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I know the article is old, but the author showed a severe lack of common sense. Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account, then

I know the article is old, but the author showed a severe lack of common sense. Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account, then it is as 'at risk' as if you only kept on the hard-drive of your ageing laptop that you bought on discount in Walmart/ASDA ten years ago. This oft quoted adage also applies: 'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product'. The author seemed to think that Facebook owe him for some reason, and that he is fully justified/entitled in begging for his account back. Facebook is a private company who most of the time let the general public mingle in the lobby of its HQ[1]. As their lobby is still their property, they can refuse entry whenever they like. Something needs to be done about Facebook's near dominance of the Social Media space. If we let this run unchecked for much longer, there won't be an 'internet' - just millions of stale, abandoned websites all simply redirecting you to their respective Facebook Pages instead. It also wouldn't surprise me if at some point, new phones will be released where the browser app is no longer installed by default, but the Facebook app is. Even if this happened today, most non-technical users wouldn't even notice. --- [1] Because the lobby is full of adverts from Facebook's business partners and Facebook gets a nice cut if you buy something being advertised.

kolinko 9y ago
In theory that's where consumer protection and antitrust laws should kick in.
gizmo686 9y ago
There is another option. Consider sites like Facebook to be public accommodations, and create new laws regulating acceptable behavior of digital public accommodations. Facebook is a significant part of our society. It is not clear why it should be free democratic oversight.
- bduerst 9y ago
  They'll just title themselves as a "private club", like other organizations that wanted to continue discriminating after public accommodations were enacted. And in all fairness, FB originally started that way when you needed a university email address to join.
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    As long as we are updating the definition of public accommodation, we can also define the "private". My point was more that it is not unreasonable to look to regulations to deal with Facebook. The regulations do not necessarily have to be "public accommodations", I just cited them as the most relevant legal concept I was aware of.
    - jakeogh 9y ago
      I am more than happy to give Facebook as much rope as it needs. No worries though, other sovereign entities are trying to do what you suggest, so we get the best of both worlds. It's a wonderful demonstration of why nation-states should defend their independence.
vivekd 9y ago
Fair enough, still though, you'd think someone at facebook would have returned his photos and videos if he had requested, just to be nice. We are moving to a cloud based world, and I'd hate for it to be a world where people rely widely on cloud based services and risk losing their vital documents if they get banned from a given service.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  We're there, and have been for years. The employees aren't paid to be "nice", and if you don't have a contract with the company storing your data, then you're making a mistake relying on them. Rely on them for convenient access to your files...but not as your prime copy, or your essential backup. You use their services at their whim.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >The employees aren't paid to be "nice" // Why not? Our UK micro-business's (PLC's) internal motto is "be nice" seems to work well.
    - to3m 9y ago
      How many billions is your UK micro business worth?
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Lol, yes, of course if it makes lots of money then it doesn't need to be run morally or with any degree of humanity. /s
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      It doesn't mesh well with the corporate amorality that large organizations seem to tend toward in pursuit of profit. > Lol, yes, of course if it makes lots of money then it doesn't need to be run morally or with any degree of humanity. /s Why did you add the sarcasm tag? The proof's in the pudding: When Facebook throws people off their platform, the first, second, and third reactions of the victims seem to be trying to climb back on. Apparently, they don't "need" to be run morally.
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product' This adage is beginning to show its age - virtually all services that can get their hands on your data end up selling it nowadays, whether you pay them or not. I heard even some restaurant chains sell data on who they served and when.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Indeed. It's time to simply say: in surveillance capitalism, you are the product.
  - 659087 9y ago
    The product in a factory farm kind of way.
  - rexpop 9y ago
    Mm, no. The user is not the product. The user is labor. Our labor is to collect information about Facebook's customers' customers.
- eveningcoffee 9y ago
  We need laws that will put real chill in the people who try to get away with something like this.
  - rexpop 9y ago
    How do you mean? Laws that prevent services from targeting ads and content based on their users' identities?
    - eveningcoffee 9y ago
      Exactly. And people behind it should be afraid of very real time behind the bars.
flexie 9y ago
Law is full of regulations and court precedents that restrict what people can do to their private property. Here on HN people seem to think that private property is like a subclass in python where the owner is free to define whatever method or property he wants and overwrite rules inherited from the society superclass. It's not. Landlords cannot just evict renters based on the landlord's own terms of service, not even a renter's non-paying children or girlfriend with whom the landlord didn't contract, and not even the renter himself although the stopped paying: The landlord needs to follow the rules of society, go through a bailiff's court or follow similar strict procedures defined in society to ensure that mandatory law is followed. Not everybody can set up a medical clinic on their private property, even if they offer their services for free. TV stations in many European countries can't show hidden ads in programmes and cannot show ads for kids for certain products. Even though the viewers didn't pay. Even though they are free not to watch. In most places landowners cannot freely decide to do what they want with their land, like building a factory, without taking into consideration zoning laws and without hearing the neighbors or wider community as well. For millennia, what we today call criminal laws, have applied on private property as well. You can't just hit somebody in the face because they are in your house and the terms on the door clearly says that you can. Think that's ridiculous? Well, it used to be that restaurants in America could chose to serve whites only. It was the choice of the property owner. Until it wasn't. Courts and congress decided that such practices were so despicable that the general interest of non-discrimination outweighed the interest in business owners getting to decide for themselves. Same with businesses hiring men only. Today most of us regard it as obvious that non discrimination laws trump the interest of private owners. A few decades ago, most people thought the owner could choose freely whom to hire. I hope we will start regulating the new advertising industry comprised of social networks and search engines more tightly.
- userbinator 9y ago
  You can't just hit somebody in the face because they are in your house and the terms on the door clearly says that you can. This may be worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
  - 9y ago
chris_wot 9y ago
But there was no reasoning given as to why he had his account disabled. Facebook is now so ubiquitous that it is in danger of becoming an essential service.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
As usual, there's an eerily appropriate xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1150/ https://xkcd.com/1150/.
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  "Did Chad ask you with a big fat grin on his face to put everything that matters to you in this awesome garage which he built solely for the purpose of 'helping' people show off and connect without having to know how to build shelves? No? Does he arbitrarily kick some out, and let others stay? Yes? Then this cartoon doesn't apply at all." It's not about business or legality, it's about being a dick or not, or, as demonstrated here, about being a coward or not when someone's being a dick to your friend. Of course, seeing how hard Facebook and other middlemen try to insert themselves into fucking everything, it's about a bit more than just being a dick, but it's pointless to discuss the ocean before we're clear about what is the water drop and what is the sophistry.
NuDinNou 9y ago
> Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account That's not what a back up is. Facebook can be a backup for your photos.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  > Facebook can be a backup for your photos. Nonsense. Try getting the originals out of Facebook.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Easy enough if you're in the EU, where we have laws about this sort of thing.
    - Crespyl 9y ago
      That seems strange. Is there a law mandating that all image hosts allow recovering the exact original image? That seems... impractical for a lot of use cases.
      - lmm 9y ago
        No, any organization that stores personal data has to allow you to recover that data though.
  - rexpop 9y ago
    https://www.facebook.com/settings https://www.facebook.com/settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data.
    - rootusrootus 9y ago
      Just did exactly that. Thanks!
- ivanche 9y ago
  It can't be. Try to upload some hi-res photo and then download it from FB. Now check the resolution of that downloaded photo.
intoverflow2 9y ago
> Something needs to be done about Facebook's near dominance of the Social Media space Not gonna stop now, they just have the money to buy market share. If people had jumped ship after the Insta acquire then it could have been a blow to them wasting all that money on a dead space but nah people still kept using it and fell for it because they didn't change things right away and now Instagram is a mess of ads and stolen features and the creepy data sharing from FB is oozing in through friend "suggestions".
lyra_comms 9y ago
We're on it :)
chrismcb 9y ago
You are right in that Facebook is not a backup, even if it was a paid service. But the old age doesn't apply. While we may be the product we are also the client. Fb does have a certain responsibility. Especially when they are encouraging people to user the platform for just what she as using it for. Ignoring any legal ramifications, it is in fb's best interests to help her because they need people like her. If we assume that we are the product, fb needs to do a certain amount of work to keep the product happy, or it goes away. I'm not saying they have to bend over backwards to help everyone, but at some point the backlash could hurt them... Yeah it probably won't, but it is still good business sense to help your "product"

kolinko 9y ago

In theory that's where consumer protection and antitrust laws should kick in.

gizmo686 9y ago

There is another option. Consider sites like Facebook to be public accommodations, and create new laws regulating acceptable behavior of digital public accommodations. Facebook is a significant part of our society. It is not clear why it should be free democratic oversight.

bduerst 9y ago
They'll just title themselves as a "private club", like other organizations that wanted to continue discriminating after public accommodations were enacted. And in all fairness, FB originally started that way when you needed a university email address to join.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  As long as we are updating the definition of public accommodation, we can also define the "private". My point was more that it is not unreasonable to look to regulations to deal with Facebook. The regulations do not necessarily have to be "public accommodations", I just cited them as the most relevant legal concept I was aware of.
  - jakeogh 9y ago
    I am more than happy to give Facebook as much rope as it needs. No worries though, other sovereign entities are trying to do what you suggest, so we get the best of both worlds. It's a wonderful demonstration of why nation-states should defend their independence.

vivekd 9y ago

Fair enough, still though, you'd think someone at facebook would have returned his photos and videos if he had requested, just to be nice. We are moving to a cloud based world, and I'd hate for it to be a world where people rely widely on cloud based services and risk losing their vital documents if they get banned from a given service.

khedoros1 9y ago
We're there, and have been for years. The employees aren't paid to be "nice", and if you don't have a contract with the company storing your data, then you're making a mistake relying on them. Rely on them for convenient access to your files...but not as your prime copy, or your essential backup. You use their services at their whim.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  >The employees aren't paid to be "nice" // Why not? Our UK micro-business's (PLC's) internal motto is "be nice" seems to work well.
  - to3m 9y ago
    How many billions is your UK micro business worth?
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Lol, yes, of course if it makes lots of money then it doesn't need to be run morally or with any degree of humanity. /s
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    It doesn't mesh well with the corporate amorality that large organizations seem to tend toward in pursuit of profit. > Lol, yes, of course if it makes lots of money then it doesn't need to be run morally or with any degree of humanity. /s Why did you add the sarcasm tag? The proof's in the pudding: When Facebook throws people off their platform, the first, second, and third reactions of the victims seem to be trying to climb back on. Apparently, they don't "need" to be run morally.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

'If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product' This adage is beginning to show its age - virtually all services that can get their hands on your data end up selling it nowadays, whether you pay them or not. I heard even some restaurant chains sell data on who they served and when.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Indeed. It's time to simply say: in surveillance capitalism, you are the product.
- 659087 9y ago
  The product in a factory farm kind of way.
- rexpop 9y ago
  Mm, no. The user is not the product. The user is labor. Our labor is to collect information about Facebook's customers' customers.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
We need laws that will put real chill in the people who try to get away with something like this.
- rexpop 9y ago
  How do you mean? Laws that prevent services from targeting ads and content based on their users' identities?
  - eveningcoffee 9y ago
    Exactly. And people behind it should be afraid of very real time behind the bars.

flexie 9y ago

Law is full of regulations and court precedents that restrict what people can do to their private property. Here on HN people seem to think that private property is like a subclass in python where the owner is free to define whatever method or property he wants and overwrite rules inherited from the society superclass. It's not. Landlords cannot just evict renters based on the landlord's own terms of service, not even a renter's non-paying children or girlfriend with whom the landlord didn't contract, and not even the renter himself although the stopped paying: The landlord needs to follow the rules of society, go through a bailiff's court or follow similar strict procedures defined in society to ensure that mandatory law is followed. Not everybody can set up a medical clinic on their private property, even if they offer their services for free. TV stations in many European countries can't show hidden ads in programmes and cannot show ads for kids for certain products. Even though the viewers didn't pay. Even though they are free not to watch. In most places landowners cannot freely decide to do what they want with their land, like building a factory, without taking into consideration zoning laws and without hearing the neighbors or wider community as well. For millennia, what we today call criminal laws, have applied on private property as well. You can't just hit somebody in the face because they are in your house and the terms on the door clearly says that you can. Think that's ridiculous? Well, it used to be that restaurants in America could chose to serve whites only. It was the choice of the property owner. Until it wasn't. Courts and congress decided that such practices were so despicable that the general interest of non-discrimination outweighed the interest in business owners getting to decide for themselves. Same with businesses hiring men only. Today most of us regard it as obvious that non discrimination laws trump the interest of private owners. A few decades ago, most people thought the owner could choose freely whom to hire. I hope we will start regulating the new advertising industry comprised of social networks and search engines more tightly.

userbinator 9y ago
You can't just hit somebody in the face because they are in your house and the terms on the door clearly says that you can. This may be worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
- 9y ago

chris_wot 9y ago

But there was no reasoning given as to why he had his account disabled. Facebook is now so ubiquitous that it is in danger of becoming an essential service.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

As usual, there's an eerily appropriate xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1150/ https://xkcd.com/1150/.

wordupmaking 9y ago
"Did Chad ask you with a big fat grin on his face to put everything that matters to you in this awesome garage which he built solely for the purpose of 'helping' people show off and connect without having to know how to build shelves? No? Does he arbitrarily kick some out, and let others stay? Yes? Then this cartoon doesn't apply at all." It's not about business or legality, it's about being a dick or not, or, as demonstrated here, about being a coward or not when someone's being a dick to your friend. Of course, seeing how hard Facebook and other middlemen try to insert themselves into fucking everything, it's about a bit more than just being a dick, but it's pointless to discuss the ocean before we're clear about what is the water drop and what is the sophistry.

NuDinNou 9y ago

> Facebook is NOT a backup. If you only keep stuff in your Facebook account That's not what a back up is. Facebook can be a backup for your photos.

pmlnr 9y ago
> Facebook can be a backup for your photos. Nonsense. Try getting the originals out of Facebook.
- lmm 9y ago
  Easy enough if you're in the EU, where we have laws about this sort of thing.
  - Crespyl 9y ago
    That seems strange. Is there a law mandating that all image hosts allow recovering the exact original image? That seems... impractical for a lot of use cases.
    - lmm 9y ago
      No, any organization that stores personal data has to allow you to recover that data though.
- rexpop 9y ago
  https://www.facebook.com/settings https://www.facebook.com/settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data.
  - rootusrootus 9y ago
    Just did exactly that. Thanks!
ivanche 9y ago
It can't be. Try to upload some hi-res photo and then download it from FB. Now check the resolution of that downloaded photo.

intoverflow2 9y ago

> Something needs to be done about Facebook's near dominance of the Social Media space Not gonna stop now, they just have the money to buy market share. If people had jumped ship after the Insta acquire then it could have been a blow to them wasting all that money on a dead space but nah people still kept using it and fell for it because they didn't change things right away and now Instagram is a mess of ads and stolen features and the creepy data sharing from FB is oozing in through friend "suggestions".

lyra_comms 9y ago

We're on it :)

chrismcb 9y ago

You are right in that Facebook is not a backup, even if it was a paid service. But the old age doesn't apply. While we may be the product we are also the client. Fb does have a certain responsibility. Especially when they are encouraging people to user the platform for just what she as using it for. Ignoring any legal ramifications, it is in fb's best interests to help her because they need people like her. If we assume that we are the product, fb needs to do a certain amount of work to keep the product happy, or it goes away. I'm not saying they have to bend over backwards to help everyone, but at some point the backlash could hurt them... Yeah it probably won't, but it is still good business sense to help your "product"