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So basically, your argument is that it's a dangerous attack on users' privacy for Facebook to allow users to view it through any app but their own, no matter ho

by makomk 8y ago

So basically, your argument is that it's a dangerous attack on users' privacy for Facebook to allow users to view it through any app but their own, no matter how strict their contracts with the app developers, even if those developers are big companies like Microsoft with a lot to lose if they get caught doing something malicious? That it's an attack on gay rights for the Facebook walled garden to not be maximally strict and absolute in its grip on what software people can use to interact with their friends on it? Because that's what we're talking about here: apps that allow users to access their Facebook accounts and interact with their friends through them. Not shady Zynga games or information-mining quizzes, but alternatives to the official Facebook app that are only allowed to "provide versions of the Facebook experience" and are created by major device manufacturers. I'm curious how Facebook's continued willingness to allow web access to people's private information fits into all this too. After all, the user's web browser has access to all this dangerous personal information about their friends, it can certainly do all kinds of malicious things with it, and Facebook doesn't even have any kind of contractual relationship with the browser developers preventing this. Given how many shady browser extensions are out there this is certainly being abused right now. Should Facebook take down their web version too in the name of protecting gay children?

dhimes 8y ago
So basically your argument is that corporations should be trusted to self-police, because they know that bad things would happen if they get caught misbehaving? Like, Microsoft would be destroyed if they were found to be sending users' information to their servers and the average user didn't realize it?
- systoll 8y ago
  Quite the opposite. The moment facebook provides a way for a person to use a device to view information, they've simultaneously produced something the device's OS could use to exfiltrate that information. There's nothing facebook can practically* implement to allow Windows Phone users to use Facebook while preventing Microsoft from exfiltrating data. Drop the API, and they can scrape webpages; it doesn't remove any fundamental barrier to information. If Facebook wanted/needed to limit access to this information from untrusted device manufacturers, a website is out of the question, and you couldn't just release a windows/android/linux app — you'd need to go per-manufacturer. This leaves pretty much everyone worse off. [though it'd be pretty great for Apple.] Users need to trust the manufacturer of the devices they use. There's room for regulation/enforcement to ensure that they can. But holding services responsible for vetting the platforms that can access their data makes open platforms like the web untenable, and doesn't fix anything. * Impractically, facebook could send and show encrypted data which can be decrypted by the user via pen & paper.

by makomk 8y ago

dhimes 8y ago

So basically your argument is that corporations should be trusted to self-police, because they know that bad things would happen if they get caught misbehaving? Like, Microsoft would be destroyed if they were found to be sending users' information to their servers and the average user didn't realize it?

systoll 8y ago
Quite the opposite. The moment facebook provides a way for a person to use a device to view information, they've simultaneously produced something the device's OS could use to exfiltrate that information. There's nothing facebook can practically* implement to allow Windows Phone users to use Facebook while preventing Microsoft from exfiltrating data. Drop the API, and they can scrape webpages; it doesn't remove any fundamental barrier to information. If Facebook wanted/needed to limit access to this information from untrusted device manufacturers, a website is out of the question, and you couldn't just release a windows/android/linux app — you'd need to go per-manufacturer. This leaves pretty much everyone worse off. [though it'd be pretty great for Apple.] Users need to trust the manufacturer of the devices they use. There's room for regulation/enforcement to ensure that they can. But holding services responsible for vetting the platforms that can access their data makes open platforms like the web untenable, and doesn't fix anything. * Impractically, facebook could send and show encrypted data which can be decrypted by the user via pen & paper.