[HN Gopher] Facebook bans, sends C&D letter to developer of Unfo... ___________________________________________________________________ Facebook bans, sends C&D letter to developer of Unfollow Everything extension Author : mmastrac Score : 996 points Date : 2021-10-08 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.techspot.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.techspot.com) | m0zg wrote: | Reminds me of how many years ago I advised a guy who was being | sold a real shit instrument at a musical instruments store that | what he's about to buy is a waste of money and he shouldn't buy | it. I also explained why that is. Things got heated and I was | asked to leave, as well. :-) | jessaustin wrote: | This piece by the actual developer, linked within TFA, seems | better: | | https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every... | fotta wrote: | Discussed yesterday too | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788821 | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | Everyone who says they've done the same thing is probably guilty | of the cardinal sin of social media: linking to accounts you | really have no business linking to. The underlying problem is | connecting to everyone you recognize and everyone who asks. On | Facebook, I only befriend people who are actual, real-life | friends. (Currently a paltry 148.) Life changes and moves on. | People who fall off my radar get unfriended. It's pretty simple. | And, of my friends, I mute those whose posts I find annoying | and/or spammy. The people who are "friends" with thousands of | people? That makes ZERO sense for anyone, and you have only | yourself to blame for a news feed that is nutty and bizarre. I | get it. We're all still working out how to live with an | antagonistic service that we can't live without, but I have | settled into this approach, and I can promise it works much | better than gaming your number of contacts. | noasaservice wrote: | I logged into FB with chrome (normally use ff). Got the plugin, | and ran the unfollower. | | Now, my FB feed is empty. It's pretty nice and now tamed. I don't | see the usual inflammatory garbage Fb always tries to entice me | with. | neither_color wrote: | Anyone have the source so we can build it ourselves? | londons_explore wrote: | Neither the techspot nor the slate article link to the tool the | entire article is about. | | Here is a direct link to the tool: | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-... | | Why do news organisations resist linking users to the source of | news so heavily? | burkaman wrote: | That's a different extension. They can't link to Unfollow | Everything because he was forced to take it down. | jessaustin wrote: | That seems pretty bad. They used the threat of a lawsuit to | govern his use of a completely unrelated platform owned by a | different firm. I'm sure the courts just love this shit, but | that would only show how fundamentally unjust the courts are. | | Is there something wrong with the linked extension? Is its | existence contingent on FB lawyers not identifying the | developer? | barbazoo wrote: | This doesn't seem to be the same tool. The letter cites | "Unfollow everything for facebook" | cproctor wrote: | I have been thinking about the difference between human users and | computational agents. There is a widespread pattern of enforcing | that only human users may interact with a service, not | computational agents. Running a user-installed extension is one | example; additional examples are CAPTCHAs, account verification | by phone number, or services which refuse to provide API access | such as banks. | | Sometimes the reason is to protect users (e.g. banks), sometimes | to protect the service from abuse. But often the reason is to | ensure value can be extracted from users (e.g. serving ad | impressions) or the power that can be exerted over users. | Regardless, I believe this comes down to power: computer | scientists understand that acting through a computational agent | is fundamentally more powerful than acting directly as a human | user. Computational agents can operate at scale, they provide | virtualization (e.g. throwaway identities), and thereby conserve | the ultimate scarce resource: our attention. Many systems seem to | have computational power asymmetry as their fundamental | principle: as little human contact on the system's side as | possible; as much human contact on the user's side as possible. | | If there's any path ahead that avoids a totalitarian nightmare | resulting from asymptotic concentration of power, it depends on | cultivating a more widespread understanding of computational | power and developing new social norms and policies. As a CS | educator, this is one of my top priorities. | wussboy wrote: | I haven't thought about it like this before. Thank you. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _Computational agents (...) conserve the ultimate scarce | resource: our attention. Many systems seem to have | computational power asymmetry as their fundamental principle: | as little human contact on the system 's side as possible; as | much human contact on the user's side as possible._ | | That's the key thing nobody is telling people about the so- | called "attention economy": it's whole point is to make things | as _inefficient_ as possible - because money is made on the | friction. In order to make money off attention, companies need | to capture it (thereby making you spend it on something else | than what you wanted to). To make more money, they need that | attention to last longer (thereby making you spend more time, | and /or spend it more often, on things that make them money). | | Seen this way, it's clear why services hate end-user | automation: their whole business is causing the very friction | the users would like to automate away. | rektide wrote: | I have what feels like a religious belief, that denying | humanity the ability to use tools to explore, to poke & prod & | pry at the virtual materials in front of us is Anti- | Enlightenment, flies in the face of the godhood & what nature & | destiny & whatever provenance might be has built in creating | mankind. | | No material in the universe has ever been resistant to | understanding, to probing, to exploration. It's from this | exploration that humankind has emerged & whatever of greatness | of civilization that we have has been built. These mechanized | systems that we legally are not allowed to explore or work is | one of the most de-humanizing hells I can imagine. | | Humanity as we know it can not endure in a world where we are | never allowed to understand or go further. Shame on any company | or law that acts otherwise; they are monsters. | | Thank you for your very succinct well captured write up. | Humankind seems desperately in need of a defense force, needs | to be able to grasp what an existential threat forced- | consumierzation is, how radical of a historical upset this | juncture we're at is. I 100% agree that giving people insight & | visibility & faculties to work with, understand, see, & monkey | with computers is essential to keeping our core liberaties | alive, in an increasingly mechanizing & automating world. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > But often the reason is to ensure value can be extracted from | users (e.g. serving ad impressions) or the power that can be | exerted over users. | | Yeah, I assume this is the most common reason. This needs to be | fought on principle. It doesn't matter what their terms and | conditions say. It doesn't matter how much money they lose. We | should always have full control. We should be able to block | their advertising. We should be able to automate our browsers. | We should be able to turn our user agents into cyberweapons | against them. | | This is legitimate self defense against their abuse. We're | talking about a company that gets people addicted to bullshit | feeds so they can make money by showing ads. _Of course_ an | "unfollow all" button is necessary. They won't provide one | because they want us addicted to their feed. So we'll provide | one for them. | | People spend their days on social media because they're | addicted to it. If a browser extension can somehow help people | break free, it's objectively a good thing for humanity. If this | world was just, courts would rip Facebook a new one if they | dared to waste their time with this stuff. | quantified wrote: | This is why large roomfuls of people spend their days curating | a set of social media profiles. It's a jobs-creation policy for | the lower rungs of cyber-scamming and mischief, while maybe | discouraging it from getting out of control. Eg | [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/02/click- | far...], was looking for other references too. | ddingus wrote: | Thank you. That is good work. | userbinator wrote: | Knowledge is power... and they don't want you to have too much. | | Imagine if almost everyone knew that they could use things like | userscripts and stylesheets to enhance their browsing | experience. Or that DRM can often be cracked by changing a | single byte. | | This is why the war on general-purpose computing started. There | are some things they don't want you to know because they'd lose | control. | fullshark wrote: | Seems so short sighted, if some subset of users prefer another | version of FB, give it to them to make sure they don't leave. The | value of FB is the network, keep it healthy instead of doing | whatever you can to increase ad real estate. | Ajay-p wrote: | This seems like it would fall under Anti-SLAPP if taken to actual | court. | standardUser wrote: | I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I | followed a couple years ago. My feed is now a very limited | selection of gaming and media posts that I enjoy immensely. No | politics at all and almost nothing in my feed from actual | individuals that I know. I ended up enjoying Facebook again, even | if in a very different way. | | It was a tedious process and a tool like this could help a lot of | people find their own value in the platform by getting a fresh | start. Sadly, FB has no interest in that and would rather corral | us in ways as to maximize their own benefit, not ours. | chias wrote: | I quit facebook for a couple years, but recently reactivated | because the truth of the matter was that my family uses it and | I missed finding out about _so many_ things, including some | marriages and births. When I reactivated, I set out to do | exactly that: every time I look at my feed, I unfollow | everybody who is not immediate family. It has been tedious and | slow-going, but the net result has been actually pretty great. | | One thing I struggle with is the tags. You unfollow someone and | your feed won't include their posts anymore, but it _will_ | include random posts that they're tagged in, and I haven't yet | found a way to curtail this. I've used "Hide this post" | repeatedly because the option text says "see fewer posts like | this", but it hasn't really had an effect. Have you found a way | to fix this? | sanjayparekh wrote: | I did a Show HN a little while ago but you might want to | check out TogetherLetters [0]. We made it to keep going with | regular updates for groups of people (friends, family, | coworkers, etc.) via email. Never shared on the web and it's | consistent (bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly in the free | plan, weekly added in the paid plan). It might help solve | some of your FOMO pain. | | [0] https://www.togetherletters.com | 3520 wrote: | You may be able to configure F.B. Purity [0] to your liking. | I installed it last night after seeing it mentioned in | another thread here and it's cut down on all of my newsfeed | clutter. | | [0]https://www.fbpurity.com/ | ViViDboarder wrote: | I use RSS to follow media posts rather than people. | ok123456 wrote: | There's no getting away from politics if you live in somewhat | of a swing state. My feed is full of AIPAC, conservative think- | tank, and posts by the local guy who just doesn't want his | property taxes on his $3 million dollar estate to go up | $200/year. All of them paid for. All of them have no way of | "unfollowing". | | There is nothing in my follows or "likes" that would indicate | that this is anything I'd be interested in. It's just as bad as | the broadcast TV ads that they "disrupted:" indiscriminate, | obtrusive and unwanted. | rndmind wrote: | Yeah, that surmises why I left facebook back in 2014. When | all of my older aunts started joining the site, I thought to | myself "man... this is just not what it used to be, this | isn't cool anymore." | | Looking back when I left in 2014, facebook has turned into | 4chan but worse because its connected to real life | identities. It's an utter garbage fire and I laugh at the | users of it. | Marsymars wrote: | > All of them have no way of "unfollowing". | | If you unfollow all your friends/pages, your feed will be | empty and will look something like this: https://romanvesely. | com/static/b031d9ff5bb48d618d1226fb363a9... | walrus01 wrote: | It's tedious but it is possible to click on the context menu | next to an ad, then click "why am I seeing this ad", and then | click "never show ads from this source again". | | Now that I think of it, a client side extension that | automates this process, would be an interesting thing. | Generally the same idea as the extension mentioned in the top | post, which automates the client-side of unfollowing | everything, but for attempting to 'block' ads from | everything. I wonder if they've rate limited that... | thinkloop wrote: | Couldn't you go a step further and have the extension look | for "sponsored" list items and simply remove them from the | html? | 0x0000000 wrote: | It's a cat and mouse game. See an example of how Facebook | obfuscates "Sponsored" here: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/anila7/fa | ceb... | wheels wrote: | F.B. Purity does just that, but the HTML is fairly | complicated (if I remember correctly, the relevant words | are a jumble of absolutely positioned spans, with a lot | of fodder thrown in to throw off blockers). Facebook | changed their code about a month ago, and the extension | developer has been working on a fix for almost all of | that time and still hasn't rolled it out yet. | loeg wrote: | It's obfuscated to make it difficult to ad-block. | colejohnson66 wrote: | Ad blockers such as uBlock Origin try. IIRC, Facebook | obscures the HTML in a way that makes blocking without a | more advanced parser harder. | colinmhayes wrote: | My boss shared a story about his time at Facebook. He was | working on ads during 2012 election, and Facebook had a | problem. It was just a couple of weeks before the election | and the Romney campaign had money to burn. They were | winning auctions on facebook left and right. The problem | was that too many people had clicked the "never show ads | from this source again" button on the ads. Guess what, he | was tasked with turning the button off for Romney ads, now | facebook could show as many political ads as the campaign | could buy. | ddingus wrote: | Never see ads from that Source again, until you do... | heavyset_go wrote: | > _It 's tedious but it is possible to click on the context | menu next to an ad, then click "why am I seeing this ad", | and then click "never show ads from this source again"._ | | The ad-buyers funnel their ad buys through agencies and | separate accounts. | jessaustin wrote: | Their business model is based on doomscrolling. | prescriptivist wrote: | I did this too and use facebook for the marketplace and half a | dozen pretty active niche groups that don't have corresponding | communities outside of facebook. I agree that it was tedious | but since doing that I can't muster much ire toward Facebook | beyond the general ire I have for everything on the internet, | which I think has been a net negative for people's happiness | (broadly speaking). | thomascgalvin wrote: | > I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I | followed a couple years ago. | | I did much the same. I unfollowed every page, and any person I | hadn't seen in person within the past year. | | My Facebook is now a carefully curated list of people I like, | and cat pictures. It's done wonders for my mental health. | decodebytes wrote: | Is this the same as unfriending? | standardUser wrote: | No, you can mute any friend (or any page) without them | knowing, but I think the term they use is unfollow. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > I manually unfollowed almost every friend and every page I | followed a couple years ago. ... I ended up enjoying Facebook | again, even if in a very different way. | | Facebook and other social media platforms actually gives users | a lot of tools to tailor their feeds. Muting or unfollowing | people (leaving the friend connection intact) should be the go- | to operation for anyone who's always posting things you aren't | interested in. | | The other half of tailoring your feed is learning to embrace | the like button. If you see something you like, click the like | button. Sounds simple, but I know a lot of people who refuse to | click the like button because they dislike the concept of like | counts, but they forget that it's one of the primary mechanisms | for telling the algorithms what you want to see. The more you | like content, the more you'll see it. | ohashi wrote: | I feel like they also are trying to send me content that | upsets me to get me to engage. Mute one conspiracy theorist | and all the others start getting moved up in my feed. | colejohnson66 wrote: | Well, you "engaged" with the muted piece by interacting | with it (even if it's to mute it), so you must be | interested in that content, no? /s | tmp_anon_22 wrote: | Do they provide bulk tooling or automation APIs to do it | effectively? | qudat wrote: | It sounds like you turned facebook into twitter. Just use | twitter. | javajosh wrote: | Good anecdote! In fact, I don't see why FB is doing this at | all, as it seems to be against their self-interest. Heck, it | never occurred to me to unfollow everyone; it may make the | platform bearable/usable. (I went on a "brief" fb pause over a | year ago. Just never had a reason to go back, except to say hi | to friends that I don't have other channels to. But the | cost/benefit doesn't really work out. Unfollow Everything would | change that calculation for me.) | prepend wrote: | I did something similar and I probably open every few weeks or | so and it's great. | | It would be nice if I could easily switch between networks but | I have to keep the same pared down list of people and things I | follow. | | It reminds me of Google circles where you could have more fine | grained networks. | cronix wrote: | > has no interest in that and would rather corral us in ways as | to maximize their own benefit, not ours. | | I'm trying to think of a for-profit business that does _not_ do | that and coming up short. | standardUser wrote: | There's lots of ways to make a profit and some companies have | found ways to make user choice and transparency key selling | points that endear their customers and keep them coming back. | Or at least show some restraint and not engage wholesale in | dark patterns, even if only for reputational purposes. | | Look at GoDaddy, a near-universally despised company that has | managed to become a dominant player by engaging in anti-user | practices. But there's plenty of other players that profit in | that same space while maintaining really positive | relationships with their customers. | | So while I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint that for-profit | businesses always and only act like for-profit businesses, | there's still some room to maneuver. Facebook has clearly | chosen to manipulate and data mine every single user to | within inches of their lives in what amounts to a scorched | earth policy. | quotemstr wrote: | HN: "How dare Facebook ban this extension! All it does is let a | computer do automatically what a user could already do on his | own. Ridiculous!" | | Also HN: "automated facial recognition is bad" | oauea wrote: | First facebook tries to take down the entire internet with their | bgp spam, and now this? | anonu wrote: | The threat of a lawsuit when the big guy has infinite resources | is a scary proposition. Dealing with this can easily cost the | developer $10s of 1000s. Basically, corporate bullying. Its not | right... | 0x4d464d48 wrote: | Zuckerberg mentioned how much pride he and the team at Facebook | take in their products. | | I wonder how much pride they take in users saying the experience | is enhanced by orders of magntiude when they unsubscribe from | their feeds... | eddiezane wrote: | ~10 years ago when I still had Facebook for campus events I | remember installing this extension and loving it. Glad to see | it still exists. | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo... | busymom0 wrote: | That's why I never watch those hearings or read whatever empty | words these people say. Only care about actions. The hearings | have pretty much become a way for politicians to grandstand for | cameras and partisan politics while the CEOs get to lie and | make untrue claims without any consequences. | | Actions > Words. | sharklazer wrote: | True, but has this ever not been the case? Pols and Execs | alike want great (or at least not bad) sound bites. They | perform on an act on a stage. | busymom0 wrote: | I think it has accelerated in the last 5-10 years because | of Twitter and other social media. I do not think the | hearings such as the Church Committee Hearings are possible | now a days. | indianhippie wrote: | I wrote a custom script for myself about two years ago to do the | exact same thing! It's still publicly accessible in my GitHub | gists. I had no idea that others will find it useful. | | I unfollowed everyone. Then I added a selective few to follow. I | have tweaked who I follow and who I unfollow over the last two | years to give me a balanced news feed that I enjoy. Basically | twitter behavior but on FB. | annadane wrote: | One of the worst things that could have happened to Facebook is | the whole Cambridge Analytica thing; now they can always just | hide behind the veneer of "we disable scripting/API access to x | degree because something something hand waiving black magic user | safety third party developers and do you want another scandal | like we had with CA" even when they may be completely different | situations | tzm wrote: | FB also demanded a list of every single domain the developer | owns. Seems egregious. | busymom0 wrote: | That demand sort of tells me FB is "reaching" too much and may | not have much teeth. | | In the recent 2020 ruling for VAN BUREN v. UNITED STATES, | Supreme Court states that: | | > "An individual "exceeds authorized access" when he accesses a | com- puter with authorization but then obtains information | located in par- ticular areas of the computer--such as files, | folders, or databases-- that are off-limits to him." | | https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf | | To me this means that as long as OP's extension is only doing | stuff which their authorized cookie/token etc is authorized to | do, they should be fine. Also it's not the OP who's doing these | actions, it's the end user who's using the extension to achieve | authorized activity. So I don't see how OP's extension is in | the wrong. | | Only valid claim FB might have is about using trademarked data | and any data collection maybe. But the end user using the | extension to perform authorized actions (even if automated) | should be okay imo. | | Btw, link to FB's letter for those curious: | | https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a... | javajosh wrote: | I went looking for the (Chrome) Extension and found: | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-... | | It's called "Unfollow Everyone" though. Is it the same thing? The | only clue about the developer identity is the email address, | 'easwarismyname@gmail.com' and the developer is "TMP". | | I'm curious -- if FB pressures Goog to delist the extension, | would this open them up to anti-trust action? | | Also I wonder if the Everyone -> Everything was a mistake, or an | intentional misdirect to avoid a Streisand effect? | burkaman wrote: | That's a different one. Unfollow Everything has been taken | down. | zhengyi13 wrote: | > would this open them up to anti-trust action? | | IANAL. I understand anti-trust regs to work at a market level. | FB asking for an extension that interacts solely with their | wholly-owned, private platform doesn't affect the larger social | media market at all. | baoha wrote: | Someone should create a gofundme page for the guy to fight this | nonsense in court. | gdsdfe wrote: | This maybe why the no-code low-code movement, if can call it | that, maybe be very useful. If one can easily create such an app | and run it for themselves, what Facebook are gonna do ban | everyone from their platform? | unobatbayar wrote: | Interesting that people still use Facebook, even after everything | that has happened and happening. | throwawaysea wrote: | How can this C&D have any legal basis? This person is providing | an extension that is just a piece of software for a browser. The | user can choose to 'violate the terms of service' or not. But | browser automation isn't something Facebook has the standing to | block, I would think. | | Also how do they feel about Social Book Post Manager | (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book- | post-m...), an extension that lets people delete their Facebook | history selectively (like all your video views), in bulk? This | seems like a basic feature any trustworthy social media platform | or technology company in general should provide. But since | Facebook doesn't, someone made an extension that helps users out. | Unfortunately this extension is out of date and doesn't work in | 2021 because it doesn't have '2021' as an option in their date | filter, and because Facebook's continual UI changes to the | activity log seem to be designed to break this extension, since | they certainly provide no benefits to users. | | Can some hacker here who has the skills please make a tool to | help lay persons clear their posts/comments/likes/etc. one by one | for Facebook, Instagram, and the rest? | cyral wrote: | C&Ds often have questionable reasoning to back them up. Any | lawyer can write something that sounds scary to get you to | stop. Whether they are actually interpreting the law correctly | is up to the courts, and Facebook knows most people give in | because they don't want to chance it or spend money fighting | it. | jerf wrote: | One trick they can pull out in the future is to write into the | terms of service that you can't use the service to develop | extensions manipulating the service. Then they change | something, anything to make the extension not work. If the | extension gets fixed, clearly someone broke the terms of | service. | | Watch for a terms of service update from facebook. | | I had a company fire this at me back in 2000 or so. It worked, | in that it wasn't worth dealing with the issues and I stopped. | It didn't work in the sense the company is long gone anyhow.... | outside1234 wrote: | Regulate Facebook now | Ansil849 wrote: | Facebook engineers lurking on HN reading this: you are complicit | in things like this by developing the technical infrastructure | that makes it all possible. If your motivation is money, you can | absolutely find that employment elsewhere. | AdrianB1 wrote: | Shaming does not work, otherwise FB would have no engineers at | all; the fact that FB still exists is a proof it does not work, | so what is the point? | int_19h wrote: | It might also work in a sense that FB has less qualified | engineers than they would otherwise have. Which would cause | their quality of service to be less, hopefully. Which would | provide some advantage to their competitors, and/or annoy | some of their users into leaving. | Ansil849 wrote: | I genuinely feel like shaming and social ostracization should | be way more commonly used. If suddenly you stop hanging out | with friends who work at outfits like Facebook, if they stop | being invited to dinners, are socially shunned, then I | genuinely believe it will have a net positive effect. | | The problem is that bad behavior is normalized and | rationalized in our society, 'everyone needs a paycheck.' | This legitimizes working for companies like this. | notjesse wrote: | I believe that in a society that has free speech, there is | a duty of the member's of society to exercise their free | speech and disassociate from those acting unethically. | Particularly for unethical actions that cannot be | prosecuted due to the rights afforded to all. | | Now while there are a lot of things that facebook probably | can be prosecuted for, there are many things that they | probably can't be. So I think we have an obligation to | shame and shun those who act in reprehensible ways. And | obviously in proportion to how culpable/complicit those | individuals are. | AdrianB1 wrote: | My point exactly (your last 2 sentences). | spiffytech wrote: | There's a book, _So You 've Been Publicly Shamed_, that | investigates a few cases of internet lynch mobs, and the | history of shaming as punishment. | | The book's conclusion (as I recall) is that shaming is far | more cruel than we commonly think, and shaming used to be | more common until people realized its cruelty. | pnt12 wrote: | And they'll get new friends. | | I doubt that shaming individuals works. But having | thoughtful discourse about it is probably much better - let | people hear the arguments and make up their mind. | | With this being said, I do find it a waste that some of the | best minds in the world are working towards ads and | engagement businesses. Having a tool for global | communication is wonderful, but their unethical behaviors | are unexcusable. | speedybird wrote: | > _I doubt that shaming individuals works. But having | thoughtful discourse about it is probably much better - | let people hear the arguments and make up their mind._ | | Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Have a nice long | thoughtful conversation with your friend about why you | disapprove of what they're doing with their life, offer | to help them find a new job if you're so inclined, but | cut contact if/when they refuse to reform. Tell others | what you've done and encourage them to do the same. | | Shaming almost certainly does work, otherwise humans | wouldn't be so inclined to try it all the time. I'm quite | certain that shaming is a tactic baked into our social | instincts by evolution. | int_19h wrote: | It does work, but it has to be truly pervasive. If it's 1 | out of 9 personal interactions that the person might | have, the very proportion becomes a self-justification: | "if it really were that bad, why don't all _those_ people | bring it up? " | | But e.g. you don't see many people openly self- | identifying as racists anymore. | speedybird wrote: | > _The problem is that bad behavior is normalized and | rationalized in our society, 'everyone needs a paycheck.'_ | | The movie _Thank you for Smoking_ , about a tobacco | lobbyist, calls this the _" Yuppie Nuremberg Defense."_ All | manner of immorality, even shilling for a tobacco firm, | will be excused away with _hey man, I 've got a mortgage to | pay._ | urda wrote: | Every employee and Engineer that is currently at Facebook is | involved in this mess. Every one of them are complicit. To | the FB Engineers reading this: it is a saddening you have | chosen to use your talents to build dangerous technologies | instead of technologies that improve our lives. | toomuchtodo wrote: | The developer should let the FTC know. | heavyset_go wrote: | I've made a post here[1] about getting in touch with the FTC, | the US Dept. of Justice, and states' Attorneys General offices | when it comes to companies like Facebook stifling innovation | and competition. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27924908 | 8note wrote: | If you are banned by Facebook, does that mean they will stop | tracking you? | lilSebastian wrote: | Delete all accounts, block all social media endpoints at DNS | level. Nuke the site from orbit... | grumblestumble wrote: | This is the kind of malware I can get behind. | marstall wrote: | I unfollowed everything manually a couple years ago - on Facebook | and twitter. still use both tools, but I feel it's much more | under my control. Haven't looked back or missed anything. | | What possible basis would Facebook have for preventing people | from managing their own account in this way, improving their | lives? Insanity. | randall wrote: | Fwiw I have adhd and (by necessity of my job) spend a lot of time | on fb. Newsfeed eradicator has been very useful for me. | hwers wrote: | Great ad for the extension, I wanna try this now. | StatsAreFun wrote: | Is there a chance the EFF might defend this solo developer? | asdff wrote: | Even EFF can't take down goliath | wrboyce wrote: | I received a C&D from Facebook many moons ago. I was a young man | and absolutely shit myself, to the extent that I don't even have | the source code anymore. All I did was publish some CSS to make | Facebook look a little less shitty. | ben_w wrote: | Eesh. | | Ironically enough I was thinking recently about how, content | aside, Facebook's UI is as bad now as it was in 2010. | lightsurfer wrote: | This company is worst than Exxon by at least an order of | magnitude. Exploiting humanity and consciousness. What a level of | audacity. Eventually MZ will be removed to rebrand. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | If Zuckerberg had not ignored a C&D letter (from the Winkelvosses | lawyer), there would be no Facebook. | | Once Mr Barclay is no longer using Facebook, then whatever | "browsewrap" agreement was created between Barclay and Facebook | is arguably no longer in effect. Whatever provisions survive do | not include a prohibition on using automation. | | The Terms state | | "If you delete or we disable your account, these Terms shall | terminate as an agreement between you and us, but the following | provisions will remain in place: 3, 4.2-4.5." | | The prohibition on automation is provision #2. | | Even if you believe that Facebook can bind non-users to these | Terms, then you also have to consider that most courts have | refused to enforce browserwrap agreements to begin with. For | websites trying to enforce browserwrap, there is a recurring | problem with the question of consent. Generally, the website has | the burden of proving the user read and understood the Terms. | | But let's assume Facebook can get past this hurdle. Let's | consider the "automated means" provision. Is it enforceable. It | is unlikely a provision like this one in a browsewrap agreement | has ever been reviewed by any court. Facebook's provision is | extremely vague and ambiguous. What is "automated means". It is | the essence of a computer. If browser extensions are banned, why | not state this explicitly. For example, Facebook-approved web | browsers without any extensions all use automation to request | image and JavaScript resources. Users do not manually request | those resources. | | The clause itself states | | "You may not access or collect data from our Products using | automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to | access data that you do not have permission to access." | | But the UnfollowEverything extension does not access nor collect | data. | | It is arguable that (a) for any ordinary user, using | UnfollowEbverything does not violate the Facebook Terms and (b) | that it is only the usage of this extension by researchers who | were otherwise gathering behavioural data that triggered the C&D | letter. We already know that Facebook fears researchers studying | the effects of its (scripted, automated) website on users.^1 | | 1. | https://web.archive.org/web/20210806191005/https://www.wired... | | In the Facebook Terms, Facebook itself admits to using | automation: | | "And we develop automated systems to improve our ability to | detect and remove abusive and dangerous activity that may harm | our community and the integrity of our Products." | | It is 2021, and courts in Northern California are well-aware that | automation is useful, _for everyone_. They would also understand | that unfollowing friends results in no loss to user privacy. Nor | does it interfere with any ads. | | But let's assume Facebook can overcome these hurdles and a court | in Northern California agrees with the ridiculous arguments | Facebook's lawyers would have to make. Imagine (a) Facebook | manages to affirmatively prove Barclay consented to the | browsewrap that no one ever reads and (b) he understood that | using UnfollowEveryone was a violation of the Terms. What would | Facebook claim as damage/loss for Barclay's alleged "breach". | | As an aside, this bit in the Terms is amusing | | "We do not control or direct what people and others do or say, | and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether | online or offline) or any content that they share (including | offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful and other | objectionable content)." | | It is easily arguable that Facebook does seek to control/direct | what users do as it forced Barclay to spend hours in order to | unfollow each of his friends by pointing and clicking. | | Facebook attempts to control and direct what users see and do | when using the website, rather than allowing users to make their | own choices. That seems beyond question. | voodootrucker wrote: | I just did this manually in protest. | SMAAART wrote: | Long time ago I took the time to unfollow 99% of my "Facebook | Friends" and get out of groups and pages that were of no interest | to me. | | So now I follow a handful of friends and a few pages of interest | to me, it's quite interesting. | christoz wrote: | I'd tried to unfollow as many as I could by tapping, at some | point after 50 taps Facebook blocked me form further tapping, I | don't even remember how I got to the list of all individuals - | groups - pages, I am using mobile web version. Clearly Facebook | won't make your life easy in this | tonetheman wrote: | Glad Facebook is really working to make their platform more safe. | I mean this is clearly worse than the treason, sedition, antivax | and genocide normally seen on their platform. | justapassenger wrote: | I'd assume that ~trillion dollar company can walk and chew gum | at the same time. | | Especially, if you look at Facebook history, siphoning data | from there (that this extension was also doing) brought them | one of the biggest scandals (cambridge analytica). | VieEnCode wrote: | In a similar vein, I've been using News Feed Eradicator: | | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... | threatofrain wrote: | Big prior discussion from yesterday. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28788821 | nvr219 wrote: | Here is where you can download the extension | | Here's the extension zip files that were archived from the Chrome | Store. You can get all versions back to 1.0. | | https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid... | https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid... | https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenklid... | | They are CRX (Chrome Extension) files, some manual steps needed | to unpack, or change .zip to .crx and open with Chrome. | https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo... | | Install Instructions: | https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect | | Source: | https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo... | SilasX wrote: | Chrome doesn't require extensions to be signed? Or hasn't | revoked the signature? | gnicholas wrote: | I could be wrong, but I think you can side-load any extension | locally. About 3 years ago Google made it impossible to have | users click a link on your website and install that way | (which some people referred to as side-loading), but I think | you can still enable dev mode and side-load a downloaded | file. | spiderfarmer wrote: | I didn't know about this extension but now I do. Thanks FB | lawyers. | leeoniya wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect | riffic wrote: | I didn't know what Barbra Streisand's Malibu residence | looked like, but now I do. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | I recommend avoiding all browser extensions unless they come | from well-known developers (eg 1Password) and they're | downloaded and installed through official channels. | | Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing | activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this | extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home | to the author's server. That might be what the install | instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine | the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author | defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the | plug-in was working, except for study participants who | apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in. | Either way, I wouldn't rush to install a plug-in that was | caught sending _any_ of my social media data to a 3rd-party | server. | | I certainly would not install a browser extension from an | unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless | the claimed origin of the code. | eigengrau5150 wrote: | Isn't this basically a prelude to a SLAPP lawsuit? | stackedinserter wrote: | Understandable, because (anecdotally) it turned out to be the | most effective way to get rid of Facebook. Over a couple of weeks | I unfollowed all the friends and communities, and ended up with | clean page that asked me to add more friends. Since the place | turned to barren land with no life, I simply stopped coming | there. | eyeareque wrote: | If they ban you does this mean that they stop tracking you and | saving data about you? Sounds like a win. | barbazoo wrote: | The timing of this is interesting. The letter is dated July 1, is | this a repost or has this been reported earlier already? | MR4D wrote: | Is there a GoFundMe page we can donate to for legal defense Yet? | mdoms wrote: | It seems like this guy straight forwardly violated their terms of | service. | wesleywt wrote: | I guess C&D and ban is another way to treat your Facebook | addiction. | smashah wrote: | How come Teller API is (apparently) 100% legal and has massive VC | backing but there is possibility of legal grounds for this | blatant bullying? | | Just shows that tech is more scared of Facebook than massive | established institutions. | warkdarrior wrote: | For banking specifically, you have the Open Banking initiatives | around world, including the PSD2 directive in Europe, which | requires that APIs for banking should exist and be offered to | all. | | There is no regulation or other government directives requiring | social media companies to provide APIs open to all. | smashah wrote: | I know about PDS2 which is why I specifically bring up the | example of Teller. They literally use mobile clients and | reverse engineer banking protocols manually then expose them | as APIs to their customers. | | https://www.producthunt.com/posts/teller-api?comment=483805 | | I support teller in this endeavour. | mlboss wrote: | It would be nice to have the extension source code on github.com. | We can all create and install the extension locally. | goldenManatee wrote: | Oh look, Facebook trying to make themselves more popular with us | this week. | sedatk wrote: | Here's the first-hand account of the extension's author: | https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every... | bsd44 wrote: | Why is this worthy of media attention? As much as I despise | social networking websites, I don't see anything wrong here. | annoyingnoob wrote: | What makes this browser plugin illegal software that is worthy | of a ban? | | What else can Facebook demand that its users use or don't use? | krapp wrote: | > What makes this browser plugin illegal software that is | worthy of a ban? | | It isn't illegal. Facebook isn't a legislative body or a | court, it can neither create nor adjudicate law. | | And you can read Facebook's case via their cease and desist | letter linked in the article. | | > What else can Facebook demand that its users use or don't | use? | | Outside of their platform? Nothing, obviously. They're not | going to break into your house and burn your books or | anything. | annoyingnoob wrote: | Exactly, Facebook cannot dictate what software one can make | or run. They can claim a terms of service issue and ban you | from their service but they cannot stop you from developing | software. | | If it were me, I'd be tempted to martyr myself just to show | how fucked up Facebook really is. What is the worst that | can happen? The guy goes bankrupt. Life goes on. | krapp wrote: | >They can claim a terms of service issue and ban you from | their service but they cannot stop you from developing | software. | | They can stop you from developing software for their | platform or using their API or brand, which is what | Facebook has done. They haven't demanded the developer of | Unfollow Everything cease developing software altogether, | only that they cease developing software for Facebook. | | Also, Facebook is nowhere near unique in having similar | terms for developers. | annoyingnoob wrote: | The issue was 'automating user interactions'. The demand | is 'I agree to never again create tools that interact | with Facebook or its other services'. | | That demand is wrong. What if the developer makes an | extension for some other web site and then FB buys that | site? They'll go the legal route again. I don't think | that is right. | NackerHughes wrote: | So... where can I download the extension? | mort1merp0 wrote: | See nvr219 comment above | NackerHughes wrote: | Thanks! | | For any others as unobservant as me: https://www.reddit.com/r | /programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollo... | quickthrower2 wrote: | Ha ha. Streisand Effect! | TravisHusky wrote: | The cease and desist seemingly has no real legal basis, but I | mean you can send a cease and desist for anything you want. My | mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors didn't | like it so they had a lawyer send a cease and desist with no | legal basis. My mom ignored the C&D and is enjoying her new shed. | | The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag out | lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives because | they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone else. It's | complete abuse of process, and really should be dealt with more | harshly than it is. | ransom1538 wrote: | "The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag | out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives | because they can afford to hold" | | Meh. Just show up. Don't hire lawyers. File motions all day to | see more evidence. | javajosh wrote: | Tangentially, I wonder why both the words "cease" and "desist" | are necessary. Aren't they synonyms? Perhaps it's just for | emphasis? | morsch wrote: | It has an interesting history. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet | fogof wrote: | They are slightly different in meaning. Cease = Stop doing | it. Desist = Don't do it again. | dlivingston wrote: | " A legal doublet is a standardized phrase used frequently in | English legal language consisting of two or more words that | are near synonyms, usually connected by "and", and in | standard orders, such as "cease and desist". | | The doubling--and sometimes even tripling--often originates | in the transition from use of one language for legal purposes | to another... To ensure understanding, the terms from both | languages were used. This reflected the interactions between | Germanic and Roman law following the decline of the Roman | Empire." | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet | hackcasual wrote: | Driving without due care and attention | lelandfe wrote: | Thought this was also pretty great: | | > _Doublets may also have arisen or persisted because the | solicitors and clerks who drew up conveyances and other | documents were paid by the word_ | svachalek wrote: | That seems likely and probable. | rzzzt wrote: | Are solicitors and clerks also doublets? | djrogers wrote: | No, but conveyances and other documents was. ;-) | marcus0x62 wrote: | No, but if a lawyer can find a way to bill you for the | services of both, they will. | abruzzi wrote: | This is interesting. I've always worked off the assumption | that while english legal documents look like english they | are actuallysomething a little special. These words get | tested in court cases and opinions are written about them | and what them mean. So, in this case my assumption | (possibly incorrect) had been that each of those words had | specific legal meaning, and perhaps a venn diagram would | show 95% overlap of the sets, by using both words they get | 100% overlap. | | (Its also why lay people shouldn't write their own | contracts, because a lawyer with contract experience won't | use words that haven't been tested.) | thinkloop wrote: | Now we're only missing what the two languages are for | "cease and desist" | zinekeller wrote: | Cease - Latin to _cessare_ meaning "to yield", then Old | French. | | Desist - Latin to _stare_ (sta-re, not homonym of stair) | meaning "to stand", then (still) Latin to "sistere" | meaning "to stop" plus prefix de, which in this context | is "an order (from top, aka court) to down (aka to you)", | then Old French. | | Huh. | | So this is basically court-enforced stop and yielding to | the other party. | [deleted] | celticninja wrote: | Cease is more like stop doing something you were already | doing, where is desist is More like don't even start it. | | So perhaps they should be cease or desist. | James-Livesey wrote: | Perhaps, but then one _could_ say, "I'll pick 'cease', | please! I'll get back to doing it again later" | wavefunction wrote: | Or "stop doing it and don't restart" | citizenkeen wrote: | My law professor told me it was a temporal phrasing: stop | doing it (cease), and don't do it in the future (desist). | Otherwise I could stop for one day, or in the age of the | internet one minute, and then begin again: I would have | ceased and resumed. | [deleted] | panta wrote: | > The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag | out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives | because they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone | else. | | There is no certainty in the legal system, they could very well | win even if they are in the wrong. More so when they can employ | an army of lawyers and put economic pressure on the system. | XCSme wrote: | > My mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors | didn't like it | | Note that depending on the country, you might still need | authorization to build any structure on your own property. | ethbr0 wrote: | I recently moved into a neighborhood with a stricter HOA, | after avoiding them for most of my life. | | My plan is to wait until February 2022, and build the ugliest | golden Trump mailbox I can slap together. Then, when they ask | me to take it down, request an appeal, and film the ensuing | meeting. Then, send said video to Fox News et al. Then, run | for HOA on a platform of abolishing the HOA. | | ... I really don't like neighbors telling me what I can and | can't do. | vegetablepotpie wrote: | I can't help but point out the irony of this post that | building an idol of a politician is considered an act of | defiance against authority. | Nasrudith wrote: | Well it is being used as a tool in the literal sense. Who | it applies to of all parties mentioned above in the | perojative sense will be left as an exercise to the | reader (as it is a matter of opinion). | [deleted] | TravisHusky wrote: | Yeah; she had the permits. It was kinda funny from the | outside because people kept complaining to the county and the | county kept pushing back saying it was approved. That shed | must've been inspected 3 separate times because of a couple | of neighbors who didn't even live on the same street but I | guess were just bored. | | The neighborhood has an HOA but the HOA actually had no | actual rules because they were not properly registering with | the county when they made bylaws (where my mom is all HOA | rules have to be submitted to the state, otherwise they are | not enforceable). Gotta love HOAs. | smileysteve wrote: | A much more related example of ignoring of ignoring a Cease and | Desist is the one that Zuckerberg received from the Winklevoss | twins as he and Eduardo were marketing The Facebook -- only it | had some legal basis. | blocked_again wrote: | > My mom was building a shed on her property, some neighbors | didn't like it so they had a lawyer send a cease and desist | with no legal basis | | > The only problem is Facebook is huge and is willing to drag | out lawsuits they won't win just to destroy people's lives | because they can afford to hold out much longer than everyone | else. | | Convincing people that America is the land of the free, is the | biggest trick the devil has ever pulled. | colechristensen wrote: | Nobody has ever been "free" but damn are we a whole lot more | free than most humans in the history of civilization. | int_19h wrote: | Americans are so free that they have to pay $2,350 for the | privilege of becoming non-Americans. | JadeNB wrote: | Even more ominous than a cease & desist is a cease & decease, | which is how the article (presumably inadvertently) describes | it. | ineedasername wrote: | _Stop it & die!_ | | It would be an appropriate way for Facebook to phrase their | C&D considering the forms that cyber-bullying take on the | platform | walrus01 wrote: | Give the source code to the extension to a developer located in | an impossible legal jurisdiction like Afghanistan. Let them | publish it. Good luck to Facebook hiring a lawyer and trying | its luck in the Taliban's court system. Even before the | collapse of the previous government in Kabul it would have been | a near impossibility. | JulianMorrison wrote: | Do you want a Facebook own-brand drone army? Because this is | how you get one. | jessaustin wrote: | So the MVP drones will do what twenty years of trillion- | dollar brutality couldn't do? Wow you seem to have an even | lower opinion of the effectiveness of USA military than I | do... I suspect Taliban would laugh at this idea. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Free clay pigeon shooting? Sure! | notatoad wrote: | Meh, given current Facebook PR trends I give it about a | week before we learn they've already got one. | [deleted] | aaroninsf wrote: | _Delivery drone can deliver quite a range of things._ | JulianMorrison wrote: | "Our new fleet of stand-off delivery drones and | inertially guided gliding packages can accurately drop | your purchase onto your front lawn from 31,000 feet" | int_19h wrote: | https://www.maverickdrone.com/products/skynet-drone- | defense-... | manquer wrote: | Even better fund organizations like EFF to take cases like | this and make sure there is legal precedent that gives a | strong footing to all developers. | | Hiding in other countries is a not sustainable solution, they | are going to force extension stores to remove it etc payment | gateway not to process you, pushing you as a dev to the | fringes and silence others | | The chilling effect is the real aim, they are effectively | signaling that they can come after anyone who pisses their | business model of. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | Oh yeah, find someone that wants to be a target of a major US | corporation in Afghanistan/third world. | | You forget we have Guantanamo where people were "renditioned" | with little or no legal basis either in the US or otherwise, | and I believe there are people in Guantanamo that have no | publicly provided evidence to be there? | | All it takes is waiting for some politically opportune reason | to enact a little dragnet and getting someone on some CIA | list with little evidence, and BAM, You're in something like | Guantanamo or even worse (client torture security services, | assassination, etc). | | Yes we withdrew forces, but we've been there a decade and | likely have a large network of CIA contacts that would kill | or injure a random Afghan civilian. | | The US Government is a very very very very dangerous entity | to anyone in the third world should you get on their radar. | They are dangerous to US citizens with the Padilla case, | antiterrorism law overreach, no fly lists, and a variety of | other harassment techniques. | | The state department and CIA are power extensions of the | corporate elite in the United States. We have toppled regimes | for oil... minerals... even bananas. | | Russia would be far better. | rpmisms wrote: | I have family there, let me know if I can help. | dashtiarian wrote: | I'm a developer in Iran willing to do this, email in the | profile, just in case the owner wants to and reads this. | quickthrower2 wrote: | This is so awesome! Is this the start of a new thing / | movement I wonder? | | Such a plugin is beholden to the extension "marketplaces" | so it would be good to include instructions on how to self | install the extension if chrome bans it. | davchana wrote: | Isn't it that one can just unpack any extension? Unless it | is doing something on server side too; all client side code | is in extension itself? | KorematsuFredt wrote: | Happy to donate for the cause as well. Please do this. | 650REDHAIR wrote: | I'll donate to this project. | inglor_cz wrote: | Donating money to a project in Iran may be legally hairy | for Americans. Check the situation before doing so. I am | all for helping worthwhile projects financially, but | international politics is a mess. | [deleted] | roozbeh18 wrote: | ah, had a discussion with a friend about sending money | with Iran in the comments. he said his poker buddies used | to donate 10% of the winning for someone to help orphans | in iran. in the paypal transfer he wrote "for the good | work you do in iran". his account got banned and money | never got returned. later his account was reinstated but | money never was returned. | walrus01 wrote: | I've seen a case where somebody had their zelle or venmo | account permanently removed for sending a small transfer | to their friend with the description "for the cubans" - | they were paying their buddy back for an order of | sandwiches. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_sandwich | FrameworkFred wrote: | Paypal actually did this to me for hiring an indonesian | kid to sketch a t-shirt design for $50. | | Before I clicked send, I verified that Paypal said they'd | send the money without charging a fee. He received it, | minus the fee they claimed they wouldn't charge. So, I | tried to send another $10 to cover the difference and I | got torpedoed into some black hole of no return. | | Now I can't use paypal to buy anything without submitting | a bunch of documentation, which is super weird | considering I _don 't_ have to send anything like that to | use their competitors' services, so it's never going to | happen. | | I assume it's some sort of regulation they're attempting | to follow, but haven't thought through, but who knows? | It's definitely costing them money, but maybe not enough | to justify improving the UX. | djrogers wrote: | That sounds more like urban legend than a true story. | Neither Zelle nor Venmo (and it's a strike that you can't | specify) have an obligation to cancel accounts based on | comments. | | If they did, half of the accounts in Venmo would be | banned already - have you read the comments in the public | feed? People know that feed exists, and use it to troll | their friends all the time. | short12 wrote: | I've never seen a bank or credit card company put in any | effort regarding cuban cigars. A few of the best shops | are clearly illegal just because of the name alone. But | they all accept visa and Mastercard | | You don't even need to bother with h dark web and | cryptocurrency. It will just flat out show up on your | bill without issue. | mthoms wrote: | I think they might have interpreted it as "please give | this money _to_ the Cubans ". Which, AFAIK is (was?) | illegal in the US. | evolve2k wrote: | And then we wonder if crypto has a real market. | Bluestein wrote: | Seconded. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Better yet: anonymous git hosting as a tor hidden service. | Now there's nothing they can do but rage at all the | "unauthorized" extensions giving users control over their | little platform. | Eikon wrote: | And then, where to publish it? On a website based in an | American jurisdiction? On some browser extension store? | | Great idea. | walrus01 wrote: | Individual civilian afghans are not embargoed by US law - | it's not Iran. The Taliban are, of course, embargoed and | listed in various things like the OFAC list. | | Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Afghans have gmail | accounts, many companies use google workspace or office365, | etc. For example. | notatoad wrote: | I think the point was that having an Afghani publish the | source wouldn't really accomplish anything because | Facebook could just go after whatever service was used to | publish it, instead of the person who published it. | | An Afghani can access GitHub or the chrome extension | store, but those are both run by American companies who | will obey Facebook's takedown requests. | 14 wrote: | What about torrenting? Why not offer is somewhere a bit | more decentralized? | throwawayboise wrote: | Now you're into territory where yes, the extension is | available, but nobody can find it and only the very | technically astute will be able and willing to install | it. FB achieves 99.9% of their goal. | walrus01 wrote: | At least that shifts the dangerous legal-financial burden | onto google's lawyers, if they want to fight a takedown | request to remove an extension from the extension store. | colejohnson66 wrote: | I doubt Google would fight it and would just take it down | no questions asked | jessaustin wrote: | A takedown request is only binding on a well-capitalized | firm like Google if it is based on some legal rationale | that could survive a test in court. It isn't clear that | the request under discussion has such a rationale. At the | very least Google would take this to some court and force | a judge to say something about it. | | Once a firm grows accustomed to following orders from | their competitors, bad times lie ahead. | int_19h wrote: | But why would Google bother to waste time and resources | figuring out if it's actually valid or not? They don't | seem to do that on YouTube. | mrtksn wrote: | That's actually... interesting. It's a well established | tactic to go to another country and publish your stuff from | there if you like to keep annoying a government or | institution. You know, Snowden is in Russia, some Russian | journalists are in EU countries. It happens all the time | since ever. | | What if someone creates a Telegram group where developers | from hostile countries(like US&Iran, UK&Russia, Japan&China) | pass each other projects that are not obviously illegal but | not feasible due to risk of persecution? | | In this case, If FB thinks it has a case can try its luck by | sending Google a scary looking letter then proceed to compel | Google to remove the extension by court order. | lacker wrote: | _The cease and desist seemingly has no real legal basis_ | | It seems pretty straightforward to me - the Facebook terms of | service say that you won't make scripts that interact with the | Facebook site except through approved APIs, the cease and | desist is telling him that he is breaking this agreement. | There's no lawsuit involved, Facebook will just enforce this | themselves by banning the account and making the script not | work. It's not a big deal, this probably happens hundreds of | times a day for various bots that people make that manipulate | Facebook in different ways. | asdff wrote: | I feel like websites shouldn't be able to just ban scripting. | What if I have a disability and a custom script is the only | way I can interface with fb? | dghlsakjg wrote: | If Facebook makes a change to intentionally make | accessibility harder, then you can sue Facebook under the | ADA if you are an American. | | There is a whole category of law where they just go around | suing businesses for not being accessible enough. Quite a | lot of money in it. | quantified wrote: | Browsers only automate user interactions with the | underlying HTTP APIs. What defines "scripting" here? | nickff wrote: | If you have a disability, and you can't use the site, | you're probably entitled to make an ADA claim against them. | KerryJones wrote: | I agree with you that they shouldn't be able to ban | scripting... but they're only going to use it for things | that they believe hurt the website. If there's a law that | says "don't do it" they can sue the people they don't like | and ignore the ones they don't care about. | feanaro wrote: | Agreed, but people seem to often miss this point. There is | nothing special in _browsers_ that allows them to do | something that "scripts" cannot do. They are both HTTP | user agents. | asdff wrote: | I hate the whole song and dance too with how you have to | fake your user agent and add human like delay to | interactions whenever you make a useful script on the web | these days. You aren't stopping malicious behavior since | they know how to penetrate these systems trivially, you | just make it harder for the average user who has to learn | as they go how to rope around these issues and hope they | don't get IP banned along the way for making a website | slightly more useful to them. | lacker wrote: | Disabilities deserve special protection, but in practice | companies seem pretty good about working with usability | extensions. AFAICT almost all cases where companies don't | support disabled users enough, it's unintentional. There's | a little bit of extra work like providing alt image tags | that companies neglect, or they don't think to test on | color-blind users, that sort of thing, rather than banning | usability extensions for violating the TOS. | ethbr0 wrote: | Why do we need to appeal to the differently abled? | | If I own a general purpose computer, and I purchase a | connection to the internet, I'm entitled to interact | however I desire* with an internet service, or the | information it chooses to send me. | | It is not entitled to have the information it sent to me | displayed in a certain way, and it certainly isn't entitled | to bitch when I _choose_ to interact with it in a way | different than its preferences. | | If that's what it wants, then it's welcome to sell a sealed | appliance that only interacts in allowed ways. And we'll | see what choices people make. | | * With the exception of actions that impact others, e.g. | DoS, authentication bypass, malicious hacking | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _Why do we need to appeal to the differently abled?_ | | Because it's the only avenue we have. Providing | accessibility tends to require creating holes in | otherwise user-hostile UX, and big companies can't give | up on accessibility due to PR reasons - which makes it a | perfect beachhead for people who just want a sane and | respectful computing experience. | ben_w wrote: | > With the exception of actions that impact others, e.g. | DoS, authentication bypass, malicious hacking | | It is very easy to DoS by accident with software; and | while I'm in favour of totally breaking the economic | model of FB in this way, doing so _definitely_ has an | impact on others (specifically the Other which is FB | itself). | ethbr0 wrote: | True, but the only way to prevent _that_ is by stripping | users of autonomy. | | And in a choice between user autonomy and service | stability, I can't side with the latter over the former. | NoSorryCannot wrote: | If everyone is entitled to interact with the internet on | their own terms, then why would that not include a | service being entitled to act in a way that's adversarial | to your desires? | cybernautique wrote: | In my opinion, it does! However, on my machines, I am the | arbiter. Facebook cedes control to me the moment any of | their content hits my browser. | throwawayboise wrote: | Except that when you signed up for a FB account you | agreed to access the site on their terms, not yours. | | And let's be honest, and I'm the last person to defend | FB, but they are not likely to be going to be going after | a lone user who has automated something for his own | convenience with Selenium or whatever... | | Once I decided I wanted to delete a lot of old email from | a webmail account. There was no "select all" function so | I wrote a one-liner in the javascript console of the | browser. When that worked, I automated clicking the | "delete" button, and then added a loop to do it over and | over. This probably violated a TOS clause somehow, but | nothing ever came of it. | cybernautique wrote: | I have not signed up for a FB account and yet they still | try to deliver payloads to my browser, in the form of | tracking buttons embedded in non-FB sites. They've | likewise ceded all control of those buttons, and what I | do with them, to me! | throwawayboise wrote: | Agree with you there; my comment was in the context of a | FB user interacting with the FB functionality. | int_19h wrote: | Given FB's near-monopoly position, any such "agreements" | are effectively forced. | AlecSchueler wrote: | Because we share society with people who have various | interaction difficulties and the larger community has for | a long time accepted that we shouldn't deny access to | daily goods and services for those people. It's like a | mandate that a shop needs disabled access, it's totsllu | reasonable | amelius wrote: | Except FB will just ignore your argument and detect and | ban your automated service. | nickff wrote: | Is this a moral/ethical, polemical, or a legal argument? | | Why are you entitled to all these things? What gives you | the right to demand that others act in accordance with | your desires? | drdeca wrote: | I'm pretty sure it isn't meant as a legal argument. | | What entitles me to control of my computer? "My computer | is mine, and you cannot have it.". | | That being said, I'm somewhat more open to the validity | of restrictions for how to interact with the server. | | If someone e.g. is running an MMO with e.g. in-game items | with real money value, and someone else is like, | distributing cheats to get these items immediately, it | seems fair that the MMO owner should be able to make them | stop (though, like, ideally their game would just be | secure?) | | But if users are permitted to interact with the server in | a particular way, I see no reason to allow requiring that | users actually touch their mouse and keyboard while doing | things they are allowed to do using their mouse and | keyboard. | Talanes wrote: | https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow- | every... | | The actual timeline of events doesn't match what you think | would happen. They banned him and then used the threat of a | lawsuit to get him to take down the extension/code. | salawat wrote: | They can't ban the account. The account would be the | downloader's and presumably, would auto-generate unfollow | actions just as a user in a browser would manually. If they | break the script, they'll probably break the unfollow UI for | legitimate human user's and create evidence that they employ | dark UI practices as a core part of their business strategy, | which would be a P.R. nightmare. | | Messing with this is a lose-lose for Facebook. | lacker wrote: | _If they break the script, they 'll probably break the | unfollow UI for legitimate human users_ | | _Messing with this is a lose-lose for Facebook._ | | Nah, this sort of thing really happens all the time. Think | hundreds of scripts like this automatically disabled each | day. This one just flukily got some press attention. Large | tech companies will have teams entirely dedicated to | preventing scripts from doing things while keeping the site | running as normal for regular users. | newhotelowner wrote: | If they could ban the account, they would have done it. | | Extension is more like a automated tool. Don't need any | permission from Facebook. User can install the tool, and | click on a button to unfollow your friends. | | Facebook could write TOS for his users not to run a script on | their website. | | I write scripts (userscripts) all the time. I have a script | for Gmail that I use it all the time. Gmail doesn't know | that. | UglyToad wrote: | Yeah this is the problem more generally with the legal system | both in my home country of England but especially in the US. As | one hn user put it so perfectly recently "the process is the | punishment". | | I think a lot of people in the software bubble don't realize | what a huge sum even $100 is for the average person, the law | only affords power and protection to the rich and already | powerful. | akudha wrote: | _demanded that I agree to never again create tools that | interact with Facebook or its other services._ | | How is this legal in any shape or form? It is a browser | extension, running on users' browsers, installed intentionally | by his users. This is insane. The level of arrogance and | entitlement here is mind blowing. | quotemstr wrote: | > How is this legal in any shape or form? It is a browser | extension, running on users' browsers, installed | intentionally by his users. This is insane. The level of | arrogance and entitlement here is mind blowing. | | Google banned the Chrome extension "bypass paywalls" for | doing nothing bad except annoying Google's friends. | | This is why walled gardens are bad. It's not Google's place | or Facebook's place or Apple's place or anyone's place to | tell me what programs I can run on my own computer. | rmah wrote: | It's legal in the same way it's legal for me to demand that | you never eat tomatoes again. It's also legal for you to | demand that your neighbor turn off his TV. Anyone non- | government party can pretty much _demand_ anything from | anyone else. It means next to nothing. Not trying to be | snarky here. It 's just that I find it odd that so many | people seem to think that the law is about what's permitted | when it's really about what's not permitted. At least in the | USA. | | Arrogance and entitlement on Facebook's part though, that I | agree with. | hetspookjee wrote: | Now add the ingredients that you have a vested interest in | setting an example, and have infinite resources to do so. | Say you set aside a billion dollar to hammer your neighbour | with lawsuit after lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. You | can run this way for years while consistently losing. It's | not a matter of being right or wrong, it's a matter of who | has the longest breath. Sure After several years the tables | might turn and the judges may find it odd you're claiming | such weird things, but then again you've been going at it | for years already. | | So sure there might be a moral argument on what is right or | wrong, but the law in practice does not work like that. | Unless a judge sets an example by nipping this behaviour in | the bud with excessive fees, but good luck seeing that ever | happen. | | The only way I'd see the neighbour win is if a whale of an | activist Party would side with him and make it clear that | any legal fight will be taken up with the biggest defence | possible, but this is equally unlikely to happen | unfortunately. | rmah wrote: | I wasn't making a moral argument, I was making a | practical one. The _demand_ , in and of itself, means | very little. Being notified may matter, but the fact that | it was couched as a "demand" rather than a "request" is | irrelevant. And the notice will only matter in so far as | you are actually in breech of a contract or there is a | tort or you are breaking a law. As you illustrated, it's | primarily the ability to punish non-compliance that | actually matters (via procedure, public relations, etc). | | Through it all though, the fact that the other party | _demanded_ something of you instead of politely asked " | or humbly requested is not really relevant. What matters | is that you got notice. That's it. | robbrown451 wrote: | I guess it is all in the definition of "demand." I | interpret the word -- at least in this context -- to mean | it has legal teeth, so to speak. | | Even if they are enforcing their demand by way of banning | users that don't comply, that may indeed be illegal. For | instance, if Facebook made a demand that gay people may not | declare themselves so on the platform or they will be | banned, I'm sure they'd pretty quickly find themselves on | the wrong side of the law. | | But really, right now, something like this just gives | Congress new things to grill Zuckerberg on, next time they | bring him in. (which is inevitable, I think) | chemmail wrote: | They think they own the internet. But in some countries they | do. | unclebucknasty wrote: | > _How is this legal in any shape or form?_ | | IANAL, but have some experience with this from a business | matter, resulting in obtaining advice of counsel. | | And, yeah this is not a criminal matter, but a civil one, so | you're right that the developer isn't likely in civil breach | unless they are using FB resources (e.g. API or SDK) that | they access under agreement with FB and are violating. | | The irony is that if the FB standard user agreement prevents | users from, say, using software to programmatically access | the site, then it's the _user_ of the extension who would be | in breach with FB. | | So, as long as the developer doesn't use the extension on | their own FB account, then FB doesn't have much to stand on | (and even then the C&D would only be applicable to the | developer's use of the extension as a user). | | On a related side note, if the extension actually did | something not related to a specific account (e.g. scraped a | _public_ profile while not signed in), then even the user | would likely not be in breach, as there is no affirmative | assent (i.e. clickwrap) to terms of use required to simply | visit the site. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I would suppose for any extension to work with Facebook the | site it would need to be developed with knowledge of a | Facebook page's DOM, as such the developer would need to go | look at the page to be used and write code to do what the | extension needs to do. | | Thus I guess one legal argument would be that the ability | of the extension to work proves the developer's use of | Facebook the service even though they have been banned. So | maybe there is something from that they can build up an | argument, although it starts to sound far-fetched enough I | might expect a judge to not buy it. | invokestatic wrote: | There's actually a concept of tortious interference, which | can make you liable for assisting other people in breaking | a terms of service, even if you never broke it yourself. | zja wrote: | Sounds similar to what happened when Blizzard sued a | company for selling World of Warcraft hacks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_(bot) | invokestatic wrote: | Funny you should mention. I only know this cuz I used to | sell cheats for games. | polynomial wrote: | Browser extensions don't kill FB accounts. People kill FB | accounts. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > The level of arrogance and entitlement here is mind | blowing. | | Yeah. They put a server on the internet but we're not | supposed to talk to it. We can only do it on their terms. | Gotta control those users so they don't hurt a billion dollar | company's business interests. | | I remember the pirate bay's responses to legal threats. | That's exactly the kind of reply Facebook deserves. | jonplackett wrote: | Streisand effect in action. Installing extension now. | Thanks FB legal team! | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect | quenix wrote: | What were the pirate bay's responses, if you don't mind? | InvaderFizz wrote: | They were quite fun to read at the time. | | Here is an old archive link to some: https://web.archive. | org/web/20111223101839/http://thepirateb... | akudha wrote: | _Please don 't sue us right now, our lawyer is passed out | in an alley from too much moonshine, so please atleast | wait until he's found and doesn't have a huge | hangover..._ | | _The problem here seems to be that the material is | unreleased? If that is the case, you can easily fix the | problem by releasing it. We 'll be more than glad to help | you distribute it - free of charge! - to our users._ | | Thank you for the link. Their responses are hilarious, | haha | noptd wrote: | And their responses have aged brilliantly to boot. | radmuzom wrote: | If you are interested in a more detailed story, listen to | this Darknet Diaries interview with one of the co- | founders of PirateBay. | | https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/92/ | tptacek wrote: | I don't have an opinion one way or the other on this | extension or Facebook's decision, but the premise of your | comment --- "we put a service up on the Internet but you | can only talk to it on our terms" --- that is actually how | things work, and how they should work. | [deleted] | matheusmoreira wrote: | > that is actually how things work, and how they should | work | | I don't think so. Users simply don't have the power to | negotiate these contracts. These "take it or leave it" | deals are abusive. Especially since many times these | platforms have network effects so strong you _need_ to be | part of them in order to not fail at life. Under these | conditions, nobody can truly consent to anything. These | "terms" should not even apply. Nobody even reads them, it | doesn't matter what they say because it won't change the | fact they _need_ to be on Facebook because of family, | work, school, whatever. They click "agree" not because | they agree but because the sign up form won't submit if | they don't. | | So technology that lets us alter the deal is very much | welcome indeed. They don't want us using this stuff but | their permission is not necessary. Software is gonna | interoperate with their site whether they want it or not. | They should not even be able to find out that we're doing | anything out of the ordinary. From their perspective, | they should simply see a normal user agent issuing normal | HTTP requests. | | Adversarial interoperability. If they refuse to make the | site work like we want it to, we'll do the work for them. | This should be considered a form of legitimate self | defense against their abuse. | EvanAnderson wrote: | The nuance of how "we put up a service ... talk to it on | our terms" is enforced is what is deeply concerning to | me. Is that up to Facebook to use technical means to | enforce their terms or is the force of law behind them? | Where is that line drawn? | | If I modify the DOM with an extension to hide content I | don't like am I running afoul of the law? How about using | Lynx instead of Chrome? | | What constitutes "talking to" a service? Is it data I | send to that server, or is it how my computer processes | the data I receive and how I interact with it? | | Different people are going to have wildly different | opinions, and some of them are very troubling to me. | Committing fraud is one thing, but simply using a service | without exceeding your authority in a way the service | provider doesn't prefer seems like something the service | provider should handle without the force of law behind | them. | tptacek wrote: | It is up to Facebook to use both technical means and | enforceable contract law to draw lines around how their | service can be used, the same way it is up to any of us | to do the same with services we stand up on the Internet. | | There are limits to both tools, and legislatures can | enact new restrictions in response to public demand. But | none of that is in play in this story. | | If the argument upthread was "we should demand laws that | prevent Facebook from locking out extensions to their | platform", I wouldn't have a rebuttal (I might or might | not support those restrictions). But the sarcastic dunk | that was actually made, that it was somehow ridiculous | that Facebook would have some say over the terms of how | their platform was used, was weird and worth commenting | on. It's not only not ridiculous, but actually the world | as it exists today. | javajosh wrote: | _> [they said] it was somehow ridiculous that Facebook | would have some say over the terms of how their platform | was used_ | | It's less about FB's right to set boundaries, and more | about what FB does when they feel the boundaries have | been violated. In this case, they've perma-banned the guy | and initiated threatening legal action. That action's | extreme demands are NOT in FB's TOS, and reflect on FB's | attitude of entitlement. | | One argument against this is that FB is just doing the | "standard legal thing" of demanding everything up-front, | and then negotiating. That is true, but I don't think | that just because every lawyer tries to bully their | clients enemy means they should. And in this case FB is | Goliath, swinging hard and fast at David. | | And you know what? Fuck Goliath. | threeseed wrote: | You don't know the full story here. | | It's quite likely that Facebook sent the person an email | asking him to stop violating their Terms of Service and | he refused. | mumblemumble wrote: | Consider it by analogy: let's say I have a fax machine at | my house, and someone keeps sending me faxes on it even | though I don't want them to. | | I _could_ set up some technical mechanism to stop it, | such as blocking their phone number. But, if it 's easy | for them to switch phone numbers, then that won't work | well. And I may not be able to just block a whole area | code, because there may be people I want to let fax me | coming from that area code as well. | | My other recourse, then, is threaten to sue them, and, if | they continue, to actually sue them. And I would argue | that I should be able to do that. Sending me faxes costs | me financial resources and ties up my fax machine, so | it's hardly zero cost to me, and it makes sense to have | some third party to sort out the dispute and decide where | the line should be drawn. | | I can imagine other worlds with gentler, more even-handed | approaches to sorting out these kinds of issues. | Unfortunately, most those approaches fall under the | general category of "regulation", and the country I | reside in, the USA, decided a long time ago to eschew | that kind of approach in favor of one that relies heavily | on lawyering up and lawsuits. | csydas wrote: | Analogies are always risky business ;) | | Facebook has a public service and one of the options is | to Unfollow; someone wrote a browser extension to do this | automatically for all items. | | Fundamentally, what is the difference between automating | this process and doing it manually? | | In your example of a fax machine, arguably fax numbers | are a private entity; there is no requirement for | publishing fax numbers nor is fax automatically publicly | listed for everyone to see. A malicious spammer would | need to either obtain the fax number from a listing | somewhere or brute-force the number, and similarly, the | only way to __know__ that a fax has gone is ambiguous. | obtain the fax number from a listing somewhere or brute- | force the number, and neither is really analogous to what | a browser offers. | | I think your analogy conflates a few concepts | incorrectly, namely that there is some unexpected or | undue financial consequence to Facebook for publicly | allowing users to Unfollow Groups; if the extension | __needlessly__ generated traffic, this is closer to your | analogy. But as I can see how the extension works (based | on archived copies found on shady sites), it's not undue | traffic, it's just expediting the process of manually | Unfollowing groups. | | Facebook shouldn't have a recourse here as I see it; the | automation causes no undue burden on facebook that isn't | possible by manually clicking, an arbitrary review of the | extension suggests there is no undue stress on the | servers that differs in any way from the traffic one | might generate if they manually unfollowed groups. | Automating the process indeed might be undesirable for | Facebook in some way, but fundamentally the same result | is achievable with manually clicking, and I think a more | substantial evidence of damage is required from Facebook | to justify such a threat. | | If we take it to a logical comparison, should Facebook | have the right to block a mouse + keyboard automation | tool that I script to react at human speeds but is pixel- | perfect to unfollow groups? | | If the answer to this from Facebook is "yes", then the | natural question is "what is the similarity between these | processes?"; if the answer is "automation", then the | natural question is "why is this damaging to Facebook as | opposed to me just manually unfollowing??", and I'm not | confident Facebook has a reasonable/strong answer to | this. | | If Facebook is fine with the slower method, then the | question becomes "what is the real concern with the | faster method? I will skip the logical follow-ups here as | the response is already long. | | Facebook should __not__ have the right to sue just | because they don't like an activity; no one benefits from | this; quite the opposite, smaller parties are actively | harmed by such behavior as they lack the financial | resources or confidence (or both) to respond to such a | legal challenge, and this was never the intent of law. | One should not need heavy financing to secure their | natural rights; if Facebook wants to position that the | extension is somehow illegal as per terms of service, I | think the duty is on them to demonstrate how it's | significantly damaging and how it differs from a | dedicated person armed with a cup of coffee and an hour | of free time; if Facebook cannot make a significant | distinction outside of convenience for the person, then I | don't see a basis for legal recourse. | throwaway14356 wrote: | what if there is only one brand of fax, they are selling | your phone number to advertisers and they demand you | receave the faxes? | | or say you have to listen to robocalls or els you cant | use some unrelated monopolistic service or product? | | i like the analogy but the real story is who would use | such a tool. if someone feels they need such extreme | measures i wouldnt dare deny them this. who in there | right mind? | White_Wolf wrote: | That is exactly how it works even with the extension. By | building what ammounts to a GUI to a glorified database | you are deciding on the interaction level with the | database. | | The fact that the extensions helps automate some tasks if | a different matter. If it were an industrial level | scraper that scraped anything public... that could be | considered malicious and can cause tangible financial | losses. | | This extension on the other hand... You can't really | justify sending a threat like that. You can come up with | excuses but that is it. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Yeah. Imagine sending a C&D to an extension developer | because their software is helping people break free from | their social media feed addictions. Can't have that, it's | reducing ad impressions! | | It's like Facebook _wants_ people to hate them. | robbrown451 wrote: | Please elaborate. | | I understand certain terms (such as saying you can't hit | the server more often than a reasonable amount), but much | beyond that I push back. If the laws allow them to make | such all encompassing demands of how I use their product, | well, laws can be changed, and I vote. | tptacek wrote: | You can vote much more forcefully by simply not using | Facebook. Many of my friends have made exactly this | decision and they seem fine. | robbrown451 wrote: | I disagree. I don't think that solves the problem, at | all. | | One: Facebook is currently being accused of damaging | democracy via misinformation and their "anger promoting" | algorithm. That affects me, and my leaving Facebook | doesn't solve that. Two: there is the monopoly issue (if | that is the right word.... the issue I am concerned about | lies on a spectrum, unlike many people's usage of | "monopoly"). Prior to Facebook having dominance, I used | to be in the loop of what my friends are doing, because | they used phone, email, etc. Now they all use Facebook | and my choice to not use it (which I don't, actually) | results in my not being included in a huge number of | things. In that sense, I think Facebook has become like a | utility, like the phone company of old. I can't just find | a social network product that I prefer, and use it | instead.... my friends are not on it and other social | networks are not interoperable with Facebook. (as phone | providers and email providers are interoperable with one | another) | | Teens who use Facebook products are known to be harmed. | Maybe you think they should just not use these products. | That will cause even greater harm to their social lives | than it causes to mine, since all their friends are using | it and being connected with friends is very important to | teens. Again, their simply not using the product doesn't | address the problem. (and MY not using it especially | doesn't help) | | I think your comment is like saying "if you don't like | constant robocalls, just cancel your phone plan rather | than encourage laws to curtail them." Kind of throwing | out the baby with the bathwater. | | So yeah, I'll exercise my right to vote by actually | voting. Luckily, many representatives are in agreement | with my perspective on this. | threeseed wrote: | > Teens who use Facebook products are known to be harmed | | There is nothing special about Facebook products that | make them harmful. | | It's a glorified message board which facilitates the | exact same harmful social interaction that is prevalent | on other sites e.g. TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat. | | This idea that you can ban Facebook and Instagram and | suddenly the internet is safe for kids is just | ridiculous. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > There is nothing special about Facebook products that | make them harmful. | | Sure, there is. Addiction. People are addicted to this | stuff. They're addicted to likes, reactions, seeing their | follower numbers increase. They're addicted to the | algorithmic content feeds. Facebook is actively working | towards keeping it that way. They probably want to make | it even more addictive. They want people using their | software at all times in order to collect data and serve | ads. | | Why else would they C&D an unfollow extension developer? | They want people to keep following so they get addicted | to the infinite content plus ads feed. | | Also, nobody is excusing any of the other sites you | mentioned. There's plenty of things wrong with them as | well and we'll condemn them for it. We're just focusing | on Facebook right now because it's the subject of this | particular thread. | feanaro wrote: | I'm not sure why you think the line is this clearcut, and | in the wrong direction at that, but this gets murky | really quickly. | | You don't get a say in how I'm using my computer. If | you're exposing your HTTP server to the world _and_ | letting users access it using their web browsers, you | _don 't_ get to tell me my choice of web browser (that | is, HTTP agent) is not to your liking. | threeseed wrote: | The line is crystal clear. | | You can do whatever you want with your computer. | | But when you use your computer to access a remote service | you need to comply with their terms of service. | feanaro wrote: | And this is in no way transgressing their terms of | service since it's doing the exact same thing any HTTP | agent would do. They don't get to choose _which_ agent I | use. | | In other words, either the action is disallowed | completely or it's allowed regardless of my choice of | user agent. | threeseed wrote: | It's irrelevant how you violate their Terms of Service | only that you do. | | If I attempt XSS or SQL Injection against a website it is | still illegal regardless of whether the HTTP request uses | the same user-agent or is similar to other requests. | feanaro wrote: | You're missing a crucial point, which is that an XSS or | SQL injection requests are _different_ requests from | those made during regular use. The intent of sending such | a request is also different. | | In this case, we are dealing with the _same_ requests | with the same intent, just made with a different browser. | As stated previously, you cannot force my choice of | browser. | | Now please tell me which (real or imaginary) ToS clause | this violates and how it could possibly violate it, even | hypothetically. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | If their terms of service say "thou shalt not reverse- | engineer", and I want to connect my Facebook to my | Friendica, UK law says that I'm allowed to do so, and | Facebook is _not allowed_ to have a problem with it - any | clause in a contract that says otherwise is to simply be | deleted.1 | | 1: Technically, I think "ignored" is more accurate; if | you're prohibited from reverse-engineering _in general_ , | the general prohibition would still apply even though it | has a specific exemption. I'm not a lawyer, though. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Similar situation here. I also have certain rights that | Facebook tries to deny me through their contract clauses. | I consulted a lawyer and was told those could be ignored. | | Apparently it's a thing in the US. People can sign their | rights away to these companies. Needless to say, those | counter-rights clauses have become standard in every | contract. Read one of these abusive contracts and you've | read them all. "We reserve all possible rights while you | promise not use any of yours" summarizes every terms of | service out there. | int_19h wrote: | That depends on the terms - not everything goes. For | example, they don't get to say that you must only use | Facebook while naked. | | And in this case, I would argue that this is a case where | they should not have the ability to restrict this kind of | interaction. If the law disagrees, then the law needs to | be changed (and in the meantime, ignored to the extent | possible). | matheusmoreira wrote: | > But when you use your computer to access a remote | service you need to comply with their terms of service. | | The only moral obligation is to not crack the server and | take control of it. We won't make the server's processor | execute our code. That's the line. Your computer runs | your code, my computer runs my code. | | Anything else is fair game. Server responds to my HTTP | requests, so obviously anything I can do with HTTP | requests is allowed. It doesn't matter what I use as user | agent since it's the company's own code that's handling | those requests. | | Ironically, taking over control is exactly what big tech | is doing with _our_ computers. They take control away | from us and give it to the copyright industry, to the | advertisers, to everyone who would very much prefer that | we users remain mere passive consumers just like in the | days of television. Our computers are slowly becoming | appliances. | thriftwy wrote: | Web Browser is called User Agent for a reason. It is not | Corporate Agent or Facebook Agent. It should grant every | right to the user with regards of look and feel of web | sites, and none to the website being browsed. | | Web site may merely suggest how it is best served. | matheusmoreira wrote: | I agee completely. This also extends to HTTP requests and | all kinds of automation. We should be able to make a | custom Facebook client if we want to. There's no reason | their client must be the only one allowed to talk to | their servers. Competition in this is space is obviously | good for us. User agents should do what's good for us, | not what's good for some company. If subverting their | business interests is good for us, that's exactly what | the software should do. We are its masters. | | Really, the user should have all the power. These | companies already have what, billions of dollars? That's | power enough for them. | feanaro wrote: | > There's no reason their client must be the only one | allowed to talk to their servers. | | In a lot of cases it's also not _their_ client in any | sense of the word. Firefox, Chromium, Safari are not | Facebook 's. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Yeah. Their overreach in that case is even more | offensive. The whole notion of Facebook having any say in | the matter is absurd. Who are they to say which | extensions or scripts people should or shouldn't be able | to use? | thriftwy wrote: | At least, every browser should include a grabber which | will mirror all information it sees to store locally/in | the cloud. | | Facebook bans you? You still have all your data intact. | | I wonder if Facebook is legally still obliged to provide | all its information to the user in the EU even after | banning the user, and if they comply. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > I wonder if Facebook is legally still obliged to | provide all its information to the user in the EU even | after banning the user, and if they comply. | | If they aren't, they should be. Facebook's contracts | aren't above the law which says people have a right to | their data. Does the law care that the user was banned? I | don't think so. Nor should a banishment somehow | invalidate someone's rights. | threeseed wrote: | > They put a server on the internet but we're not supposed | to talk to it. | | Just because a company offers a service doesn't give you | the right to (ab)use it any way you want. | | If that were the case hacking would be considered legal. | matheusmoreira wrote: | If I exploit a vulnerability in order to crack their | security and run my own code on Facebook servers, I've | committed a crime. | | Sending an HTTP request to the Facebook server is not a | crime. Facebook code is still in control. It can ignore | my request. | throwoutway wrote: | The requests are authorized, by authenticated users. | Facebook could just deny the requests or rate limit. Or | stop offering the unfollow feature (which they keep | moving and hiding). | wizzwizz4 wrote: | > _Just because a company offers a service doesn 't give | you the right to (ab)use it any way you want._ | | Didn't the US Supreme Court say it _did_ , actually? I | know that GDPR and the UK's Copyright Act have something | to say about the matter. | threeseed wrote: | There is no law anywhere in the world that grants you | permission to use any internet service for any purpose. | | It's always subject to the conditions the service | provider sets. | | Otherwise again it would legalise hacking. | javajosh wrote: | _> How is this legal..._ | | In theory, legality is the Judge's opinion of the law applied | to circumstance. To even approach this state is extremely | expensive and takes a great deal of time - on the order of | years. | | So, for the most part we're all on our own. And in that | context, legality doesn't matter. At all. What does matter is | leverage. The justice system itself is, ironically, most | often used as leverage, not as a service for determining | legality, but as a threat of the expense and time of getting | to that determination. | | It's sickening, but that's how it is. | chrisseaton wrote: | > How is this legal in any shape or form? | | Are you asking how it's legal that you can demand someone to | do something? | | How is anything legal? Because there's no law against it. | There's no law against demanding something. You can demand | (almost) anything of anyone you want. | throwaway14356 wrote: | what if you have some kind of leverage over them? | chrisseaton wrote: | Yes that's usually legal. Again - what law are you | thinking of when you ask if it's illegal? | pixl97 wrote: | Would this be considered a SLAPP? | bathtub365 wrote: | It's impossible to tell since there isn't a lawsuit | cyral wrote: | Not a lawyer but I believe that only applies to actual | lawsuits. Anyone can send you a C&D and you can choose to | ignore it. It will cost at least $300 to consult with a | lawyer to even write a response. If the other party really | believes they are right, they will sue you. | bityard wrote: | I can't find it now because google is garbage these days | but years ago I once ran across forum thread or blog post | from a small business owner who semi-regularly received | random bogus patent infringement and other claims with | offers to settle matter out of court for thousands of | dollars. | | He had a lawyer but after burning through a lot of money | with carefully-written objections, he decided to just start | ignoring them altogether. Which generally worked. These | lawyers (and their clients) were just trolling for easy | cash and never actually wanted to go to court because their | claims were bogus and they would almost certainly lose. | | Sometimes, however, the other party's law firm would call | him on the phone to follow with their demands. He would let | them yammer on for a few minutes, ask some innocent | questions, and then finally interrupt them with something | like this. "Here is what I have to say to your client's | claim... you have a pen and paper ready? I need you to | write this down. Okay, good. Here it is: 'Fuck you.' No | wait, I'm not done yet. Just let me speak. I want you to | also add, 'and go to hell" please. That is my official | legal response. Have a nice day." And slammed the phone | down. | | Take the story with a grain of salt, but he said it worked | 100% of the time. | xxpor wrote: | C&Ds are also specifically protected speech under the | first amendment, under the theory they're really a threat | to petition the government. | bmsleight_ wrote: | "I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram". | | https://prunescape.fandom.com/wiki/The_Reply_Given_in_Ark | ell... | c2h5oh wrote: | That would require a lawsuit IIRC, but it does have a some | legal ramifications - I remember reading somewhere that C&D | would make it easier for the recipient of it to sue. | | It definitely doesn't help their image or any antitrust | lawsuit FB might be facing. | rglover wrote: | Can anyone who works at Facebook speak anonymously about what's | going on over there? They seem like they're in full authoritarian | meltdown mode... | streamofdigits wrote: | We have a serious information overload problem and the level of | control provided by that extension is infinitesimal to what | should be routinely available to all users. | Karawebnetwork wrote: | > a tool that unfollows all connections automatically, | potentially making the social network less addictive and | depressing. | | Having done this manually, I can attest to the increase in the | quality of my feed. Every now and then, I need to do the manual | work again. | | I'm glad that Facebook has streisand effect this extension, I'll | look into installing it. | rytill wrote: | As someone who doesn't have Facebook, what actually appears on | your feed at all when you've unfollowed all connections? | Wouldn't your feed be empty? | Karawebnetwork wrote: | Groups, pages and family members that I have not blocked. | | Some of the posts Facebook shows to everyone and the ads. | | The video widget list that shows what is pretty much embedded | Instagram videos. | | And quickly enough, the "you've reached the bottom" message | and end of scroll. I can't remember its exact wording, but | the way it's displayed makes it seem like a bug or glitch. It | shows that they did not expect users to get there. | rytill wrote: | Ah, so it's like "unfollow by default" instead of "follow | by default" | Danielsauck wrote: | Ok | iainctduncan wrote: | FWIW, I just do this by never going to the feed. Ever. I open FB | on my messages, check my handful of groups (who I sure wish were | on forums, but aren't...) and never see the crack flavoured | candy. | | Also, a wonderful tool is Stylebot. You can make CSS overrides to | hide auto suggestions, "you might need this dopamine rush", | "other addicts got addicted to this" and all that crap. Makes | reddit actually usable. | AlexandrB wrote: | Contrast this action with this paragraph from Zuckerberg's | statement 2 days ago: | | > At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we | prioritize profit over safety and well-being. That's just not | true. For example, one move that has been called into question is | when we introduced the Meaningful Social Interactions change to | News Feed. This change showed fewer viral videos and more content | from friends and family -- which we did knowing it would mean | people spent less time on Facebook, but that research suggested | it was the right thing for people's well-being. Is that something | a company focused on profits over people would do? | | This ban is the answer the rhetorical question in the last | sentence: Yes, this is exactly something a company focused on | profits over people would do. Whatever corporate-speak tweaks | Facebook makes to the news feed, the one thing it can't abide is | people actively choosing what they experience on the site. | asdff wrote: | I can barely stand reading any quotes from that man. So | blatanly two faced. | | >Is that something a company focused on profits over people | would do? | | This is like BP patting themselves on the back for barely | cleaning up an oil spill they themselves caused, and saying | "see, we aren't evil, we did the bare minimum necessary to get | some puff pieces in the press for us" | [deleted] | akersten wrote: | A ban? Fine, whatever, their house their rules. | | A cease and desist for making a browser extension that automates | a process that any user could themselves do with no special | "hacking" required? Absolutely absurd, I hope there is no legal | basis for this threat. | e9 wrote: | It's probably because extension was recording usage of | Facebook. They are cracking down on any type of user data | collection even with user consent. Which is ironic but in some | way makes sense to avoid another Cambridge Analytica. | | Edit: to clarify confusion, author of the extension worked with | university to collect user data to use for study: | https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-every... | lowkey_ wrote: | I imagine it's more so, at least according to the article as | well, that this extension is automating user interactions. | | As an example of automated user interactions: It's clearly | not allowed to use an extension that will automatically | follow on Instagram in order to increase your follower count. | | Sadly, although this extension should morally be categorized | differently, it falls into the same category per their rules | -- automatically following is treated the same as | automatically unfollowing. (In fact, a common feature of | automatic follower bots is to automatically unfollow | afterwards). | ARandomerDude wrote: | Facebook is an ad platform. The guy wrote a plugin that | removes their ability to display ads. Now he's banned. It's | pretty straightforward. | akersten wrote: | With the disclaimer that I haven't looked too closely into it | - that does make things sound a little sketchier from a user | privacy perspective. I probably wouldn't use the extension | myself. I'm still curious how Facebook has standing just | because data is being recorded about the user's browsing | which happens to include (maybe exclusively) their website. | Most browser extensions are capable of exfiltrating page | content - are they all in target for FB to say "nah, we don't | like that" on behalf of someone who goes to facebook.com with | the extension installed? I would think (hope) not. | burkaman wrote: | No, the letter is here: | https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything- | cease-a.... It's because the extension "automates actions on | Facebook". Why do you say it was recording usage? | e9 wrote: | The author of the extension admits he worked with | university to collect user data for some study: | https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow- | every... | trangus_1985 wrote: | > Fine, whatever, their house their rules | | When they are the de facto form of communication for a | significant percentage of the population, it starts to go from | "their rules" territory to "society's rules". | | Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 years | ago because you were selling answering machines? | krapp wrote: | >When they are the de facto form of communication for a | significant percentage of the population, it starts to go | from "their rules" territory to "society's rules". | | Facebook is nowhere near the de facto form of communication | for a significant percentage of the population, as evidenced | by the fact that the world didn't crash to a halt when it | went down a few days ago. It's merely popular, but being | popular doesn't mean it controls society or dictates its | rules. | | >Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 years | ago because you were selling answering machines? | | That would be a valid comparison of Facebook owned the | infrastructure of the internet, but they don't. It's | _trivially_ easy to communicate without Facebook. | pengaru wrote: | Facebook isn't a monopoly, as evidenced by their recent | outage resulting in 70M new Telegram users overnight. | | Even so, as others have pointed out, the telcos did have | arguably reasonable restrictions placed on what one could | connect to the network. | | But to put glorified web sites in the same class as | government-sanctioned monopolies utilities tend to | necessarily be is asinine. Your telco had to run physical | wires across the land, gas company physical pipes everywhere, | there was no practical means of a free competitive market, | it's a completely different situation. | throwaway6734 wrote: | There are multiple other ways to contact people. I haven't | used facebook in almost a decade and have zero issue | communicating with people | bragh wrote: | If you do not like the rules set by them, you can always | build your own social network. | b9a2cab5 wrote: | This is like saying if you don't like the rules you can | build your own multinational telephone network. There's a | reason telecoms are subject to common carrier rules and I | don't see why tech monopolies should be any different. | Nasrudith wrote: | The crucial difference is lack of a right of way. The | thing which creates an actual monopoly instead of the | language degradation of monopoly to mean "But it is big | and I don't like it!". | Imnimo wrote: | My understanding of common carrier rules is that they | want to avoid a situation where a railroad or telephone | operator who controlled the only available line could | charge exorbitant rates to customers who had no | alternatives. I don't really see how the same concern is | true for Facebook - we have lots of options to | disseminate information online. | bragh wrote: | I think you are seriously and intentionally | misunderstanding the point. So far it was completely fine | for Facebook to ban whoever they wanted and it was | justified by them being a private company. Anybody who | complained about it was told that they can build their | own social network/cloud provider/payment provider. | | Somehow now this is bad... Ridiculous. | munk-a wrote: | Facebook is a utility that should be nationalized - it | has grown too big. | riffic wrote: | > Facebook is a utility | | hardly. | pengaru wrote: | > Facebook is a utility that should be nationalized - it | has grown too big. | | This can't happen to utility monopolies: | | https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/06/telegram- | says-... | | If your claim were true, everyone would just be stuck | suffering and beholden to Facebook's ability to fix their | service for lack of options. | b9a2cab5 wrote: | It's fine if you're a small or medium size business that | commands at most single digit % of the market. Facebook | dominates ad spending and reach to the point that you | can't just build your own, because they have a de facto | monopoly/oligopoly over digital ads. | | Let me ask you this: do you think Apple should be allowed | to ban whoever they want from their platform justified by | them being a private company? If you say no, then you | should also say no to Facebook being allowed to do so. | Otherwise you're just twisting the facts to support your | political position. | macksd wrote: | Different people on the Internet will say different | things. You can't really assign one collective motive to | everything on the Internet and then say it's | hypocritical. | postsantum wrote: | If you don't like this privte outrage, just ignore it or | start your own | macksd wrote: | And your own social network will fail because of network | effects. If Facebook can be as terrible as they have been | and retain their users, it's really because of their users | that they're being propped up with a successful business. I | gotta say at that point even I start thinking they owe | their users more than a free market exchange would imply. | | Not to mention we're talking about them sending a pretty | formal legal threat. Would you philosophy in this case not | be "if you don't like their browser extension, don't use | it?" | riffic wrote: | > network effects | | If you're building a new social network today, it makes | sense to tap into an existing social graph so you can | bootstrap your network with an existing ecosystem. | Michelle Lim made a great case for this in her post here: | | https://www.michellelim.org/writing/into-the-fediverse/ | | These protocols exist today. This is a W3C recommendation | as of 2018-01-23: | | https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/ | new_guy wrote: | > And your own social network will fail because of | network effects | | Speak for yourself. Not everything needs to be 'planet | scale', I run a few social networks and they do just | fine. | | And I agree with Facebook in this case, if you have | someone come into your house with the sole intent of | burning it down, of course you're going to kick them out. | It's no different than dealing with trolls or other bad | actors. | macksd wrote: | Burning down Facebook? What on Earth are you talking | about? It makes it easier for users to remove their own | accounts across multiple services. It's a common | interface to features the social networks themselves | provide. This is the opposite of a bad actor. | munk-a wrote: | If you don't like the rules of English you can always | invent your own language - sure you won't be able to talk | to anyone but isn't that freedom enough? | willis936 wrote: | This argument gives the platforms more credit than they're | worth. It's been obvious for half a decade that social media | is bad for mental health. I've cut it out of my life. I tell | others to cut it out of their life. No one's under the | impression that these platforms are good for anything. | They're popular now, but they are not important. | lsb wrote: | Cigarettes are obviously bad for people's individual | health, but we don't rely on individual responsibility to | ensure children don't purchase themselves cigarettes. | subsubzero wrote: | I cut facebook out of my life almost 5 years ago before it | was "cool" to do so. Its like junk food or cigarettes or | anything else that is net bad for a person. I would say let | people decide for themselves if they want to use it and you | hope they make the smart choice of just saying no to | facebook and all its toxicity that comes with it. | yosito wrote: | > they are not important | | They are important because they contain a significant | portion of many people's address books. When Facebook was | offline a few days ago, I had no way of reaching about two | thirds of my contacts. And I'm someone who's made a | significant effort to move off of Facebook. There were | people I wanted to contact that day that the only way to | reach them would have been to ask mutual friends for other | contact details. And there were a few people that I either | don't have mutual friends with or who our mutual friends | were also only reachable via Facebook. If legislation aims | for some form of "interoperability" the main condition | should be that, if Facebook were to disappear again, I | would still have the ability to reach all of my Facebook | contacts via another network. | listenallyall wrote: | I loathe Facebook and am hesitant to take its side on any | issue. But if you cannot be bothered to ask your | "contacts" for a phone number, email address, Telegram, | whatever, I don't see why it is Facebook's responsibility | to ensure you have access to these people 24/7. | smoldesu wrote: | That's a social issue, not a Facebook one. | Interoperability is an _insane_ ask that has absolutely | no precedent, and I say that as one of the biggest FOSS | enthusiasts this side of the Mississippi. There 's simply | no way that the United States government could force a | private company's hand like that, and _even if they did_ | the fallout from that would be insane. Where do we stop | with interoperability? Do all browsers need to share the | same history storage format? Do all cloud storage | providers need to use the same app? Do all of us need to | use the same operating system, communication protocols | and news outlets? | | No, because we're different people. Some people are drawn | to Facebook's firehose feed, and there's not really | anything you can do to stop them in a free world. It's a | disgusting, albeit perfectly legal exchange of goods and | services. Microsoft and Apple fought long and hard to | make sure consumer protection laws like that never saw | the light of day. | [deleted] | slx26 wrote: | Yeah, I always defend there should be a "law of scale". When | you start making your own project, taking a risk, spending | hours and hours working on something, it's fair for a single | individual to have the right to make any calls in what they | are doing. But when it expands to thousands of workers and | millions of users (or even much, much less), your | responsibilities and reach can not be the same anymore. | Saying "I built it" is no justification. The growth and the | contributions that are making something possible, users | included, do not support the logic of "my house my rules" | anymore. | | This wasn't particularly related to this specific case, and | visions and missions of companies should still be respected, | but society does have a very warped concept of "property" | when it involves their work or ideas. | retrac wrote: | > Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 | years ago because you were selling answering machines? | | Yes, actually. It was illegal to connect any equipment beside | Bell's equipment to the US telephone system. Not only would | you be disconnected and possibly fined by your phone provider | for doing so, but American law also made it illegal to sell | such devices as well for use on the phone network. If you | wanted to use an answering machine not sold by Bell, you had | to get it custom rewired by Bell and pay a monthly rental fee | for the privilege: | | > AT&T, citing the Communications Act of 1934, which stated | in part that the company had the right to make changes and | dictate "the classifications, practices, and regulations | affecting such charges," claimed the right to "forbid | attachment to the telephone of any device 'not furnished by | the telephone company.'" | | > Initially, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) | ruled in AT&T's favor. It found that the device was a | "foreign attachment" subject to AT&T control and that | unrestricted use of the device could, in the commission's | opinion, result in a general deterioration of the quality of | telephone service. | | It was challenged and the seller of the amplifier device | ultimately won in federal court: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A- | Phone_Corp._v._United_S... (Even then, you couldn't actually | electronically connect a device, you could only acoustically | couple it. Direct connection of modems wouldn't be legal | until the 1980s.) | at-fates-hands wrote: | >> It was illegal to connect any equipment beside Bell's | equipment to the US telephone system. Not only would you be | disconnected and possibly fined by your phone provider for | doing so, but American law also made it illegal to sell | such devices as well for use on the phone network. | | Which is the exact thing which gave rise to phone phreaking | and getting around the limitations on Bell Systems. | | "Exploding The Phone" by Phil Lapsley is a great book that | examines these early hackers: | | https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-invisible- | playground... | rektide wrote: | Sounds like you can imagine the law permitting something | horrific & ghastly. | | I too can imagine that. But the restraints the law allowed | to be imposed on our freedom sound absurd, sound outlandish | to me now. We were in a situation that de-legitimizes the | law & the legal system, and eventually we fixed that. | | > Can you imagine being cut off from the phone system 40 | years ago because you were selling answering machines? | | Also, it was illegal to sell connecting equipment, sure, | but AT&T didn't go nearly as far as what we see today. They | didn't do anything this bad. The question posed wasn't | about the legality or ability to interoperate, to make | devices. | | The question was about the reprecussion. Hush-A-Phone & | other companies did not have their corporate phone numbers | dropped, did not lose their ability to make phone calls | when the started making a device AT&T didn't like. AT&T | took them to court & tried to get them to stop making | devices, but they didn't retaliate by kicking their | corporate entity off the network. AT&T also didn't search | for people using the phone system to talk about using other | means of communication & kick them off the phone network | (something we've seen repeatedly, recently with Mastodon, | although those policies may/may not have been improved | recently). Facebook is acting far more like a bully than | AT&T did, in my view. | cycomanic wrote: | But they didn't ban the seller from using the phone system, | they banned people from attaching a different machine to | the system. That's like the Facebook trying to detect the | extension and trying to block it. That's similar to some | websites blocking ad blockers, while it would not go down | well with Facebook users I think it's very different to | what Facebook does here. | [deleted] | prepend wrote: | > It was illegal | | It wasn't an arbitrary choice by a private company. That's | a big difference. | | A stupid rule by a highly regulated monopoly is very | different from a stupid rule by an unregulated monopoly | (maybe member of oligopoly). | tshaddox wrote: | Right, the point wasn't whether you can literally imagine | that happening. The point is that it's obviously bad. | [deleted] | bduerst wrote: | > It was illegal to connect any equipment beside Bell's | equipment to the US telephone system. | | Right, but IIRC Bell was considered a common carrier. | | That means Bell could enforce this because they already had | to give equal play on their network. Facebook is not and | does not. | djmips wrote: | Facebook wants to think it is | Nasrudith wrote: | I wonder how much of the ban was from concern of poorly | regulated voltage related device damage. Now at least FCC | regulations alone protect against the worst because | anything that cheap also tends to output significant noise | on reserved spectrum(s). | trangus_1985 wrote: | I said 40 years for a reason ;) But yes, those laws were | horrible, and stifled innovation. | RNCTX wrote: | +1 and this mentality persisted all the way through the | Lucent bankruptcy, prior to which their business model was | to sue everyone who had ever talked on a phone, right on up | to the previous presidential administration which involved | trying to place former telco execs on FCC regulatory boards | to rewrite rules which aren't really rules. | | But what they don't address is that HBOMax is already the | worst streaming app on my TV, and therefore it doesn't | matter how much money AT&T throws at politics. Their stuff | sucks because they're AT&T, not because of some political | misfortune. | riffic wrote: | the existing AT&T is not the previous AT&T. | | edit: sources | | * Current AT&T: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T | | * Old AT&T: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation | | * History: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T | Retric wrote: | The existing AT&T is just a zombie formed from 5 of the | original 8 fragments of the old AT&T. I can't help but | wonder how many former coworkers at AT&T in 1981 where | reunited in 2014 without ever having left the fragments. | toast0 wrote: | At least some of the fragments were doing a lot of | pushing out of older employees in the 2000s, so probably | not a whole lot left, but I like the concept. | RNCTX wrote: | Oh but it is. Culture doesn't tend to change, | particularly with ridiculous "rebranding" exercises. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | No, it's the previous AT&T with some parts factored out | (most notably, Verizon). It also apparently managed to | remerge several parts of itself over the years, which is | mind boggling (how that didn't trigger immediate court | action is beyond me): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System | jonas21 wrote: | > _Even then, you couldn 't actually electronically connect | a device, you could only acoustically couple it. Direct | connection of modems wouldn't be legal until the 1980s._ | | In the late 90s, I remember watching the scenes in WarGames | (which came out in 1983) where Matthew Broderick's | character is using a modem where you had to place the phone | cradle on top of it and thinking why would you ever design | a modem that way? | | And of course the reason was to work around this stupidity. | | https://youtu.be/zb1r_uKOew4?t=49 | foobiekr wrote: | Acoustic couplers also existed because most homes were | pre modular phone jacks and the phones were connected | with screw taps. | wyldfire wrote: | I didn't know this was the case. Interesting! | | From [1] | | > It was not until a landmark U.S. court ruling regarding | the Hush-A-Phone in 1956 that the use of a phone | attachment (by a third party vendor) was allowed for the | first time; though AT&T's right to regulate any device | connected to the telephone system was upheld by the | courts, they were instructed to cease interference | towards Hush-A-Phone users. A second court decision in | 1968 regarding the Carterfone further allowed any device | not harmful to the system to be connected directly to the | AT&T network. This decision enabled the proliferation of | later innovations like answering machines, fax machines, | and modems. | | From [2]: | | > After the ruling, it was still illegal to connect some | equipment to the AT&T network. For example, modems could | not electronically connect to the phone system. Instead, | Americans had to connect their modems mechanically by | attaching a phone receiver to an acoustic coupler via | suction cups. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A- | Phone_Corp._v._United_S... | josephg wrote: | Australian here. I remember that scene, and I've always | wondered what that was about too. I was using modems in | the mid 90s and I never saw anything like that cradle | device! Thankyou. That makes horrible, awful sense to me | now. | djmips wrote: | Yeah, looks like acoustic couplers were mostly a | seventies thing | salamandersauce wrote: | It's not entirely stupidity. Acoustic modems also made | sense for portability. Reporters in the 80s used to use | things like TRS-80 Model 100 + an Acoustic modem to send | stories back to the office over public telephones rather | than have to hunt down a phone jack somewhere. | throwawaysea wrote: | All these large technology platforms are as ubiquitous as | utilities, as powerful as governments, and as unregulated as | can be. Their network effects and access to capital gives | them unusually strong protection from competition, and also | the ability to just copy smaller competitors with impunity. | After all, what legal action could a cash-tight startup take | up against a behemoth with a war chest in the tens of | billions of Dollars? Given their size, scope, and the lack of | healthy competition, they need to be reigned in. We need to | treat social media platforms like we treat telecom services - | as common carriers. And we need to treat other large tech | platforms as public utilities as well. | | Clarence Thomas on treating social media as common carriers: | https://reclaimthenet.org/justice-clarance-thomas-big- | tech-p... | | Eugene Volokh on treating social media as common carriers: | https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/16/conclusion-social- | media... | root_axis wrote: | Nah. Nobody needs to use FB to communicate, there are many | dozens of available communication platforms, you can't even | sign up for FB without a phone number anyway, this idea that | FB is some critical communication infrastructure is totally | false. | croes wrote: | For some countries Facebook, Instagram and WhatApp are the | internet. Official entities and company use them as the | only form of communication with the citizens and customers. | root_axis wrote: | Sure, this exists, but it's extremely rare, it's more of | a talking point than an accurate representation of | reality. | riffic wrote: | lol, ma bell did exactly this and more. | londons_explore wrote: | It's probably for using the Facebook name or logo. | | They could even potentially argue that the names of the | "unfollow" buttons and associated URL's (which are in the code | of the extension) are copyright facebook. The source code has | things like: getElementsByClassName("oi732d6d | ik7dh3pa d2edcug0 qv66sw1b | | Which are very much on dodgy ground... | | Even a very weak legal argument is enough to win when you're | fighting someone who doesn't have the budget or desire to even | show up in the courtroom. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | The full cease and desist is posted here: | https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a... | | It's not strictly about automating API requests. He was also | using Facebook's trademarks (easy target for valid C&D | requests). He was also using the plugin to collect data from | users, including some very detailed data for a subset that | opted in to a study. Facebook doesn't take kindly to people | making extensions that use their trademarks and collect user | data, no matter how trivial. | James-Livesey wrote: | > A copy of each and every version of any software code You | have developed or used to interact with the Facebook websites | and/or services, including any libraries, frameworks, ... | | Couldn't one maliciously comply with this particular order? | Especially 'used to interact with', which could be | interpreted as 'used in the process of development to | interact with'. I feel like if I were them, I would in this | case send a whole copy of the Linux source code (seeing my PC | runs it); Chromium (to 'interact' with Facebook); WebKit (or | similar browser-side dependencies that your extension somehow | interacts with) etc. Not forgetting to send every version of | the aforementioned software! | | Might be bending the rules just a bit (/s), but hey, at least | I'm on the safe side by including absolutely everything! | jjulius wrote: | >Facebook doesn't take kindly to people making extensions | that ... collect user data, no matter how trivial. | | The hypocrisy here is absolutely hilarious. | akersten wrote: | > He was also using Facebook's trademarks | | Seems like the only potentially legally valid part of it. And | even then, if he's not misrepresenting his product as made by | Facebook (just "compatible with Facebook" or "use while | you're on Facebook") I think it's still a stretch. Can a | cottage industry survive without ever being allowed to even | name the companion products for which the extension is | designed? | MereInterest wrote: | To my understanding, the original purpose of trademarks was | to protect the buyer. If I buy a bicycle listed as being | from X, I can expect that it was manufactured by X, or at | the very least endorsed by X (e.g. Kirkland products). If a | different manufacturer Y labels their product as X, then I | no longer have that certainty. | | But corporations have taken that and gone way too far on | it. If I describe a product as being "compatible with X" or | "fits on an X", that in no way makes a claim that it is | manufactured by X. Like how tv manufacturers should be able | to say "Perfect for watching the Super Bowl this weekend.", | but avoid doing so for fear of being sued. There's no | endorsement at all there, nor any dilution of the | trademark, and yet it gets treated as though the words | themselves are protected. | Nasrudith wrote: | I believe it is an implicit "you make them look shoddy" | if your product doesn't work after they change something. | Self-produced ones at least they can check for backward | compatibility but they have no way of guaranteeing any of | their changes would break any fly-by-night or obscure | adaptors. | | Rather overkill in practice for a legal doctrine. But I | can see their concern, and why a company would dislike it | over the sheer tech support call volume alone. Their | first response being "stop it!" makes sense in that | light. | | Open standards are a good way to prevent issues while | keeping both sides happy (notably it also keeps company | names out of it except in deniablenways such as say | listing GMail as an example of a POP3 user - it doesn't | equate the two). Open standards aren't automatic or free | though and there may easily be gaps because they never | thought to specify a given portion for interoperability. | topicseed wrote: | What if they don't reply _WITHIN 48 HOURS_? It 's a big | decision to take, would a judge later down the road look at | this in any way? | lelandfe wrote: | IANAL. You probably know this already, but C&D's are not | legal documents - just scare tactics. The result from | ignoring it for >48hrs would simply be Facebook | escalating... if they decided to. | | I have worked for places that have completely ignored C&D's | with no repercussions. | | That being said, Facebook can use this down the road as an | example of them providing ample warning and notice to the | developer - which, yes, is something that a judge would | consider. There just aren't, say, specific legal outcomes | to ignoring this C&D's (totally arbitrary) timeframe. | [deleted] | croes wrote: | Not so fast. What if you bought games in the Oculus store? You | can't just ban someone and remove his access to paid software | because of a browser extension. What about my computer, my | browser my rules? | 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: | > I hope there is no legal basis for this threat | | Does that really matter? If a malicious company like Facebook | wants to ruin your life and drown you in lawsuits, they are | able to do so. By the time it is determined that the person | under attack by Facebook is actually in the right, the damage | will be done. | NotPractical wrote: | If there is a legal basis for this threat, I guess most browser | extensions are at risk. | CosmicShadow wrote: | What I want to know is how do we keep making things worse for | Facebook? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Well we could all tell everyone we know about the extension. | Chuck it in your slacks #random | | Edit: I chucked elsewhere on social media and will slack it on | Monday. | 29athrowaway wrote: | "This is so upsetting. I am going to continue to use Facebook, | Instagram and Whatsapp, then buy an Oculus VR headset. That will | teach them" | | - Average Facebook user | annadane wrote: | I don't like this line of reasoning and you see it all the time | on Reddit: "Oh, you dislike Facebook but I bet you still use | Instagram lol!" | | The existence of a company being scummy shouldn't lead to | consumers being blamed. This is ridiculous. If anything it | should be a GREATER cause for regulators to break them up | immediately ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-08 23:00 UTC)