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The New York Times should be ashamed of itself. Facebook let companies like Apple integrate with their platform. To do so, these companies sent the same sequen
by miracle2k 8y ago
The New York Times should be ashamed of itself. Facebook let companies like Apple integrate with their platform.
To do so, these companies sent the same sequence of bytes from your mobile phone to the Facebook server, as the Facebook app does, or as any person can do. I can write my own Facebook app today, and there is nothing that Facebook can do about it, except sue me.
THAT IS A GOOD THING. LITERALLY FIVE MINUTES AGO THE COMMUNITY WAS FIGHTING IN THE COURTS FOR PACKAGES SENT OVER THE INTERNET TO NOT BE CRIMINALIZED.
Remember the whole thing about violating the terms of services of a company which forbids scraping making you a criminal hacker?
The only thing Facebook said to Apple is: Let's make a deal, we will not sue you, you put our logo into your phone, also we promise not to break your app.
No data was given to anyone! This is literally my iPhone/Samsung/Blackberry running an app that gives ME access to MY Facebook data.
It doesn't even go to Blackberry's server! The nerve of people to pretend as if the data ON MY PHONE is someone in the hands of a third party, as if my phone really belongs to the manufacturer. Again, we used to be fighting for the idea that these devices should belong be unlocked, should be under our control. Now you guys pretend that data my phone downloads from Facebook is somehow a violation because I decided to use an app that someone else wrote.
There is no possible universe in which that is bad. Think about the ramifications of these new ethics that people suggest here.
- detaro 8y agoThe NYT article says that Facebook told them that some partners stored that data on their servers. I note that this Facebook rebuttal does not refute that point in regard to the device partners. (Which could be a possible confusion or misleading quote in the NYT article, conflating all partners with the device integration partners, so I'd like it to be clarified somehow)
- miracle2k 8y agoSure. I still think that is fair enough, in particular since there are actual contracts involved here. However, as you say, it is not clear at all. If that is the problem, the New York Times should write an article about that, not 5000 words of all kinds of insinuations, with the goal, it would seem, to generate the maximum amount of confusion, least amount of education, and thus the most amount of outrage.
- cm2012 8y agoDeveloper communities which pride themselves on their reason would rather not look at paltry things like details when a company they don't like is being criticized.
- Djvacto 8y agoForgive what may be a not-fully-informed question/opinion, but isn't the issue that 3rd parties were able to see private information? Not public information? Like you send the same sequence of bytes that they do, but the difference is that it should be different depending on who is sending the bytes, no?
- miracle2k 8y agoThe app that was written by Apple, or by Blackberry, had to ask you for your password first (or possible use a different kind of authentication were you had to allow access). Without that, they could not send the "right bytes", and thus, the Facebook server would not send back any private information. In other words, it worked exactly like the Facebook app written by Facebook itself.