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It's a competitive tactic to be open when you're small and less open when you're big. For example, you can download your entire profile as a .zip file from Face
by orijing 15y ago
It's a competitive tactic to be open when you're small and less open when you're big. For example, you can download your entire profile as a .zip file from Facebook (not sure if you can get the email), and you can allow any apps to access your data (again, probably not email), even though Facebook is the largest social network on the web.
In comparison, Google doesn't let you download your entire search history and everything else that they collect about you--what sort of ads you like, keywords that have worked well for you, links you've clicked on. To me, my "search history" is my profile on Google while my wall/profile is my data on Facebook.
- jonknee 15y agoYou're wrong. You can export your search history as an RSS feed (well I can't, as I have web history turned off). Not sure how that would be useful though... And to be fair, Facebook doesn't let you download your entire search history and everything else that they collect about you either. They only let you download what you put in. Google does the same, you can download your Gmail contacts (or sync them to another service), Picasa photos, Reader subscriptions, etc.
- jeffdavis 15y ago"For example, you can download your entire profile as a .zip file from Facebook" Do you get all of your connections (by what identifiers?), all the messages you've sent, and everything else?
- orijing 15y agoI don't know. I haven't touched that feature in a while. But there's a philosophy that you own your content, but connections are owned by both ends. I'm not even sure that being able to export your wall (including others' private comments) is fair to others. Otherwise, you end up with Google's public-sharing bug (where you can share a private item publicly). There's a fine balance between respecting your privacy and flexibility, and those of your friends.
- rxin 15y agoThis argument is too weak to sell. In the same realm, you should remove from the zip file photos that contains the user's friend(s).
- jeffdavis 15y ago"Otherwise, you end up with Google's public-sharing bug (where you can share a private item publicly)." If you share something digital with someone, they can share it with someone else. That's just the way it is. Interfaces and clients should help you avoid doing that accidentally, and even make it slightly challenging (perhaps you need to write a new client against their API or something) -- but preventing you from exporting your own data, or data that someone has explicitly shared with you, is just not justified. It sounds a lot more like a convenient excuse for lock-in.
- rxin 15y agoFacebook certainly doesn't allow you to download all the logs about you that they collect. The amount of logs they collect about you are huge, and those are the true valuable data (rather than the pictures you've uploaded).