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> Say I am running a social network. I want to allow my users to give access to their own damn data to third parties. You don't. There is no safe way to do thi

> Say I am running a social network. I want to allow my users to give access to their own damn data to third parties. You don't. There is no safe way to do this, but more to the point, this is not something that your users want to actually do. If people want to give their data to a "third party" they can just go directly to that party and give it their data. Your permission or participation is not required. If you'd like to try it, start a social network and then start serving big dialogue boxes that say "Would you like to give all your personal data to a third party? Click here to get started." Note that Facebook worked very hard to do the exact opposite of serving that kind of clear dialogue. > I want them to be able to use third party chat UIs. Why? If you are running a chat system, why not just build the UI you want your chat system to have? This doesn't even make sense to me. I think maybe what you mean is that you want your users to be able to interact with 3rd party services through your chat UI? In which case the answer is to build an API for that which properly handles data and privacy. "Let this 3rd party do everything with a user account that a user can do" is a shitty, lazy and/or deliberately permissive way to deliver that feature. Note that Apple and Whatsapp, among others, provide 3rd party chat integrations without letting the 3rd parties read every message in the user's archive.

miracle2k 8y ago
Sure there is. Of course people want to use third party email or chat clients. In fact, this is in many ways the bete noir of Hacker News whenever a related subject comes up, just today Slack blocking Iranian user. People point out that Slack, and Google Talk, used to have to speak Jabber. So I type my password into a Jabber WebClient, and I have just shared all the messages you sent me with a third party. It is literally this thing. People who used the Nylas N1 client, or now, any app that uses the Nylas APIs are sharing all their email messages, contacts and calendars with a third party - this includes your messages and your telephone number.

miracle2k 8y ago

Sure there is. Of course people want to use third party email or chat clients. In fact, this is in many ways the bete noir of Hacker News whenever a related subject comes up, just today Slack blocking Iranian user. People point out that Slack, and Google Talk, used to have to speak Jabber. So I type my password into a Jabber WebClient, and I have just shared all the messages you sent me with a third party. It is literally this thing. People who used the Nylas N1 client, or now, any app that uses the Nylas APIs are sharing all their email messages, contacts and calendars with a third party - this includes your messages and your telephone number.