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First. There is a difference between "texts" (SMS) and "notifications" (Apples own private system). Suing Facebook by confusing the courts on this difference

First. There is a difference between "texts" (SMS) and "notifications" (Apples own private system). Suing Facebook by confusing the courts on this difference is absolutely horrifying. I am no facebook fanboy, but push notifications should not be handled by the "Telephone Communications Privacy Act". W(who)tf wrote this confusing article. We engineers here have a responsibility to know the difference. I am sure lawyers are laughing over whiskey somewhere. "You see, Brickman had opted out of receiving texts from Facebook via the platform's notification settings." then later in the article "The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that Facebook's sending unauthorized text messages is a violation of the federal Telephone Communications Privacy Act (TCPA)."

atomical 10y ago
Why is the distinction important? I have heard people regularly confuse the two but now I'm wondering if it even matters outside of a technical discussion.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  The only difference of my head is because one is messages received over the network and the other is messages generated by your phone (which can certainly be from network messages, but could also be because you have arrived at your destination, reach your fitbit goal, etc).
jsmeaton 10y ago
No where in the article are notifications mentioned. Part of the law being used is that the text has to be delivered to a phone number so I'd be very surprised if this was about notifications. If this IS about sending notifications then I'd agree that it's very poor. However, if Facebook are sending SMS messages when the user has opted out then I think that a suit is probably fair enough.
Vendan 10y ago
Text message notifications are set via Facebook's notification settings page... so this all looks valid? Sounds like they opted out of getting text messages, and then still got one. Not sure where you are reading "push notifications" into this.
otterley 10y ago
The activity at issue in the suit is SMS text messaging, not IP push notifications.

atomical 10y ago

Why is the distinction important? I have heard people regularly confuse the two but now I'm wondering if it even matters outside of a technical discussion.

tomjen3 10y ago
The only difference of my head is because one is messages received over the network and the other is messages generated by your phone (which can certainly be from network messages, but could also be because you have arrived at your destination, reach your fitbit goal, etc).

jsmeaton 10y ago

No where in the article are notifications mentioned. Part of the law being used is that the text has to be delivered to a phone number so I'd be very surprised if this was about notifications. If this IS about sending notifications then I'd agree that it's very poor. However, if Facebook are sending SMS messages when the user has opted out then I think that a suit is probably fair enough.

Vendan 10y ago

Text message notifications are set via Facebook's notification settings page... so this all looks valid? Sounds like they opted out of getting text messages, and then still got one. Not sure where you are reading "push notifications" into this.

otterley 10y ago

The activity at issue in the suit is SMS text messaging, not IP push notifications.