11 ms·

Facebook sues two Chrome extension makers for scraping user data

164 points by dane-pgp 6y ago

dane-pgp 6y ago
I wonder if the court would rule differently if the extensions were designed to enable interoperability with other social networks. Admittedly it would be a rather awkward UX if you had to browse pages in FB before returning to your preferred social network to view the scraped data there.
worstenbrood 6y ago
Inserts spider-man pointing meme
- Spivak 6y ago
  This is going to forever be the disconnect between privacy advocates and companies handling user data. For FB/Google and other data stewards privacy means keeping your data safe from others because they consider themselves a trusted party.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    If not a trusted party, they perhaps more importantly consider it a competitive advantage that they'll defend my any means available.
    - arcturus17 6y ago
      What they tell the public - and even delude themselves with -, versus what really drives them.
  - esperent 6y ago
    What Facebook considers is not what matters though. They've shown time and time again that they are terrible stewards of people's private data. They should not be a trusted party, and Google isn't far behind. Being sympathetic to their point is view when it comes to privacy is entirely the wrong angle to take.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
ffpip 6y ago
Even amazon does this. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alexa-traffic-rank/cknebhggccemgcnbidipinkifmmegdel https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alexa-traffic-rank... 700k users
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Is there any evidence Amazon is scraping user profile data, friends lists, etc. with that? "Measuring traffic" and "harvesting data" aren't the same.
  - postalrat 6y ago
    It's advertised to scrape search queries. I assume it could be scraping other information as well. Is there any evidence it is not?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
muunbo 6y ago
In other news, the pot calls the kettle black
crazygringo 6y ago
This is actually fascinating, legally. What are they suing them for? Under what law or legal principle? A maker of extensions never agrees to Facebook's ToS in the first place, so there's no breach of contract. It would seem that only individual users could in theory be sued, though obviously Facebook would never do that because of the PR nightmare. IANAL, so I'm really curious if anyone thinks Facebook could win this in court? (Regardless of whether it works by threatening to drown the extension maker in legal costs.)
- extra88 6y ago
  > What are they suing them for? Under what law or legal principle? The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) allows for civil cases. The law prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization. This isn't a case of users knowingly using a tool to scrape data for their own use, the users installing the extension are, at most, mules, for the extension makers. Alternately, maybe copyright infringement. Some of the data are considered facts, that are not copyrightable (even in aggregate, in the U.S.) but at minimum, the actual content of ads scraped is copyrightable. There might be a question of whether Facebook has standing to sue over infringement of ads for other businesses but their ToS may cover some non-exclusive copyright to shared
  - stanrivers 6y ago
    How does the idea that while the user of the extension might agree, the friend group that is sharing the information that is being scraped has not consented? That seems to be an important difference, no?
    - extra88 6y ago
      Yes, there's harm to Facebook, the other users whose data is scraped, and probably to organizations advertising on Facebook. The masses of users and organizations are unlikely to be aware this is going on or to be able to organize and sue the extension makers. These extensions are made by shitty companies using shitty practices to make money. If current legal frameworks aren't well suited to deal with it, that doesn't make them any less shitty.
neves 6y ago
Really impressive is that the extensions are still in Chrome Store. Why didn't Facebook ask Google to remove them?
- gildas 6y ago
  They are not.
johnward 6y ago
For those that don't know, there was a public case about the legality of scraping involving HiQ and LinkedIn (https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linkedin-data-scraping-ruled-legal/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linke...) TL;DR; It was considered to be legal because HiQ were scraping public profiles. This case may be a little bit different because these scrapers seem to target both public and private data. Also see: https://medium.com/@tjwaterman99/web-scraping-is-now-legal-6bf0e5730a78 https://medium.com/@tjwaterman99/web-scraping-is-now-legal-6... (which mentions a facebook example very similar to this)
- beagle3 6y ago
  It is also different because the scrapers are acting as agents of individual users. Those individual users likely go against FBToS in doing so - but the browser extension maker is not a party to those ToS.
  - extra88 6y ago
    > the scrapers are acting as agents of individual users. According to the article, it's the reverse, the individual users are acting as paid agents of the scrapers, a proxy giving scrapers access to data through the users' access to Facebook.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      The extension is still impersonating or watching the user, with full permission from the user (acting as its agent, it's UserAgent even) - if anyone broke FB's ToS, it's the user, not the maker of the extension. I wonder what legal principle gives Facebook standing to sue the makers of the extension.
      - extra88 6y ago
        Even if the specific act of letting the extension run is the fault of each user and presumably means they each violated Facebook's ToS, they can probably sue the extension makers for bribing the users to violate the ToS. Each user only chooses to install the extension, the extension makers choose what data to scrape and I'm sure at least some of what's scraped truly belongs to Facebook, not their users or customers. If a Facebook account can be considered a technological barrier protecting intellectual property, they could sue under DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. The users installing the extension could be accomplices but they're not really the ones scraping and collecting the data.
fxtentacle 6y ago
Company scraping your data everywhere on the internet sues someone for scraping data on their part of the internet. ^_^ I hope that the judge will require Facebook to stop scraping themselves first, before they request others to stop it, too.
- djohnston 6y ago
  any sources on data that FB is scraping about you?
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    They had been scraping contacts from email inboxes and devices, IIRC
    - yuliyp 6y ago
      FB asks you explicitly if you want to upload your contacts as part of helping you find your friends. That's a far cry from "scraping your data everywhere on the internet" from the your grandparent post.
      - monadic2 6y ago
        Off-hand I suspect your contact book is more valuable than virtually anything publicly available on you. It's also entirely unnecessary to building a lookup-by-email or lookup-by-phone. I'm going to go ahead and say it's a much more evil practice than scraping.
      - pixl97 6y ago
        Not years ago they did not. Phones didn't even have security options to ask at that time.
  - junon 6y ago
    They scrape all of your contacts and create ghost profiles to better track connections of even people who do not use their services. Apple does this too. Well, did - not sure if they still do.
stanrivers 6y ago
This is interesting - instead of suing under the idea that scraping itself is wrong (courts have ruled that public information that you can get on websites can be scraped... I think it is something like 50%+ of web traffic in the U.S. is bot traffic), they are suggesting that scraping through a logged-in account is somehow different. If the user of the account consents to have the plugin installed on their computer and is made aware that the plugin will scrap this data, you could argue that there is nothing wrong here. However, people post on Facebook under the idea that the information they share will only be viewable by their friend group (or as dictated by their privacy settings). That's where this gets interesting... does the friend group of the person with the plugin have any rights to privacy that dictate what the person with the plugin can do with their data? If I take a picture of a newsfeed, for example, that has information my friends have posted, and share that somehow - am I violating their privacy legally? If not, how is this different? Will be interesting to follow this one.
- frenchyatwork 6y ago
  This is also interesting, because people (mostly my friends) also use Facebook as a tool to share pictures and other PII about me without my consent. In that regard, I don't know if there's a clear difference between Facebook and these extensions.
- devit 6y ago
  Pretty sure that either the user is not aware at all of the scraping, or anyway the scraping is not done in the user's interest and the user is not in a position to fully understand the implications, so it is a clearly malicious operation. In other words, they are abusing the user's trust to access the user's private data for their own profit, hence defrauding the user, and engaging in unauthorized access to the data shared between the user and Facebook without either party's full informed consent.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    I don't think facebook is serving ads in the users interest and the user doesn't understand the implications either. The user has to understand that there's no free lunch.
kerng 6y ago
This is funny, its like Facebook is suing itself - what a strange world we live in.
ballenf 6y ago
The gall of FB is amazing considering how recently they did the exact same thing: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ That's where FB paid teens to install a root cert on phones that tracked every thing the users did for market research. And then paid them for it.
- yuliyp 6y ago
  What? the Atlas thing is recording what a set of people do, passively. These extensions are actively scraping extra data from web sites beyond what the user is doing.
stevenicr 6y ago
I've wondered if something like this was coming for honey/joinhoney extension.. Sure pulling info from PortalX that us public is on thing - but what if Amazaon starts adding coupon codes for logged in users only? or even if not logged in, but recognized user - adds special promo price for doing thing Y.. at that point they are scraping non-public data. They would also be using that data for other purposes than just the single user who is accessing it - most likely.. I find the lack of privacy discussing in the joinhoney ads I've heard to be a bit distressing personally. Just looked at their privacy policy, and I wonder if "Honey does not track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that is not a retail website (a site where you can shop and make a purchase)" Is purposefully trying put into user's mines, retail, you know like home depot, bed bath, etc.. but the way it's written can include online retail portals.. but with "(a site where you can shop and make a purchase)"" added as a qualifier - wouldn't this include pornhub and similar places? Fingers crossed the browser makers will include on-off toggles for extensions soon - similar to how uBlock origin has - would be great to have a whitelist list of sites that I could have my browser remind me that I can turn on SpyShoppingExtensionToCheck - then auto turn off when leaving set list.. I avoided so many chrome extensions that said 'perms to view / change all web pages/ - even though I may have really wanted to use them on blankTube and yaddaTube - I didn't want them reading all web pages, and the current UI for turning off and on is not optimal imho.
akersten 6y ago
Facebook should lose this one. Secret shopping isn't illegal, and using tools to secret shop isn't illegal either. Going after camera manufacturers because they are tools used to secret shop certainly isn't illegal, even if the camera was called the "SecretShopper 3000" and paid you to do it. The users on the other hand, if they were unaware of what the extensions were doing in exchange for that money, might have a case against the extension manufacturers. But how could Facebook possibly have standing? Not a lawyer, the above are feelings.
SimeVidas 6y ago
What does scraping user data from Facebook mean? Deleting it?
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  Scraping != Scrapping. One is acquiring data on a large scale, the other one is throwing data in the trash.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
shajznnckfke 6y ago
If people are going to be mad at Facebook for allowing Cambridge Analytica to get access to user data by tricking users into providing access to their data on Facebook by installing apps, they really ought to support Facebook in the effort to block these entities who are pulling the same scheme with chrome extensions.
- tqi 6y ago
  Yeah it's interesting to me that people are disregarding the parallels. Is Facebook responsible for keeping your (and your friends) data out of 3rd party hands or not? Maybe if the makers of these extensions were affiliated with GOP PACs... EDIT: Also to be clear, I do think it is Facebooks job/responsibility/obligation
  - Reelin 6y ago
    > Is Facebook responsible for keeping your (and your friends) data out of 3rd party hands or not? They are responsible for the activity that they directly facilitate on their own platform. They have legal authority over the interactions they directly engage in (ie with users). They have no say (legally or otherwise) over what goes on outside the bounds of their own platform and thus no responsibility for it. Regulators, not individual actors, are the ones with authority over the broader ecosystem. GDPR and CCPA are examples of such. What's next, should Google be permitted to publish a ToS forbidding access to their services with non-Chrome browsers and then legally pursue other browser makers for facilitating the violation of their ToS?
- ganzuul 6y ago
  Not if you follow the money? CA was an FB customer, weren't they?
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    My understanding is that CA got the data by building a free quiz app on Facebook’s platform (I don’t think FB was getting paid for that, correct me if I’m wrong). The difference is that the quiz app used Facebook’s developer-facing APIs to access the data, whereas these Chrome extensions are hijacking the user agent to access the data via Facebook’s browser-facing APIs. I don’t think it makes a difference as to whether Facebook ought to try to stop the data collection to prevent the another CA-type scandal, and to protect itself from the resulting uproar. The fact that the extension developers haven’t made any agreement with FB means that FB needs different legal tools to try to shut it down, and perhaps they won’t succeed.
safog 6y ago
I guess to take this one step further, if these extensions become ad platforms by themselves and replace ads that facebook puts in your feed w/ their own ads, what would happen? uBlock origin (basic) - blocks facebook tracking, does not track you, inserts non personalized ads. uBlock origin (premium) - 1$ / mo. Blocks all ads. As an example.
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  > if these extensions become ad platforms by themselves and replace ads that facebook puts in your feed w/ their own ads, what would happen? This is literally what ISPs do these days.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    ISPs injecting ads is one reason that everything should be HTTPS now
- neilparikh 6y ago
  Doesn't the Brave browser do this?
lgats 6y ago
I wonder if this will go the way of the LinkedIn profile scraping case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180559
lukejduncan 6y ago
Didn’t LinkedIn lose a lawsuit that forced them to allow scraping? How does that not apply here?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
crb002 6y ago
As long as users know what the extension is doing, hope the extension owners win. Facebook has a choice to boot the users if they don't like them giving credentials to the extension.
OpticalWindows 6y ago
This might end poorly for Facebook.
sergeykish 6y ago
Extensions removed from Chrome Store. Why? UpVoice > please visit our terms of service at: https://joinupvoice.com/tos https://joinupvoice.com/tos http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/upvoice/bmngkajcejghcgafbobemkpjboikmgfi&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/... > (i) we will collect and store data which includes a randomly generated device ID and user ID as well as data about sponsored campaigns, sponsored posts or advertisements that target you directly or that have been shared with you on specific mobile applications, social media and/or other websites, as applicable; and (ii) we will complement these data with general demographic and profile information, which we collect from you as part of your registration/qualification to the Panel App and/or from your Facebook profile, like your age, your gender, where you live (by region), your relationship status and your general interests. You may also provide us with, and we may collect, additional information when you answer certain survey questions. https://www.joinupvoice.com/tos https://www.joinupvoice.com/tos It states clear what it does. If not it is problem of usability. Chrome Store should provide badge "Collects Data". People sell their data for discount both online and in real world. How can service provider sell my data and I can't? It may be interesting experience - create clean profile, watch guitar lessons on youtube, I can share it.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
Kettle sues pot.

164 points by dane-pgp 6y ago

I wonder if the court would rule differently if the extensions were designed to enable interoperability with other social networks. Admittedly it would be a rather awkward UX if you had to browse pages in FB before returning to your preferred social network to view the scraped data there.

worstenbrood 6y ago

Inserts spider-man pointing meme

Spivak 6y ago
This is going to forever be the disconnect between privacy advocates and companies handling user data. For FB/Google and other data stewards privacy means keeping your data safe from others because they consider themselves a trusted party.
- dhimes 6y ago
  If not a trusted party, they perhaps more importantly consider it a competitive advantage that they'll defend my any means available.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    What they tell the public - and even delude themselves with -, versus what really drives them.
- esperent 6y ago
  What Facebook considers is not what matters though. They've shown time and time again that they are terrible stewards of people's private data. They should not be a trusted party, and Google isn't far behind. Being sympathetic to their point is view when it comes to privacy is entirely the wrong angle to take.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

ffpip 6y ago

Even amazon does this. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alexa-traffic-rank/cknebhggccemgcnbidipinkifmmegdel https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alexa-traffic-rank... 700k users

ceejayoz 6y ago
Is there any evidence Amazon is scraping user profile data, friends lists, etc. with that? "Measuring traffic" and "harvesting data" aren't the same.
- postalrat 6y ago
  It's advertised to scrape search queries. I assume it could be scraping other information as well. Is there any evidence it is not?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

muunbo 6y ago

In other news, the pot calls the kettle black

crazygringo 6y ago

This is actually fascinating, legally. What are they suing them for? Under what law or legal principle? A maker of extensions never agrees to Facebook's ToS in the first place, so there's no breach of contract. It would seem that only individual users could in theory be sued, though obviously Facebook would never do that because of the PR nightmare. IANAL, so I'm really curious if anyone thinks Facebook could win this in court? (Regardless of whether it works by threatening to drown the extension maker in legal costs.)

extra88 6y ago
> What are they suing them for? Under what law or legal principle? The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) allows for civil cases. The law prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization. This isn't a case of users knowingly using a tool to scrape data for their own use, the users installing the extension are, at most, mules, for the extension makers. Alternately, maybe copyright infringement. Some of the data are considered facts, that are not copyrightable (even in aggregate, in the U.S.) but at minimum, the actual content of ads scraped is copyrightable. There might be a question of whether Facebook has standing to sue over infringement of ads for other businesses but their ToS may cover some non-exclusive copyright to shared
- stanrivers 6y ago
  How does the idea that while the user of the extension might agree, the friend group that is sharing the information that is being scraped has not consented? That seems to be an important difference, no?
  - extra88 6y ago
    Yes, there's harm to Facebook, the other users whose data is scraped, and probably to organizations advertising on Facebook. The masses of users and organizations are unlikely to be aware this is going on or to be able to organize and sue the extension makers. These extensions are made by shitty companies using shitty practices to make money. If current legal frameworks aren't well suited to deal with it, that doesn't make them any less shitty.

neves 6y ago

Really impressive is that the extensions are still in Chrome Store. Why didn't Facebook ask Google to remove them?

gildas 6y ago
They are not.

johnward 6y ago

For those that don't know, there was a public case about the legality of scraping involving HiQ and LinkedIn (https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linkedin-data-scraping-ruled-legal/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2019/09/10/linke...) TL;DR; It was considered to be legal because HiQ were scraping public profiles. This case may be a little bit different because these scrapers seem to target both public and private data. Also see: https://medium.com/@tjwaterman99/web-scraping-is-now-legal-6bf0e5730a78 https://medium.com/@tjwaterman99/web-scraping-is-now-legal-6... (which mentions a facebook example very similar to this)

beagle3 6y ago
It is also different because the scrapers are acting as agents of individual users. Those individual users likely go against FBToS in doing so - but the browser extension maker is not a party to those ToS.
- extra88 6y ago
  > the scrapers are acting as agents of individual users. According to the article, it's the reverse, the individual users are acting as paid agents of the scrapers, a proxy giving scrapers access to data through the users' access to Facebook.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    The extension is still impersonating or watching the user, with full permission from the user (acting as its agent, it's UserAgent even) - if anyone broke FB's ToS, it's the user, not the maker of the extension. I wonder what legal principle gives Facebook standing to sue the makers of the extension.
    - extra88 6y ago
      Even if the specific act of letting the extension run is the fault of each user and presumably means they each violated Facebook's ToS, they can probably sue the extension makers for bribing the users to violate the ToS. Each user only chooses to install the extension, the extension makers choose what data to scrape and I'm sure at least some of what's scraped truly belongs to Facebook, not their users or customers. If a Facebook account can be considered a technological barrier protecting intellectual property, they could sue under DMCA anti-circumvention provisions. The users installing the extension could be accomplices but they're not really the ones scraping and collecting the data.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Company scraping your data everywhere on the internet sues someone for scraping data on their part of the internet. ^_^ I hope that the judge will require Facebook to stop scraping themselves first, before they request others to stop it, too.

djohnston 6y ago
any sources on data that FB is scraping about you?
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  They had been scraping contacts from email inboxes and devices, IIRC
  - yuliyp 6y ago
    FB asks you explicitly if you want to upload your contacts as part of helping you find your friends. That's a far cry from "scraping your data everywhere on the internet" from the your grandparent post.
    - monadic2 6y ago
      Off-hand I suspect your contact book is more valuable than virtually anything publicly available on you. It's also entirely unnecessary to building a lookup-by-email or lookup-by-phone. I'm going to go ahead and say it's a much more evil practice than scraping.
    - pixl97 6y ago
      Not years ago they did not. Phones didn't even have security options to ask at that time.
- junon 6y ago
  They scrape all of your contacts and create ghost profiles to better track connections of even people who do not use their services. Apple does this too. Well, did - not sure if they still do.

stanrivers 6y ago

This is interesting - instead of suing under the idea that scraping itself is wrong (courts have ruled that public information that you can get on websites can be scraped... I think it is something like 50%+ of web traffic in the U.S. is bot traffic), they are suggesting that scraping through a logged-in account is somehow different. If the user of the account consents to have the plugin installed on their computer and is made aware that the plugin will scrap this data, you could argue that there is nothing wrong here. However, people post on Facebook under the idea that the information they share will only be viewable by their friend group (or as dictated by their privacy settings). That's where this gets interesting... does the friend group of the person with the plugin have any rights to privacy that dictate what the person with the plugin can do with their data? If I take a picture of a newsfeed, for example, that has information my friends have posted, and share that somehow - am I violating their privacy legally? If not, how is this different? Will be interesting to follow this one.

frenchyatwork 6y ago
This is also interesting, because people (mostly my friends) also use Facebook as a tool to share pictures and other PII about me without my consent. In that regard, I don't know if there's a clear difference between Facebook and these extensions.
devit 6y ago
Pretty sure that either the user is not aware at all of the scraping, or anyway the scraping is not done in the user's interest and the user is not in a position to fully understand the implications, so it is a clearly malicious operation. In other words, they are abusing the user's trust to access the user's private data for their own profit, hence defrauding the user, and engaging in unauthorized access to the data shared between the user and Facebook without either party's full informed consent.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  I don't think facebook is serving ads in the users interest and the user doesn't understand the implications either. The user has to understand that there's no free lunch.

kerng 6y ago

This is funny, its like Facebook is suing itself - what a strange world we live in.

ballenf 6y ago

The gall of FB is amazing considering how recently they did the exact same thing: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ That's where FB paid teens to install a root cert on phones that tracked every thing the users did for market research. And then paid them for it.

yuliyp 6y ago
What? the Atlas thing is recording what a set of people do, passively. These extensions are actively scraping extra data from web sites beyond what the user is doing.

stevenicr 6y ago

I've wondered if something like this was coming for honey/joinhoney extension.. Sure pulling info from PortalX that us public is on thing - but what if Amazaon starts adding coupon codes for logged in users only? or even if not logged in, but recognized user - adds special promo price for doing thing Y.. at that point they are scraping non-public data. They would also be using that data for other purposes than just the single user who is accessing it - most likely.. I find the lack of privacy discussing in the joinhoney ads I've heard to be a bit distressing personally. Just looked at their privacy policy, and I wonder if "Honey does not track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that is not a retail website (a site where you can shop and make a purchase)" Is purposefully trying put into user's mines, retail, you know like home depot, bed bath, etc.. but the way it's written can include online retail portals.. but with "(a site where you can shop and make a purchase)"" added as a qualifier - wouldn't this include pornhub and similar places? Fingers crossed the browser makers will include on-off toggles for extensions soon - similar to how uBlock origin has - would be great to have a whitelist list of sites that I could have my browser remind me that I can turn on SpyShoppingExtensionToCheck - then auto turn off when leaving set list.. I avoided so many chrome extensions that said 'perms to view / change all web pages/ - even though I may have really wanted to use them on blankTube and yaddaTube - I didn't want them reading all web pages, and the current UI for turning off and on is not optimal imho.

akersten 6y ago

Facebook should lose this one. Secret shopping isn't illegal, and using tools to secret shop isn't illegal either. Going after camera manufacturers because they are tools used to secret shop certainly isn't illegal, even if the camera was called the "SecretShopper 3000" and paid you to do it. The users on the other hand, if they were unaware of what the extensions were doing in exchange for that money, might have a case against the extension manufacturers. But how could Facebook possibly have standing? Not a lawyer, the above are feelings.

SimeVidas 6y ago

What does scraping user data from Facebook mean? Deleting it?

cookiengineer 6y ago
Scraping != Scrapping. One is acquiring data on a large scale, the other one is throwing data in the trash.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

shajznnckfke 6y ago

If people are going to be mad at Facebook for allowing Cambridge Analytica to get access to user data by tricking users into providing access to their data on Facebook by installing apps, they really ought to support Facebook in the effort to block these entities who are pulling the same scheme with chrome extensions.

tqi 6y ago
Yeah it's interesting to me that people are disregarding the parallels. Is Facebook responsible for keeping your (and your friends) data out of 3rd party hands or not? Maybe if the makers of these extensions were affiliated with GOP PACs... EDIT: Also to be clear, I do think it is Facebooks job/responsibility/obligation
- Reelin 6y ago
  > Is Facebook responsible for keeping your (and your friends) data out of 3rd party hands or not? They are responsible for the activity that they directly facilitate on their own platform. They have legal authority over the interactions they directly engage in (ie with users). They have no say (legally or otherwise) over what goes on outside the bounds of their own platform and thus no responsibility for it. Regulators, not individual actors, are the ones with authority over the broader ecosystem. GDPR and CCPA are examples of such. What's next, should Google be permitted to publish a ToS forbidding access to their services with non-Chrome browsers and then legally pursue other browser makers for facilitating the violation of their ToS?
ganzuul 6y ago
Not if you follow the money? CA was an FB customer, weren't they?
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  My understanding is that CA got the data by building a free quiz app on Facebook’s platform (I don’t think FB was getting paid for that, correct me if I’m wrong). The difference is that the quiz app used Facebook’s developer-facing APIs to access the data, whereas these Chrome extensions are hijacking the user agent to access the data via Facebook’s browser-facing APIs. I don’t think it makes a difference as to whether Facebook ought to try to stop the data collection to prevent the another CA-type scandal, and to protect itself from the resulting uproar. The fact that the extension developers haven’t made any agreement with FB means that FB needs different legal tools to try to shut it down, and perhaps they won’t succeed.

safog 6y ago

I guess to take this one step further, if these extensions become ad platforms by themselves and replace ads that facebook puts in your feed w/ their own ads, what would happen? uBlock origin (basic) - blocks facebook tracking, does not track you, inserts non personalized ads. uBlock origin (premium) - 1$ / mo. Blocks all ads. As an example.

cookiengineer 6y ago
> if these extensions become ad platforms by themselves and replace ads that facebook puts in your feed w/ their own ads, what would happen? This is literally what ISPs do these days.
- jefftk 6y ago
  ISPs injecting ads is one reason that everything should be HTTPS now
neilparikh 6y ago
Doesn't the Brave browser do this?

lgats 6y ago

I wonder if this will go the way of the LinkedIn profile scraping case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21241395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22180559

lukejduncan 6y ago

Didn’t LinkedIn lose a lawsuit that forced them to allow scraping? How does that not apply here?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

crb002 6y ago

As long as users know what the extension is doing, hope the extension owners win. Facebook has a choice to boot the users if they don't like them giving credentials to the extension.

OpticalWindows 6y ago

This might end poorly for Facebook.

sergeykish 6y ago

Extensions removed from Chrome Store. Why? UpVoice > please visit our terms of service at: https://joinupvoice.com/tos https://joinupvoice.com/tos http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/upvoice/bmngkajcejghcgafbobemkpjboikmgfi&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/... > (i) we will collect and store data which includes a randomly generated device ID and user ID as well as data about sponsored campaigns, sponsored posts or advertisements that target you directly or that have been shared with you on specific mobile applications, social media and/or other websites, as applicable; and (ii) we will complement these data with general demographic and profile information, which we collect from you as part of your registration/qualification to the Panel App and/or from your Facebook profile, like your age, your gender, where you live (by region), your relationship status and your general interests. You may also provide us with, and we may collect, additional information when you answer certain survey questions. https://www.joinupvoice.com/tos https://www.joinupvoice.com/tos It states clear what it does. If not it is problem of usability. Chrome Store should provide badge "Collects Data". People sell their data for discount both online and in real world. How can service provider sell my data and I can't? It may be interesting experience - create clean profile, watch guitar lessons on youtube, I can share it.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

Kettle sues pot.