7 ms·
No, you are wrong, this is a pretty egregious mistake. They defined device makers as service providers, and then allowed them to do things that even third parti
by Latteland 8y ago
No, you are wrong, this is a pretty egregious mistake. They defined device makers as service providers, and then allowed them to do things that even third parties weren't allowed. Yet they claimed they shut that stuff off to third parties (so they lied by omission). "No, we don't allow third parties anymore to do that kind of stuff" (but there's this large group that can do it, but we aren't calling them third parties). This wasn't just another way to get at the data. The NYT article goes into some detail about what they allowed them to do.
- hackinthebochs 8y ago>They defined device makers as service providers, and then allowed them to do things that even third parties weren't allowed. Because they're not third parties. Third parties are anyone off the street that meets some minimal requirements. It's like the distinction between third party and second party releases on video game consoles. Second party releases are extensions of the first party publisher because of the special access and extra scrutiny they get. The difference in this case is that this "special access" is apparently no different than what you get from the website through scraping HTML, just in a more convenient manner.
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y agoThe user is the second party dude.
- closeparen 8y agoThe user doesn’t manipulate the EM spectrum with his mind, but through user agent hardware, firmware, and software. The client stack necessarily has the same access he does.
- thinkling 8y agoYes, so it might be OK for software written by a third party to access FB with the second party's authentication and privileges, when running on the second party's device. But that doesn't make it OK for that data to be stored on the third party's servers or be otherwise available to the third party.
- seanhunter 8y agoThat's not what third parties means. Third parties means parties other than the service provider and the user.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hackinthebochs 8y agoThird party has never meant anyone who is not the first party. Special agreements between companies alter this status.
- zaroth 8y agoThis is like saying that Chrome, Edge or Firefox are “third parties”. Embedding user agent functionality into the OS is not the same as third party access. Talk to me when a device manufacturer is caught exfiltrating this user data off the phone and then aim your pitchforks at them.
- cyberpunk0 8y agoGoogle, Firefox, and Edge are not Facebook so yes they are third party.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zaroth 8y agoThat’s not what the term means. User agents which render Facebook UI components are not “third parties” to my Facebook data anymore than my monitor manufacturer is a third party to my Facebook data while I am viewing the pixels in the screen.
- hvis 8y ago> my monitor manufacturer is a third party to my Facebook data It actually is. Your monitor, on the other hand, can be considered a part of yourself for the purposes of viewing the data. If it somehow sends sensitive information back to its manufacturer, thought, that would be a new, different can of worms.
- fjsolwmv 8y agoThey are the second party -- the user. Facebook never has any interaction with the human user, they only interact with the user agent.
- cjhopman 8y agoAnd does it upset you that when a user signs into facebook in one of these browsers, facebook allows the browser access to that user's data and even data of that user's friends? Even when those friends have explicitly disabled sharing of facebook data with third parties?
- laythea 8y agoSo they basically relied on us not reading the small print. And we didn't. There should be laws against small print technicalities like that.