8 ms·

Facebook communication and lawsuit documents: 7000 pages leaked

113 points by pmlnr 7y ago

FillardMillmore 7y ago
> Six4Three’s lawsuit alleges that Facebook made threats to shut down developers’ access to data unless, for example, they sold their companies to Facebook for a price under their market value, spent large amounts advertising with Facebook, or agreed to feed all of their data back to the company. It's not like we haven't heard about this stuff before, but these documents will likely make a stronger anti-trust case if that's where the government wants to take it. I'm sure they've been keeping a seat warm for Zuck in preparation for his next Senate hearing.
- ncr100 7y ago
  Agreed, anti-trust action seems in FB's future - FB called this tactic "the Switcheroo" internally: > Initially, Zuckerberg promised developers that they would be able to operate on a level playing field with Facebook, before quietly removing their access to mission-critical application programming interfaces (APIs) – a plan dubbed the Switcheroo – once the company had grown its user base, the documents reveal.
- hanspeter 7y ago
  > Facebook made threats to shut down developers’ access to data unless they sold their companies to Facebook How does this even make sense? "We will only give your company data if your company is not your company"? Sounds more likely that they were denied access generally and then separately had talks about acquisition.
  - elliekelly 7y ago
    You can sell your company and still retain an ownership interest. If you owned a company and data access was critical to profitability then Facebook has a lot of leverage to "encourage" you to sell: you can either own 100% of the company without access to the data or own 10% of the company (or whatever percent Zuckerberg was generous enough to allow you to retain) with access to the data.
  - koolba 7y ago
    My read is that it’s referring to the other companies’ (possessive) data. You only get Facebook data if you agree to send them any non-Facebook data you’ve collected.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
I really don't understand the prevailing narrative about this lawsuit. Six4Three ran an app for downloading all your friends' bikini photos, and I don't think there's any serious argument that it's a bad thing for Facebook to shut that down. Why should we trust their selective leaks?
- pmlnr 7y ago
  You're talking about 3 things. 1: whether or not the leak is selective, we don't know. Given it was a sealed doc in a lawsuit vault, it might not be that selective, and it very much looks like they may not even be the people who leaked it. 2: the morality of the app was never the topic. 3: Facebook has been doing switch & bait for too many years, even with one's own data. See https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ for more details on this. It's the same story as Twitter: yes, come, develop apps, spread our influence, then board up all the resources. This needs to stop, both from an anti-trust perspective and with developer awareness.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    What you call a bait and switch, I would argue is an honest lesson the industry has learned. Nobody realized, in the early days, just how easy it was to abuse a social network API. We don't know for sure whether the leak is selective, but Facebook claims it is. The morality of the plaintiffs seems very relevant to evaluating whether you believe that.
    - pmlnr 7y ago
      > We don't know for sure whether the leak is selective, but Facebook claims it is. Well then, all they need to do is leak more :)
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        I'd sure like to see more leaks, but I'm sure you understand why it's unfair to expect a company that has its documents stolen to respond by publishing a bunch more of them.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bemmu 7y ago
Hacker News was mentioned in these twice, first as the source that discovered a bug, and second as a place to reach developers for article promotion.

113 points by pmlnr 7y ago

> Six4Three’s lawsuit alleges that Facebook made threats to shut down developers’ access to data unless, for example, they sold their companies to Facebook for a price under their market value, spent large amounts advertising with Facebook, or agreed to feed all of their data back to the company. It's not like we haven't heard about this stuff before, but these documents will likely make a stronger anti-trust case if that's where the government wants to take it. I'm sure they've been keeping a seat warm for Zuck in preparation for his next Senate hearing.

ncr100 7y ago
Agreed, anti-trust action seems in FB's future - FB called this tactic "the Switcheroo" internally: > Initially, Zuckerberg promised developers that they would be able to operate on a level playing field with Facebook, before quietly removing their access to mission-critical application programming interfaces (APIs) – a plan dubbed the Switcheroo – once the company had grown its user base, the documents reveal.
hanspeter 7y ago
> Facebook made threats to shut down developers’ access to data unless they sold their companies to Facebook How does this even make sense? "We will only give your company data if your company is not your company"? Sounds more likely that they were denied access generally and then separately had talks about acquisition.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  You can sell your company and still retain an ownership interest. If you owned a company and data access was critical to profitability then Facebook has a lot of leverage to "encourage" you to sell: you can either own 100% of the company without access to the data or own 10% of the company (or whatever percent Zuckerberg was generous enough to allow you to retain) with access to the data.
- koolba 7y ago
  My read is that it’s referring to the other companies’ (possessive) data. You only get Facebook data if you agree to send them any non-Facebook data you’ve collected.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

I really don't understand the prevailing narrative about this lawsuit. Six4Three ran an app for downloading all your friends' bikini photos, and I don't think there's any serious argument that it's a bad thing for Facebook to shut that down. Why should we trust their selective leaks?

pmlnr 7y ago
You're talking about 3 things. 1: whether or not the leak is selective, we don't know. Given it was a sealed doc in a lawsuit vault, it might not be that selective, and it very much looks like they may not even be the people who leaked it. 2: the morality of the app was never the topic. 3: Facebook has been doing switch & bait for too many years, even with one's own data. See https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ for more details on this. It's the same story as Twitter: yes, come, develop apps, spread our influence, then board up all the resources. This needs to stop, both from an anti-trust perspective and with developer awareness.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  What you call a bait and switch, I would argue is an honest lesson the industry has learned. Nobody realized, in the early days, just how easy it was to abuse a social network API. We don't know for sure whether the leak is selective, but Facebook claims it is. The morality of the plaintiffs seems very relevant to evaluating whether you believe that.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    > We don't know for sure whether the leak is selective, but Facebook claims it is. Well then, all they need to do is leak more :)
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I'd sure like to see more leaks, but I'm sure you understand why it's unfair to expect a company that has its documents stolen to respond by publishing a bunch more of them.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bemmu 7y ago

Hacker News was mentioned in these twice, first as the source that discovered a bug, and second as a place to reach developers for article promotion.