do good without being punished.
It's youthful idealism to think people will risk their freedom, their home, their financial security, their family, to combat an injustice. Especially against a vastly better equipped adversary like a large corporation with an excessively-sized legal department and millions or billions of dollars to burn... and full access to a legal system that can take away everything you own and away from everyone you know, at the snap of a gavel.
The few people who can't give up their idealism to become "successful" (that is, capitulate to the demands of the dominant social institutions of their era) very rarely manage to achieve social change -- the Ghandis and Martin Luther Kings to the Che Guevaras, etc., in a socially acceptable fashion. The majority simply become homeless, outcast from the system, develop mental or physical illness, and die early, and generally alone. And then there's the extreme fringe that, so frustrated by an inability to accomplish anything, take themselves out of the picture in a hailstorm of bullets or fire. Terrorism can promote social change, though it's politically unpopular to say this.
But as you can see... idealism is not particularly practical, which is why few people practice it except in small doses.
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Your comment gives me a crappy black feeling deep inside my chest.
As it should. We can't claim to be living to the highest ideals of democracy as long as wealth inequity exists on the scale that it does. So long as men toil and tolerate meaningless labor, potential is being wasted. We have given a tiny fraction of the population wide freedom of choice and an affluent lifestyle, at the expense of putting the overwhelming majority into poverty. This is not sustainable, nor is it moral. But it is, nevertheless, the current state of affairs.
America has never lived up to its p
Makes Facebook more usable (Score:4, Insightful)
"It makes Facebook at least three or four times more usable"
You know what makes Facebook more usable? Not using Facebook.
Yes, I just burned Karma.
Re:Makes Facebook more usable (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I just burned Karma.
Currently modded to +5.
Censorship is bad! NSA is evil! Facebook is for sheeple! Microsoft sucks! Apple sucks! Google sucks! Go Edward Snowden! Ooooh, I'm a rebel! Dancing on the edge!
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You have a New Alert [mozilla.net].
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You know what makes Facebook more usable? Not using Facebook.
Yes, I just burned Karma.
Well, that would be deserved.
"You know what makes a stove more usable? Not cooking!"
see?
Facebook is worst kind of double crossing scum (Score:3, Insightful)
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Facebook is a company which exists solely to make money. As long as people continue using it, and putting up with their crap, then they will continue to focus solely on making money. That's neither good nor bad; it's just market forces at work. You are free to go use another service, or create your own to replace it.
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No you are not free to go and make your own if the established players can trump up legal attacks on you and force you out.
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They can't do that anymore than MySpace could. If you make a service that's better than facebook, people will flock to it. Yes, it would have to be WAY better than facebook, just because it won't be easy to convince people to actually move, but that's not at all due to facebook throwing lawyers at you.
But yes, I understand it's easier for people to just complain about a situation than it is to actually take responsibility and change it.
ill tell you how to fix it (Score:4, Interesting)
i dont have a facebook account, no twitter account. no myspace account, i refuse to sign up to some lamer social network and spill my guts about my personal life to the world, if you knew my real name and googled it you wont find any information about me, no photos of me, because i refuse to upload that information to the internet, you have to learn to use the internet without letting the internet use you
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THIS THIS THIS THIS
So much this.
My policy is exactly the same.
I used to hate how the web had outgrown the internet. I use the Internet a lot more than I use the web. I usually keep more SSH connections than open tabs, and my torrent traffic far exceeds any web use. Well, we're coming to an even sadder reality: Not only has the web eaten the Internet, a handful of websites are eating the internet.
Re:ill tell you how to fix it (Score:5, Informative)
You have slashdot account and you voice your opinions and activities in it (telling us what you do and don't have). If that's not social I don't know what is.
Comments like
and many, MANY others can be data mined and tied to you (don't think a pseudonym and alternative mail account do much in the way of privacy).
You have absolutely no grounds on telling other people what to do or giving advice about "not getting used by the internet".
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Slashdot also lets you read it, even post, without an account.
Likewise, you can view a Twitter feed or follow a link to a tweeted pic, even through you don't have an account. Ditto a Myspace band-page (or whatever people use Myspace for.) I believe G+ is the same (not sure. I have a gmail account, and thanks to their insistent cross-liking, I apparently have every other G-account.) In other words, they are all "on the web".
Facebook requires you to have a Facebook account and logged in merely to read a posti
They should sue browsers too ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The solution to this is obviously to avoid facebook/twitter and all that shit like the plague.
Regardless, how can they sue somebody for doing a fucking greasemonkey script? "This software tinkers with our webpage" seems to be their logic. Well, so does every browser on planet earth. HTML is a declarative language, you REQUIRE a user agent to interpret your webpage. Essentially, you are telling the user "well, here is this information, and we think it should be displayed sort of like this". That's it. The user can either parse the code on his own (aka just read the source), or write some code to do it, or use somebody else's code to parse it. How are the actions performed by this script any different from what any browser does?
If you publish a website, everytime it's displayed, you are acting as GUESTS in my computer, no the other way around, and you'll play by my rules.
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They can sue someone because they have money to burn on a legal budget, and for no other reason.
This is simply a case of might makes right.
Hate Mail to Facebook (Score:2)
Okay, where is the most effective place to send hate mail or equivalent to Facebook? As many of you know, FB is almost impossible to contact directly or actually speak with a live person despite them employing thousands of them. Even their telephone number only leads you to a number of different messages and voice mail boxes that appears to mostly be dead-end bit buckets.
Re:Hate Mail to Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Who advertises on FaceBook? Send it to them. And tell them why.
Caution: This may not be effective. Some companies believe that any publicity is good publicity.
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This tool affects Facebook revenue (Score:3)
by making Facebook "3-4 times more usable", it reduces the time people spend stuck with burdensome Facebook advertising and workflow to access desired material. In other words, it reduces Facebook's revenue for advertising from those links and burdensome clickthroughs. _Of course_ they object, and _of course_ they feel he's in violation of his terms of service or even more severe contract violations for interfering with what they try to sel to the advertisers and customer tracking companies, who actually pay Facebook's bills.
Why is there surprise that Facebook's legal staff and management would threaten the tool author over this?
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Ironically, Facebook's advertising is amongst the least intrusive around - for now. They also provide means to give them feedback (on the website - sadly, their mobile apps are lacking on that account, amongst many others) about which ads you prefer and which you don't want to see. Mind you, their lack of profiling data can show up at times, usually in the form of repeated generic ads being served up.
Happened to author of FB Purity too (Score:3)
I remember Kruse being very dismissive then.
Also FB Purity is a much better extension.
http://www.fbpurity.com/ [fbpurity.com]
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Indeed, that link is blocked by Facebook. The author had to rename the extension to Fluff-Busting Purity too. I haven't seen him complain about FB lawyers in a while though so let's hope they're leaving him alone.
It's been a while since this quote was apropos (Score:2)
It's been a while since this quote was apropos:
The tighter you grip, the more systems slip through your fingers.
Hmm (Score:2)
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with blackjack and hookers.
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Which law prohibits distributing such software? (Score:2)
Using it may be illegal, especially if you're facebook user and accepted their TOS, which may forbid it. But writing software and distributing it without having a contract with facebook, should not be subject to anything facebook can do?
And in source code form, it think, it was proven that its free speech.
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yeah, thats the point i am making. You do not need to agree to facebook TOS to create the program or to distribute it (okay, to develop it, you may need an facebook account (which agreed to the TOS) to test it). So then the program has no legal connection to facebook, only someone who is using it may have. So i do not get, why the distribution should be illegal.
Could someone enlighten me (Score:2)
Everything else: stop pontificating. It's a free platform, they can do what they like with it.
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SocialFixer is a browser add-on, it runs inside of your browser on your computer. You're thinking of Facebook Apps, which interact with Facebook's back-end through the Facebook Platform, either as web services, traditional software or mobile/tablet apps.
Agree with your comment about us getting what we paid for with Facebook. Still disappointing, nonetheless, if only because of the potential longer-term repercussions for Facebook's viability - they seem to be increasingly undermining the service's usefulness
They're making an example (Score:2)
I read Matt Kruse's blog post last night. Then I read the BuzzFeed story. I think Facebook is using Social Fixer as a test case. If they can successfully shut down apps like Social Fixer while mostly ignoring user complaints, they can become more like WalMart and less like...um....I can't think of a company or product that hasn't gone this route. I guess this is happens to all successful companies or brands. Apple's shine is definitely off since Jobs passed away. The biographies and commentaries about
Firesheep; lying about updates (Score:2)
The problem he had with his website is he was sending all communication, even non-critical stuff, over SSL.
Everything after the user has logged in is "critical" by this definition. Otherwise, Eve can clone the user's session cookie with tools similar to Firesheep.
I explained to him that he shouldn't have it check for updates via SSL
Without SSL, a man in the middle can lie that no updates are available and proceed to exploit the client's unpatched software. The only way I can think of to authenticate the presence or absence of updates without SSL is some ad-hoc way of signing timestamped responses from the update server.
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True.
With me, any site which blocks ad blocker gets visited exactly once.
Not through some personal policy or soap box theory, but simply because it's too big a pain in the ass to screw with my browser settings, and the internet is permanently filled with alternative options. It is extremely rare that a site will have something which is actually so unique that I can't get it somewhere else in under three seconds.
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a good reason not to visit them again.
If the site is important, there will be adblocker plugins for them. disabling their adblocker checking JS. Of course there may be a blocker-blocker, but in the end there will be more enthusiasts, which block the ads, than efford in blocking the blocker.
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why not just use an older version?
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why not just use an older version?
You can be sure I'm never updating my copy of Social Fixer again!