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Remember the heady days when Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, et all had almost open access to their 'social graphs', allowing people to grab content from one place,

Remember the heady days when Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, et all had almost open access to their 'social graphs', allowing people to grab content from one place, post to another, build connections using tools like Yahoo Pipes? I sometimes long for simpler days when companies were more open with their data. Didn't Netflix even have a more open api back in the day that you could rank and sort, and see new release dates, etc?

nl 6y ago
You realise what the most successful thing built on top of that open social graph was, right? Cambridge Analytica.
- bhashkarsharma 6y ago
  The issue there was collection of massive amounts of public data by Facebook. Open data APIs can be used to build nice things, if the data isn't user information.
  - nl 6y ago
    No, it was Cambridge Analytica using the old FB social graph API ("Open Graph") to build a network of people that they could make predictions on. The app "This is your digital life" let people do a psychological profile linked to their FB profile. The Open Graph API then gave Cambridge Analytica to (some of) their friend's data as well, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-a-timeline-of-the-data-hijacking-scandal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica... https://medium.com/tow-center/the-graph-api-key-points-in-the-facebook-and-cambridge-analytica-debacle-b69fe692d747 https://medium.com/tow-center/the-graph-api-key-points-in-th... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      The problem here is that we don’t really have a consensus on what should happen if people share the information they know about you with others without asking you, not that we should not have API access to our own content on social networks.
      - nl 6y ago
        No particular argument there - just noting that the original comment was calling for return to "the heady days when Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, et all had almost open access to their 'social graphs'". Turns out that wasn't a great idea. Disappointing because it's what I wanted too.

nl 6y ago

You realise what the most successful thing built on top of that open social graph was, right? Cambridge Analytica.

bhashkarsharma 6y ago
The issue there was collection of massive amounts of public data by Facebook. Open data APIs can be used to build nice things, if the data isn't user information.
- nl 6y ago
  No, it was Cambridge Analytica using the old FB social graph API ("Open Graph") to build a network of people that they could make predictions on. The app "This is your digital life" let people do a psychological profile linked to their FB profile. The Open Graph API then gave Cambridge Analytica to (some of) their friend's data as well, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-a-timeline-of-the-data-hijacking-scandal.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica... https://medium.com/tow-center/the-graph-api-key-points-in-the-facebook-and-cambridge-analytica-debacle-b69fe692d747 https://medium.com/tow-center/the-graph-api-key-points-in-th... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/ https://about.fb.com/news/2018/04/restricting-data-access/
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    The problem here is that we don’t really have a consensus on what should happen if people share the information they know about you with others without asking you, not that we should not have API access to our own content on social networks.
    - nl 6y ago
      No particular argument there - just noting that the original comment was calling for return to "the heady days when Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, et all had almost open access to their 'social graphs'". Turns out that wasn't a great idea. Disappointing because it's what I wanted too.