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As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some g

As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some guy kept coming and showing customers how to not spend any money in my store, I'd kick that guy out of my store. I very strongly dislike facebook and can't wait to watch it die, so I know comparing it to a store is a poor comparison. But at the end of the day, fb is a business, and if someone is using fb to try and hurt their business, they have the right to terminate that guy's accounts. EDIT My point here is not that we shouldn't point out bad things facebook does simply because it's "just business". I agree that the "they're a business" argument is just a deflection that derails the conversation into some weird business practice discussion, instead of all the bad things fb does. My point is more that we should try to frame these things so that the headline isn't "facebook banned me". They ban people all the time and not that many people seem to care, and in this case, of course they banned this guy.

T-28788821 5y ago
We'll. I wouldn't want to compare Facebook to a store, If anything Facebook is an equivalent of a drug store and drugs should always be restricted due to the negative effects they bring about on their consumers. Facebook by-law must display a banner written "Facebook is harmful for your mental health" and children should require parental supervision at all time.
tylerhou 5y ago
Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension, but then we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
- colpabar 5y ago
  Oh yeah I agree 100%. I guess I should have also included that I have 0 faith in anything fb says, and that I believe any and all of their claims of "we care and we're working on it" are outright lies. i.e. I'm so used to the hypocrisy that I don't really think about it, because everything they do is bad.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  I agree, the whole "facebook has the right to do this" is a deflection that quickly derails the discussion. It's not the point. The point is: Sure Facebook can do that, but the fact that they do shows us how dishonest the people working there are with all the claims they make. Facebook has the right to do this, we have the right to call them out on it just the same.
- ectopod 5y ago
  > Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension Why? It's a Chrome extension. They can ban the user and the extension will rot. That seems like more than enough power.
  - max-ibel 5y ago
    Surely, the extension uses a public API. The extension acts on behalf of the end user. So, I think facebook can ban a particular API key (tied to a packaged extension), but they would have to ban all chrome extensions to get around someone taking the extension source and building their own. So I think facebook can by disabling the API, but won't do that since there are extension that it does like. Whether FB has legal grounds to go after users using such an extension would depend on the user terms, which I don't really know. It would be fairly egregious and risky for FB to do so. But I think if someone were to open source such an extension, this someone probably does not him/herself expose to a legal risk (speaking as a non-lawyer, and not giving legal advice)
- bsedlm 5y ago
  hypocrisy (along with taboos I guess) seem to be a necessary part of a functioning society.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    Well, obviously. People can wax poetic about freedom of speech, the right to bear arms etc. But if there is a large separatist group that has historically wanted to destroy your country the first chance it gets, and members regularly commit violent acts to do it, would you really fight for the right to arm them all to the teeth, and then let them organize larger and larger rallies and shows of strength? Freedom ain’t free, and sometimes the cost can be a little too high: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
    - bsedlm 5y ago
      and in a more costly, less forgiving environment, there is not enough abudnance of wealth so society becomes less free. Neo-fascist autocracies here we go! (they're just cheaper)
- matthew_kuiash 5y ago
  Why do they have that right? Here's a car analogy - If I buy a Ford pick what right do they have to stop me doing donuts in it? Or maybe fitting a swimming pool in the back. Maybe I want to drive it around my ranch on fire. If an individual wants to use this software on their Facebook feed I really can't see what legal right FB have to prevent them. OTOH - something was probably "signed" in a EULA to prevent this.
  - fwip 5y ago
    Are you being obtuse on purpose? Putting a swimming pool in your truck bed doesn't stop people from buying Fords.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - EGreg 5y ago
    Don’t worry, when cars will download more self-driving software, you can bet your butts it will restrict you from driving some places or in some manner. Drone manufacturers already do so, you can’t fly drones within 50km of an airport or whatever, can’t fly them above 30 meters depending on where you are, and the software enforces this. Books on Kindle and Movies on iTunes can be yanked away as you read or watch them. Now, when it comes to software that isn’t even hosted on your computer, what do you expect?
    - matthew_kuiash 5y ago
      I can't wait. Sadly I agree with you. This level of control is irresistible.
- Kranar 5y ago
  I think your argument is begging the question as it depends on a prior belief that Facebook is actually harmful. Replace Facebook with a gym membership, or a charity, or some other thing that one does not presume is harmful as the premise of their argument. Would the leadership of a gym be compromised and hypocrites if they banned someone who used their gym to tell others that working out is harmful and they should stop exercising at the gym? Would banning that member indicate that the owners of the gym don't care about the health of their users and instead put profits over well being? Your argument only works and sounds credible because most people on this site believe Facebook is harmful. If people don't share that belief, then it doesn't follow that Facebook is being hypocritical because they are banning someone who is using their product to defeat the product.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Lets say that a poorly designed gym wants to promote social interaction - so they build a cool down room with a small cafe that has a machine you need to swipe a card through every ten reps to continue using the exercise equipment. Some enterprising fellow builds a portable machine that will simulate the card swipe action but can be done at the actual exercise equipment. This seems like a fairer analogy to me since this extension is dealing with a component facebook put in to drive "engagement" that is viewed by a lot of people as an anti-feature - some people like it: Miles, who hangs around the gym for the conversation, really likes the fact that he bumps into people more often in the cool-down room... but most people wish that feature had never been added. Add all of that to the fact that Facebook is the only tool Facebook allows on Facebook (so there are no competing gyms) and the tool becomes even more justifiable. Is it still quite legal for Facebook to C&D this guy - absolutely - but they're definitely not acting in their user's best interest.
    - Kranar 5y ago
      Sure if the gym is poorly designed and causing actual harm, then you can attack the gym on the basis of being poorly designed and causing harm. Attacking the gym on the basis that its owners do not want patrons who are using the very gym as a means of compromising it is not a valid argument as to why the gym's owners are hypocrites, causing harm, and putting profits above the well being of their customers.
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. Can we ever take a company that says this seriously? Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I never do.
- deleted 5y ago
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- restingrobot 5y ago
  Basically every Fortune 500 company is guilty of this. Most corporations loyalties go Shareholders, Employees, Government, Customers in that order. It is more shocking to me that anyone is surprised Facebook puts profit over people. I would be surprised if they *Didn't* do that.
- asdvasdi 5y ago
  Asking honestly, curious to know what would do you think is a good response from the company now? Considering, a few months ago, the company took down high profile accounts and content on its platform because it deemed something dangerous and lot of people were mad that company did that and it was censorship. Now the people are mad at the company because they didn't do enough moderation to ensure user health and well being. The company tried launching a version of the product with higher parental controls to let parents take more control, and people were mad and made the company stop those efforts. At this point in the company, what would you think is an acceptable response? Is there even a response that makes everyone happy?
  - themitigating 5y ago
    You know most people want Facebook to go down. If they are on the right it's because of the censorship which prevents them from using misinformation to win votes. On the left it's the misinformation.
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    I am not confident that "make everyone happy", either equally, or even in varying amounts, should even be the primary objective here a good response would be one that starts with respectable principles and values and proceeds according to those, even when it costs money of course, that won't happen voluntarily, because money
    - nradov 5y ago
      In a company that operates worldwide, which country's or culture's principles and values should take precedence?
      - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
        a good start would be for them to pick any that they can consistently apply and then seek feedback, but ideally it would explicitly describe what the trade-offs are between user safety and profits at the moment, the only principles they consistently apply seem to be: protect zuckerberg first, company profits second, everything else third, but that's just my perception -- they should make clear what their principles are so we can judge whether or not they consistently stick to them, and whether or not we need legislation to nudge those priorities around for the good of society
- squarefoot 5y ago
  > Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension Surely they can fight against it by changing how the platform works, or ban it if it was hosted somewhere on FB, or ban the author because he wrote something that hits their core business, but sending a cease and desist for an extension that is hosted elsewhere is like a tobacco company sending C&D letters to people selling anti smoking patches or telling publicly that smoking is bad for health. WTF!, this is bullying plain and simple; I already stay away from everything related to FB as much as I can (I knew about the recent FB outage by the evening news, didn't even turn on the tablet with Whatsapp that day), but I will try hard to turn that nearly 0.1% use to 0%. > I.e. the point is the hypocrisy. Exactly. At least Google removed the "Do no evil" part from their mission.
- fencepost 5y ago
  It's not entirely clear to me that FB would have any right to ban the extension. They could attempt to keep users from using it through policies or detection, but it's running by user choice on user computers in user browsers. I suspect in the US this would have been handled differently but loser pays against a company that can afford to inflate costs by millions per week to make an example....
- chrismcb 5y ago
  I'm not sure there is hypocrisy. They can and should care about both. Without users there is no profit.
thomastjeffery 5y ago
When you have literally billions of users, calling yourself a private company is disingenuous.
claytongulick 5y ago
Sure, they have the right to terminate his account. But to demand removal of the tool, demand he never makes another tool, and to threaten ruinous litigation if he doesn't comply, even though they know it's illegal to do so? That goes well beyond shopkeepers rights.
shkkmo 5y ago
That's a horrible analogy. This is like being banned from a store because someone publishes a blog that publicizes store discounts and then also having that store threaten sue you so you can't even write about their discounts. There is no reason to defend Facebook hete. People should have a right to modify their web browsers and help other people modify their web browsers.
otachack 5y ago
I get your metaphor but a store doesn't follow you 24/7 and keeps nagging you to check it. Unless it's Amazon. At least with Amazon you're spending tangible things: money + time (browsing) so you can feel the dent in your wallet/credit card eventually, which signals you to take it easy. With Facebook most people spend countless hours and there's no party telling you to chill out. Everything is enforcing you to stay on the platform. Even Netflix has some a screen popping up after 2-3 hours of binging to make sure you're still watching, giving some friction to the consumer. There's no noticable friction built into Facebook.
- Cosmin_C 5y ago
  This reminded me on how nice Netflix was when it started and how obnoxious it has become. Just like Amazon and Facebook. Small starts, nice things. Then it starts being mildly annoying, then it just intrudes everywhere in your life (like your other browsing tabs and what not). Netflix was nice because there were no ads. At the same time can I binge on a series without being irked every x minutes if I'm still there or not? Maybe I am, maybe I am not, maybe I am chilling with my SO, it's none of their damn business and at the same time it doesn't do anything helpful except nag you.
scarygliders 5y ago
I'm not totally grokking the "FB is a store" premise. Mainly because if FB was a store, it'd be a store where the patrons are not buying stuff from the store, but are themselves the product. i.e. FB offers a messaging/contact service for "free" - with the caveat being that FB gets to glean startling - and valuable - amounts of information about its patrons.
- SllX 5y ago
  Replace “store” with “mall”, “club”, or “bar” and you have the same result. Facebook is hosting on their servers that they own and/or lease which gives them a right to exclude, much like a store, bar, club or mall owner.
  - baq 5y ago
    Does it? It isn’t obvious. Especially if talking about legislation around the world.
    - SllX 5y ago
      Sorry but I flatly don’t respect legal systems that don’t respect property rights. In the Anglo-American tradition and countries which are also Anglo-descended or Anglo-influenced and some other entirely separate legal systems as well, property rights are a big deal. And a core fundamental principle of property rights is the right to exclude.
      - heurisko 5y ago
        The UK legal system, at least, recognises property rights, but offers varying degrees of exclusion. For example, the right to exclude certain classes of people is different renting a room of your house vs. renting a whole apartment. The ability to exclude is again different for service providers. It sometimes also depends on their size. e.g. larger banks are obliged to provide a free basic bank account. If social media monopolies are seen as excluding people without good reason, their monopoly status might attract attention for regulation in the same manner.
addicted 5y ago
A lot of what FB is doing here, if the story is as described, is clearly illegal. The problem is that FB is too huge for the individual to get into a legal battle with.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- restingrobot 5y ago
  It is not illegal to ban someone from using your product, (assuming they are not being discriminated against as a protected class).
  - el_ravager 5y ago
    Facebook is essentially a utility as governments use it as one of the primary ways to communicate with their citizens. Banning someone from Facebook, in the US, is unconstitutional.
    - restingrobot 5y ago
      First of all, Facebook is not a utility. No matter what you think, it is literally not classified a utility at this time. Second, just because governments, companies, or people choose to use it to communicate, does not mean it is a utility. There is a choice and many, many alternatives to Facebook. Utility status is reserved for things like power water and gas, (even internet in many places), as there are physical barriers to choice. Third, it is not unconstitutional for utilities to ban customers in the United States.
      - robbedpeter 5y ago
        If it represents the sole method of communication by some government entity, I can see a case being made that every citizen has a right to a "read only" (maybe even read only, read once?) minimized level of access, at some explicit cost to the government entity using the platform (offloading liability from the company and onboarding accountability with the backing of law. ) Facebook is obviously not a utility, in the US at least. It's also not "just" a private entity. It's a novel thing for which we don't have an existing legal framework in which to capture all the nuanced uses, rights, responsibilities, and liabilities. Facebook has taken on the role of managing the distribution of information to billions of people. It handles communications between groups and individuals. Given how critical those activities are to a healthy, liberal, free society, we should take steps to protect the rights and duties of individual users and platforms. Maybe we'll coalesce into a roughly cooperative country sometime in the future an accomplish that.
api 5y ago
You're right. The root of this problem isn't Facebook. It's the fact that private media companies are in control of what should be a peer to peer conversation between people. There is no way to fix social media. If we moderate it too much, it's "censorship." If we don't then the engagement algorithms will drive mass indoctrination into crazy ideologies that have high virality. If we do try to eliminate disinformation, who decides what is and is not correct? There's no solution to these problems because media -- mediation -- is the problem.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  there are solutions more complex than "moderate a lot" and "moderate a little" facebook could, for example, remove racist stuff a lot, and anti-racist stuff less, and then ignore the racists who complain, because they're racists
kiryin 5y ago
The author, as I see it based entirely on this one article, likely wasn't trying to "hurt their business," unless (lol) their business is unhealthy addiction. Building on your example, imagine your store was of the liquor variety, and someone placed a flier for the local AA meeting on the bulletin board. I doubt you would remove it.
travoc 5y ago
Who is claiming Facebook doesn’t have a right to remove users? Why do you feel the need to argue a point that nobody is making? We all know what Facebook is allowed to do. Here we are discussing what Facebook SHOULD be doing, and how they can avoid being loathsome hypocrites.
Jensson 5y ago
I can still find adblockers in Google search. Google blocking those sites would rightly cause a lot of people to get angry over censorship and look for alternative search engines. I see no reason to not get angry when big corporations do things you don't agree with, it is what ultimately causes them to fall and give us alternatives.
- tofuahdude 5y ago
  Being angry about it isn't the same thing as arguing that we should make it illegal.
inopinatus 5y ago
The calculus here is moral, not one of contract minutiae.
naravara 5y ago
> As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some guy kept coming and showing customers how to not spend any money in my store, I'd kick that guy out of my store. Saying he "came and showed" implies he was doing this on Facebook, but he was publishing a Chrome extension. This is more like McDonalds blacklisting you because, in your job as a nutritionist, you gave people strategies for reducing their fast food intake. It's a browser extension, not Facebook itself. They banned him for showing other people how to do something on their own computers.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The article tries to downplay what I think is the core issue: He added some functionality to the plug-in that sent statistics back to a server he controlled. He claims the data collection was minimal for most users but those who opted in had a lot more information collected. It appears everyone who used the plug-in had some amount of data collected by the author. He’s trying to spin this as Facebook trying to bury an anti-addiction tool, but I think it’s a simple case of someone getting caught writing a plugging that automates API requests and collects data from Facebook users to a 3rd-party server. I don’t think he’d be in trouble if he simply wrote an adblocker-style plugin that simply hid the feed. It was the automated spamming of the API and the 3rd-party data collection that likely got him in trouble.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I don't mean to shock you but as someone who worked on a game that interacted with facebook data - everyone in the world is harvesting some information from facebook when they're making calls to their API. Sometimes it's as "innocent" as spamming your friends with requests to play (or enabling the user to do that for in-game rewards!) and sometimes it's cambridge analytica. No application in the world just wants to altruistically be helpful by having a facebook integration - I can't even imagine what that'd look like it'd probably, honestly, be just not having a facebook integration at all.
  - finfinfin 5y ago
    There are many applications that only request logged in user’s name and email address to be populated in the registration form. I myself implemented this many times without “harvesting” anything else.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      You mean for SSO functionality? Is that log in optional and a method for users to potentially preserve their progress across multiple devices?
- cutemonster 5y ago
bsedlm 5y ago
I prefer to argue the same thing by saying that we recognize this is a rational expected behavior of any entity developed enough that it looks after itself. Similarly to other lines of reasoning critizizing specifically facebook for "knowing they can be harmful but choosing to believe they can also be positive-good (useful)". This behavior is not exclusive to Facebook; all corporations are the same, and some have done humanity far worse, yet they're still around (why?). It's unreasonable to single-out facebook in this regard.
asdff 5y ago
The tool doesn't stop people from using facebook, it just makes their usage more productive. Like RES for reddit or other third party tooling that makes life easier for users, especially power users. Personally I probably wouldn't have stopped using facebook if I knew about this approach to cleaning out the junk. Plus the tool isn't even going as far as something like RES. the tool doesnt' add or remove any utility that isn't already there, it just automates an otherwise manual and painstaking process.
malka 5y ago
And the answer is "Facebook should NOT have the right to do it". Facebook has made itself a public utility. And public utilities should be nationalized.
ravenstine 5y ago
Fact is the argument works both ways. A person can't stay logically consistent while saying "it's a private company they can do what they want" in the case of politics but then denouncing that same company when it takes an adverse action purely out of its own interest. I, for one, don't hate Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, and all of it is a reflection of society. Naturally we're pretty slow to react to any problem, so it's taken this long for a larger fragment of society to accept that social media is a problem. The next step is for all of us to admit that Zuck & co. aren't the real bad guys; while they profiteer off the psychological warfare (profiteers will always exist), we spent years falling for their tactics over and over. Fool us dozens of times, shame on us.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  they're being criticized for their hypocrisy, not for doing anything they're legally disallowed from doing thus, they can do whatever they want, including banning racists and hiding secret internal research showing they're amplifying racists, but only the second one is hypocritical given their claimed (almost satirically so, at this point) values of safety-before-profit
- el_ravager 5y ago
  Facebook is a merely the logical consequence of late-stage capitalism—its evil nature is a feature not a bug.
hikerclimber1 5y ago
Everything is subjective. Especially laws.
toss1 5y ago
Agree, on both loathing FB and that they are within their rights to kick this guy off their product. That said, congress should have him testify about his experiences, and the relationship to FB's income stream.
tombert 5y ago
I don't disagree with you at all, but just to play devil's advocate, I suppose the argument could be made that Facebook has basically created a near-monopoly in the social media space, and if that's the case maybe they should be viewed as a "utility" than a regular unregulated business. For example, I don't think Con Edison [1] could kick me off my electricity (assuming I was paying my bill), even if I handed out pamphlets saying how to use less power, since Con Edison is a regulated utility. Obviously this isn't a great comparison, you could make a much stronger argument for a "necessity" of electricity than a platform to share photos with friends, but that argument could be made that because of the ubiquity of Facebook (and subsidiaries), maybe they should be a free speech zone. [1] NYC's biggest power company.
- piggybox 5y ago
  Let's turn Google search into a utility first. I think most people use it more often than FB.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  If Facebook bans me, I can still use Twitter/Reddit/LinkedIn/TikTok/YouTube/WordPress/my own website. If Con Edison bans me, there are literally zero legal ways for me to make electricity come out of my wall sockets.
  - tombert 5y ago
    That's fair, Con Edison has an actual monopoly (more or less, it's weird and you can license third-party power), while Facebook just has a plurality of social media attention. Hell, I didn't even have a Facebook until last week when I bought my Oculus Quest (though I used a fake name and a burner email address), so clearly it's not vital. As I said before, i agree with the OP, I was just trying to entertain a different point of view.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  In what way on Earth is Facebook a near-monopoly? TikTok and YouTube are also huge social networks.
cycomanic 5y ago
But that's not what happened. Someone standing in front of a shop telling people how to avoid buying more than they really want. The company would obviously have the right to ban the person from their store. Instead they threatened the person to sue (with huge financial implications) demand that he never talks about the shop again and never comes close. That is not something a normal shop can and should be able to do.
- themitigating 5y ago
  First being outside the store isn't the stores property and anyway i don't know how that would translate to the internet. Second, companies sue individuals for defamation all the time. They can also get restraining order, claim harassment, etc
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > The company would obviously have the right to ban the person from their store. Really? I don't think this would be legal, at least in the United States. If they were causing a disturbance inside the store, sure.
johannes1234321 5y ago
I can tell people how to avoid sending mail, but the post still has to ship my letters. At some point some infrastructure becomes a utility and has to be treated as such. A universal login for other services and messaging at some point of concentration reaches that point. But it is a tough field to regulate, as we most likely haven't reached a peak of technological development in that space and regulation in developing fields is hard.
dustingetz 5y ago
Facebook is closer to a government or empire than a shop
brightball 5y ago
I honestly wonder about this exact scenario with the likes of business reviews on Google/Yelp. It’s like letting somebody hang their words on the front door of your business and as a business owner you have no power at all to do anything about it. One company had to spent 6 months trying to get a review taken down that accused one of its female executives of having an affair.
marcosdumay 5y ago
That depends on whether you see Facebook more as a small store or as a telephony company.
grishka 5y ago
The problem isn't that they can do whatever they want, it's that governments side with them more often than not. It's the existence of laws that protect them instead of protecting their users. Without this government support, their threats wouldn't have any teeth, and so adversarial interoperability would flourish.
YeBanKo 5y ago
"facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" – as much as i like the argument, i don't think it applies here. In the US being banned by one or few bug tech companies is almost similar to being banned by USPS, or by a store chains like safeway, walgreens or cvs. This should not be taken lightly and there should be legal protection against bans like this. His activity of developing the tool was outside of facebook use as a user. Its ok if they ban his dev account, or the app(if it was a fb app) or try to block it. Ideally, such cases should be tested in court, but there is such a huge imbalance between opponents, that it seems UK system is inadequate in equalizing it.
throwawaysea 5y ago
The problem is these social media platforms are so big, they represent our only practical public space for societal discourse. These are ubiquitous and fundamental services in the modern era. They need to be treated as utilities and common carriers. We can’t just let unfair discrimination and censorship hide behind claims of private ownership for this kind of platform with that kind of reach.
pmlnr 5y ago
Apparently you weren't there when FB had APIs, Farmville et al, and got rich on people developing things on their "plarform".
pcthrowaway 5y ago
I think the problem with this argument is that Facebook isn't "just" a store. For many people, it can't be avoided. Businesses rely on facebook for advertisement, creating business pages, running promotions, offering support, and engaging with customers/users. People rely on facebook for access to sometimes critical resources (think about how many emergency relief efforts require you to use facebook). Marketplace, etc. Identity management. Being banned from facebook isn't like being banned from any one store, it's increasingly becoming more like losing access to your identification, payment information, bank card, or passport. For companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google which are becoming so completely integrated with the fabric of society, governments should regulate how and when they can restrict access.
Dracophoenix 5y ago
Do you view Apple as correct when it prevented companies from notifying customers about the 30% cut on digital services for purchases and subscriptions made through the App Store? If not where do you draw the line? https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/28/21405140/apple-rejects-facebook-update-30-percent-cut https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/28/21405140/app...
jakelazaroff 5y ago
IMO the thesis of the "Facebook is a private company" argument is that moderating or banning people isn't violating some fundamental right to freedom of speech. It's not to say that they should be immune from criticism for doing so.
atoav 5y ago
If I owned a telephone company and people complained about telephones I would do... nothing. Because it is none of my fucking business I guess.
scotuswroteus 5y ago
Yeah, as long as they get literally no money through contracting with the government
tomohawk 5y ago
This is a false equivalence. Facebook is a monopoly. If you owned the only store in the country (or the store that had 70% or more of the market), it would be outrageous to assert a right to toss people out for their opinions. Monopolists must not be allowed the same leeway as ordinary businesses. This is a lesson we already learned the hard way many times. Monopolies must be held to a much higher standard, which they must meet or be broken up.
utbabya 5y ago
I disagree, I think the influence of tech companies along with the wealth and power it brings make thinking about this problem with the sole dimension of private vs public entity obsolete. FB and other social medias are wealthier than most nations on earth. They empower users having thoughts they allow with reach as the right to publish, information to make more efficient decisions from the ease of access (think e.g. local group or marketplace). Which on the flip side means losing access is not far from being punished in a social credit system. It's roughly the same as the idea of having internet being a basic human right, depending on which country or city you're from, being banned from certain social media fundamentally impact your everyday life. Note the distinct difference between them and traditional mega corps is the network effect. Even disregarding this, I think the closer analogy is access to public forum, which is more fuzzy than implied here. See e.g. https://www.dmlp.org/book/export/html/1244 https://www.dmlp.org/book/export/html/1244 whereas in this case it's like the shopping mall example but it's not just for business. I'm a degoogle and desocial-media person so I feel the tradeoff first hand. Ultimately we don't need them, but what it means is that the world would evolve faster than you, so to catch up you have to work harder, the opportunity cost of not using these products is high. Of course that wouldn't change my decision because I don't want to pay in the form of being a product, being stalked and manipulated. The entity I get these power from shouldn't have a fundamental conflict of interest against me. I'm not sure about the solution tho. Following this line of though the obvious one would be having a publicly owned social media as a basic right, then private companies can compete on top of that. But then it's gonna be terrible in other aspects.
louisbarclay 5y ago
After they kicked the guy out of the store, they told him that for the rest of his life he can't help anyone else use the store less, because he was once in the store
deleted 5y ago
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quickthrower2 5y ago
Yeah it’s a bit like your a big tobacco company and someone is selling nicotine patches.
MarkG_109 5y ago
No. It's more like someone who advises people on responsible liquor consumption, and then gets barred from the liquor store. And also FB threatened legal action against the creator to remove the app, which is outrageous. Using the liquor store analogy, it's like the Liquor store then seeks to coerce the advocate to stop publishing advice on responsible drinking, because the owner of the store wants its customers to get sloshed 24 hours a day. It's simply not right. While Facebook has a right to bar someone for inappropriate use of its service, Facebook has no right to bar someone due to advocacy work being done outside of it (and the Unfollow app just helps people do what Facebook itself allows its users to do, that being to unfollow friends and groups without unfriending them -- it's not encouraging anything illegal). Facebook is a monopoly. It should be better regulated. Its actions are completely irresponsible.

T-28788821 5y ago

We'll. I wouldn't want to compare Facebook to a store, If anything Facebook is an equivalent of a drug store and drugs should always be restricted due to the negative effects they bring about on their consumers. Facebook by-law must display a banner written "Facebook is harmful for your mental health" and children should require parental supervision at all time.

tylerhou 5y ago

Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension, but then we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.

colpabar 5y ago
Oh yeah I agree 100%. I guess I should have also included that I have 0 faith in anything fb says, and that I believe any and all of their claims of "we care and we're working on it" are outright lies. i.e. I'm so used to the hypocrisy that I don't really think about it, because everything they do is bad.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
I agree, the whole "facebook has the right to do this" is a deflection that quickly derails the discussion. It's not the point. The point is: Sure Facebook can do that, but the fact that they do shows us how dishonest the people working there are with all the claims they make. Facebook has the right to do this, we have the right to call them out on it just the same.
ectopod 5y ago
> Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension Why? It's a Chrome extension. They can ban the user and the extension will rot. That seems like more than enough power.
- max-ibel 5y ago
  Surely, the extension uses a public API. The extension acts on behalf of the end user. So, I think facebook can ban a particular API key (tied to a packaged extension), but they would have to ban all chrome extensions to get around someone taking the extension source and building their own. So I think facebook can by disabling the API, but won't do that since there are extension that it does like. Whether FB has legal grounds to go after users using such an extension would depend on the user terms, which I don't really know. It would be fairly egregious and risky for FB to do so. But I think if someone were to open source such an extension, this someone probably does not him/herself expose to a legal risk (speaking as a non-lawyer, and not giving legal advice)
bsedlm 5y ago
hypocrisy (along with taboos I guess) seem to be a necessary part of a functioning society.
- EGreg 5y ago
  Well, obviously. People can wax poetic about freedom of speech, the right to bear arms etc. But if there is a large separatist group that has historically wanted to destroy your country the first chance it gets, and members regularly commit violent acts to do it, would you really fight for the right to arm them all to the teeth, and then let them organize larger and larger rallies and shows of strength? Freedom ain’t free, and sometimes the cost can be a little too high: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    and in a more costly, less forgiving environment, there is not enough abudnance of wealth so society becomes less free. Neo-fascist autocracies here we go! (they're just cheaper)
matthew_kuiash 5y ago
Why do they have that right? Here's a car analogy - If I buy a Ford pick what right do they have to stop me doing donuts in it? Or maybe fitting a swimming pool in the back. Maybe I want to drive it around my ranch on fire. If an individual wants to use this software on their Facebook feed I really can't see what legal right FB have to prevent them. OTOH - something was probably "signed" in a EULA to prevent this.
- fwip 5y ago
  Are you being obtuse on purpose? Putting a swimming pool in your truck bed doesn't stop people from buying Fords.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- EGreg 5y ago
  Don’t worry, when cars will download more self-driving software, you can bet your butts it will restrict you from driving some places or in some manner. Drone manufacturers already do so, you can’t fly drones within 50km of an airport or whatever, can’t fly them above 30 meters depending on where you are, and the software enforces this. Books on Kindle and Movies on iTunes can be yanked away as you read or watch them. Now, when it comes to software that isn’t even hosted on your computer, what do you expect?
  - matthew_kuiash 5y ago
    I can't wait. Sadly I agree with you. This level of control is irresistible.
Kranar 5y ago
I think your argument is begging the question as it depends on a prior belief that Facebook is actually harmful. Replace Facebook with a gym membership, or a charity, or some other thing that one does not presume is harmful as the premise of their argument. Would the leadership of a gym be compromised and hypocrites if they banned someone who used their gym to tell others that working out is harmful and they should stop exercising at the gym? Would banning that member indicate that the owners of the gym don't care about the health of their users and instead put profits over well being? Your argument only works and sounds credible because most people on this site believe Facebook is harmful. If people don't share that belief, then it doesn't follow that Facebook is being hypocritical because they are banning someone who is using their product to defeat the product.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Lets say that a poorly designed gym wants to promote social interaction - so they build a cool down room with a small cafe that has a machine you need to swipe a card through every ten reps to continue using the exercise equipment. Some enterprising fellow builds a portable machine that will simulate the card swipe action but can be done at the actual exercise equipment. This seems like a fairer analogy to me since this extension is dealing with a component facebook put in to drive "engagement" that is viewed by a lot of people as an anti-feature - some people like it: Miles, who hangs around the gym for the conversation, really likes the fact that he bumps into people more often in the cool-down room... but most people wish that feature had never been added. Add all of that to the fact that Facebook is the only tool Facebook allows on Facebook (so there are no competing gyms) and the tool becomes even more justifiable. Is it still quite legal for Facebook to C&D this guy - absolutely - but they're definitely not acting in their user's best interest.
  - Kranar 5y ago
    Sure if the gym is poorly designed and causing actual harm, then you can attack the gym on the basis of being poorly designed and causing harm. Attacking the gym on the basis that its owners do not want patrons who are using the very gym as a means of compromising it is not a valid argument as to why the gym's owners are hypocrites, causing harm, and putting profits above the well being of their customers.
p_j_w 5y ago
>we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. Can we ever take a company that says this seriously? Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I never do.
deleted 5y ago
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restingrobot 5y ago
Basically every Fortune 500 company is guilty of this. Most corporations loyalties go Shareholders, Employees, Government, Customers in that order. It is more shocking to me that anyone is surprised Facebook puts profit over people. I would be surprised if they *Didn't* do that.
asdvasdi 5y ago
Asking honestly, curious to know what would do you think is a good response from the company now? Considering, a few months ago, the company took down high profile accounts and content on its platform because it deemed something dangerous and lot of people were mad that company did that and it was censorship. Now the people are mad at the company because they didn't do enough moderation to ensure user health and well being. The company tried launching a version of the product with higher parental controls to let parents take more control, and people were mad and made the company stop those efforts. At this point in the company, what would you think is an acceptable response? Is there even a response that makes everyone happy?
- themitigating 5y ago
  You know most people want Facebook to go down. If they are on the right it's because of the censorship which prevents them from using misinformation to win votes. On the left it's the misinformation.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  I am not confident that "make everyone happy", either equally, or even in varying amounts, should even be the primary objective here a good response would be one that starts with respectable principles and values and proceeds according to those, even when it costs money of course, that won't happen voluntarily, because money
  - nradov 5y ago
    In a company that operates worldwide, which country's or culture's principles and values should take precedence?
    - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
      a good start would be for them to pick any that they can consistently apply and then seek feedback, but ideally it would explicitly describe what the trade-offs are between user safety and profits at the moment, the only principles they consistently apply seem to be: protect zuckerberg first, company profits second, everything else third, but that's just my perception -- they should make clear what their principles are so we can judge whether or not they consistently stick to them, and whether or not we need legislation to nudge those priorities around for the good of society
squarefoot 5y ago
> Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension Surely they can fight against it by changing how the platform works, or ban it if it was hosted somewhere on FB, or ban the author because he wrote something that hits their core business, but sending a cease and desist for an extension that is hosted elsewhere is like a tobacco company sending C&D letters to people selling anti smoking patches or telling publicly that smoking is bad for health. WTF!, this is bullying plain and simple; I already stay away from everything related to FB as much as I can (I knew about the recent FB outage by the evening news, didn't even turn on the tablet with Whatsapp that day), but I will try hard to turn that nearly 0.1% use to 0%. > I.e. the point is the hypocrisy. Exactly. At least Google removed the "Do no evil" part from their mission.
fencepost 5y ago
It's not entirely clear to me that FB would have any right to ban the extension. They could attempt to keep users from using it through policies or detection, but it's running by user choice on user computers in user browsers. I suspect in the US this would have been handled differently but loser pays against a company that can afford to inflate costs by millions per week to make an example....
chrismcb 5y ago
I'm not sure there is hypocrisy. They can and should care about both. Without users there is no profit.

thomastjeffery 5y ago

When you have literally billions of users, calling yourself a private company is disingenuous.

claytongulick 5y ago

Sure, they have the right to terminate his account. But to demand removal of the tool, demand he never makes another tool, and to threaten ruinous litigation if he doesn't comply, even though they know it's illegal to do so? That goes well beyond shopkeepers rights.

shkkmo 5y ago

That's a horrible analogy. This is like being banned from a store because someone publishes a blog that publicizes store discounts and then also having that store threaten sue you so you can't even write about their discounts. There is no reason to defend Facebook hete. People should have a right to modify their web browsers and help other people modify their web browsers.

otachack 5y ago

I get your metaphor but a store doesn't follow you 24/7 and keeps nagging you to check it. Unless it's Amazon. At least with Amazon you're spending tangible things: money + time (browsing) so you can feel the dent in your wallet/credit card eventually, which signals you to take it easy. With Facebook most people spend countless hours and there's no party telling you to chill out. Everything is enforcing you to stay on the platform. Even Netflix has some a screen popping up after 2-3 hours of binging to make sure you're still watching, giving some friction to the consumer. There's no noticable friction built into Facebook.

Cosmin_C 5y ago
This reminded me on how nice Netflix was when it started and how obnoxious it has become. Just like Amazon and Facebook. Small starts, nice things. Then it starts being mildly annoying, then it just intrudes everywhere in your life (like your other browsing tabs and what not). Netflix was nice because there were no ads. At the same time can I binge on a series without being irked every x minutes if I'm still there or not? Maybe I am, maybe I am not, maybe I am chilling with my SO, it's none of their damn business and at the same time it doesn't do anything helpful except nag you.

scarygliders 5y ago

I'm not totally grokking the "FB is a store" premise. Mainly because if FB was a store, it'd be a store where the patrons are not buying stuff from the store, but are themselves the product. i.e. FB offers a messaging/contact service for "free" - with the caveat being that FB gets to glean startling - and valuable - amounts of information about its patrons.

SllX 5y ago
Replace “store” with “mall”, “club”, or “bar” and you have the same result. Facebook is hosting on their servers that they own and/or lease which gives them a right to exclude, much like a store, bar, club or mall owner.
- baq 5y ago
  Does it? It isn’t obvious. Especially if talking about legislation around the world.
  - SllX 5y ago
    Sorry but I flatly don’t respect legal systems that don’t respect property rights. In the Anglo-American tradition and countries which are also Anglo-descended or Anglo-influenced and some other entirely separate legal systems as well, property rights are a big deal. And a core fundamental principle of property rights is the right to exclude.
    - heurisko 5y ago
      The UK legal system, at least, recognises property rights, but offers varying degrees of exclusion. For example, the right to exclude certain classes of people is different renting a room of your house vs. renting a whole apartment. The ability to exclude is again different for service providers. It sometimes also depends on their size. e.g. larger banks are obliged to provide a free basic bank account. If social media monopolies are seen as excluding people without good reason, their monopoly status might attract attention for regulation in the same manner.

addicted 5y ago

A lot of what FB is doing here, if the story is as described, is clearly illegal. The problem is that FB is too huge for the individual to get into a legal battle with.

deleted 5y ago
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restingrobot 5y ago
It is not illegal to ban someone from using your product, (assuming they are not being discriminated against as a protected class).
- el_ravager 5y ago
  Facebook is essentially a utility as governments use it as one of the primary ways to communicate with their citizens. Banning someone from Facebook, in the US, is unconstitutional.
  - restingrobot 5y ago
    First of all, Facebook is not a utility. No matter what you think, it is literally not classified a utility at this time. Second, just because governments, companies, or people choose to use it to communicate, does not mean it is a utility. There is a choice and many, many alternatives to Facebook. Utility status is reserved for things like power water and gas, (even internet in many places), as there are physical barriers to choice. Third, it is not unconstitutional for utilities to ban customers in the United States.
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      If it represents the sole method of communication by some government entity, I can see a case being made that every citizen has a right to a "read only" (maybe even read only, read once?) minimized level of access, at some explicit cost to the government entity using the platform (offloading liability from the company and onboarding accountability with the backing of law. ) Facebook is obviously not a utility, in the US at least. It's also not "just" a private entity. It's a novel thing for which we don't have an existing legal framework in which to capture all the nuanced uses, rights, responsibilities, and liabilities. Facebook has taken on the role of managing the distribution of information to billions of people. It handles communications between groups and individuals. Given how critical those activities are to a healthy, liberal, free society, we should take steps to protect the rights and duties of individual users and platforms. Maybe we'll coalesce into a roughly cooperative country sometime in the future an accomplish that.

api 5y ago

You're right. The root of this problem isn't Facebook. It's the fact that private media companies are in control of what should be a peer to peer conversation between people. There is no way to fix social media. If we moderate it too much, it's "censorship." If we don't then the engagement algorithms will drive mass indoctrination into crazy ideologies that have high virality. If we do try to eliminate disinformation, who decides what is and is not correct? There's no solution to these problems because media -- mediation -- is the problem.

ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
there are solutions more complex than "moderate a lot" and "moderate a little" facebook could, for example, remove racist stuff a lot, and anti-racist stuff less, and then ignore the racists who complain, because they're racists

kiryin 5y ago

The author, as I see it based entirely on this one article, likely wasn't trying to "hurt their business," unless (lol) their business is unhealthy addiction. Building on your example, imagine your store was of the liquor variety, and someone placed a flier for the local AA meeting on the bulletin board. I doubt you would remove it.

travoc 5y ago

Who is claiming Facebook doesn’t have a right to remove users? Why do you feel the need to argue a point that nobody is making? We all know what Facebook is allowed to do. Here we are discussing what Facebook SHOULD be doing, and how they can avoid being loathsome hypocrites.

Jensson 5y ago

I can still find adblockers in Google search. Google blocking those sites would rightly cause a lot of people to get angry over censorship and look for alternative search engines. I see no reason to not get angry when big corporations do things you don't agree with, it is what ultimately causes them to fall and give us alternatives.

tofuahdude 5y ago
Being angry about it isn't the same thing as arguing that we should make it illegal.

inopinatus 5y ago

The calculus here is moral, not one of contract minutiae.

naravara 5y ago

> As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some guy kept coming and showing customers how to not spend any money in my store, I'd kick that guy out of my store. Saying he "came and showed" implies he was doing this on Facebook, but he was publishing a Chrome extension. This is more like McDonalds blacklisting you because, in your job as a nutritionist, you gave people strategies for reducing their fast food intake. It's a browser extension, not Facebook itself. They banned him for showing other people how to do something on their own computers.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The article tries to downplay what I think is the core issue: He added some functionality to the plug-in that sent statistics back to a server he controlled. He claims the data collection was minimal for most users but those who opted in had a lot more information collected. It appears everyone who used the plug-in had some amount of data collected by the author. He’s trying to spin this as Facebook trying to bury an anti-addiction tool, but I think it’s a simple case of someone getting caught writing a plugging that automates API requests and collects data from Facebook users to a 3rd-party server. I don’t think he’d be in trouble if he simply wrote an adblocker-style plugin that simply hid the feed. It was the automated spamming of the API and the 3rd-party data collection that likely got him in trouble.

munk-a 5y ago
I don't mean to shock you but as someone who worked on a game that interacted with facebook data - everyone in the world is harvesting some information from facebook when they're making calls to their API. Sometimes it's as "innocent" as spamming your friends with requests to play (or enabling the user to do that for in-game rewards!) and sometimes it's cambridge analytica. No application in the world just wants to altruistically be helpful by having a facebook integration - I can't even imagine what that'd look like it'd probably, honestly, be just not having a facebook integration at all.
- finfinfin 5y ago
  There are many applications that only request logged in user’s name and email address to be populated in the registration form. I myself implemented this many times without “harvesting” anything else.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    You mean for SSO functionality? Is that log in optional and a method for users to potentially preserve their progress across multiple devices?
cutemonster 5y ago

bsedlm 5y ago

I prefer to argue the same thing by saying that we recognize this is a rational expected behavior of any entity developed enough that it looks after itself. Similarly to other lines of reasoning critizizing specifically facebook for "knowing they can be harmful but choosing to believe they can also be positive-good (useful)". This behavior is not exclusive to Facebook; all corporations are the same, and some have done humanity far worse, yet they're still around (why?). It's unreasonable to single-out facebook in this regard.

asdff 5y ago

The tool doesn't stop people from using facebook, it just makes their usage more productive. Like RES for reddit or other third party tooling that makes life easier for users, especially power users. Personally I probably wouldn't have stopped using facebook if I knew about this approach to cleaning out the junk. Plus the tool isn't even going as far as something like RES. the tool doesnt' add or remove any utility that isn't already there, it just automates an otherwise manual and painstaking process.

malka 5y ago

And the answer is "Facebook should NOT have the right to do it". Facebook has made itself a public utility. And public utilities should be nationalized.

ravenstine 5y ago

Fact is the argument works both ways. A person can't stay logically consistent while saying "it's a private company they can do what they want" in the case of politics but then denouncing that same company when it takes an adverse action purely out of its own interest. I, for one, don't hate Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, and all of it is a reflection of society. Naturally we're pretty slow to react to any problem, so it's taken this long for a larger fragment of society to accept that social media is a problem. The next step is for all of us to admit that Zuck & co. aren't the real bad guys; while they profiteer off the psychological warfare (profiteers will always exist), we spent years falling for their tactics over and over. Fool us dozens of times, shame on us.

ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
they're being criticized for their hypocrisy, not for doing anything they're legally disallowed from doing thus, they can do whatever they want, including banning racists and hiding secret internal research showing they're amplifying racists, but only the second one is hypocritical given their claimed (almost satirically so, at this point) values of safety-before-profit
el_ravager 5y ago
Facebook is a merely the logical consequence of late-stage capitalism—its evil nature is a feature not a bug.

hikerclimber1 5y ago

Everything is subjective. Especially laws.

toss1 5y ago

Agree, on both loathing FB and that they are within their rights to kick this guy off their product. That said, congress should have him testify about his experiences, and the relationship to FB's income stream.

tombert 5y ago

I don't disagree with you at all, but just to play devil's advocate, I suppose the argument could be made that Facebook has basically created a near-monopoly in the social media space, and if that's the case maybe they should be viewed as a "utility" than a regular unregulated business. For example, I don't think Con Edison [1] could kick me off my electricity (assuming I was paying my bill), even if I handed out pamphlets saying how to use less power, since Con Edison is a regulated utility. Obviously this isn't a great comparison, you could make a much stronger argument for a "necessity" of electricity than a platform to share photos with friends, but that argument could be made that because of the ubiquity of Facebook (and subsidiaries), maybe they should be a free speech zone. [1] NYC's biggest power company.

piggybox 5y ago
Let's turn Google search into a utility first. I think most people use it more often than FB.
jakelazaroff 5y ago
If Facebook bans me, I can still use Twitter/Reddit/LinkedIn/TikTok/YouTube/WordPress/my own website. If Con Edison bans me, there are literally zero legal ways for me to make electricity come out of my wall sockets.
- tombert 5y ago
  That's fair, Con Edison has an actual monopoly (more or less, it's weird and you can license third-party power), while Facebook just has a plurality of social media attention. Hell, I didn't even have a Facebook until last week when I bought my Oculus Quest (though I used a fake name and a burner email address), so clearly it's not vital. As I said before, i agree with the OP, I was just trying to entertain a different point of view.
thehappypm 5y ago
In what way on Earth is Facebook a near-monopoly? TikTok and YouTube are also huge social networks.

cycomanic 5y ago

But that's not what happened. Someone standing in front of a shop telling people how to avoid buying more than they really want. The company would obviously have the right to ban the person from their store. Instead they threatened the person to sue (with huge financial implications) demand that he never talks about the shop again and never comes close. That is not something a normal shop can and should be able to do.

themitigating 5y ago
First being outside the store isn't the stores property and anyway i don't know how that would translate to the internet. Second, companies sue individuals for defamation all the time. They can also get restraining order, claim harassment, etc
brandonmenc 5y ago
> The company would obviously have the right to ban the person from their store. Really? I don't think this would be legal, at least in the United States. If they were causing a disturbance inside the store, sure.

johannes1234321 5y ago

I can tell people how to avoid sending mail, but the post still has to ship my letters. At some point some infrastructure becomes a utility and has to be treated as such. A universal login for other services and messaging at some point of concentration reaches that point. But it is a tough field to regulate, as we most likely haven't reached a peak of technological development in that space and regulation in developing fields is hard.

dustingetz 5y ago

Facebook is closer to a government or empire than a shop

brightball 5y ago

I honestly wonder about this exact scenario with the likes of business reviews on Google/Yelp. It’s like letting somebody hang their words on the front door of your business and as a business owner you have no power at all to do anything about it. One company had to spent 6 months trying to get a review taken down that accused one of its female executives of having an affair.

marcosdumay 5y ago

That depends on whether you see Facebook more as a small store or as a telephony company.

grishka 5y ago

The problem isn't that they can do whatever they want, it's that governments side with them more often than not. It's the existence of laws that protect them instead of protecting their users. Without this government support, their threats wouldn't have any teeth, and so adversarial interoperability would flourish.

YeBanKo 5y ago

"facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" – as much as i like the argument, i don't think it applies here. In the US being banned by one or few bug tech companies is almost similar to being banned by USPS, or by a store chains like safeway, walgreens or cvs. This should not be taken lightly and there should be legal protection against bans like this. His activity of developing the tool was outside of facebook use as a user. Its ok if they ban his dev account, or the app(if it was a fb app) or try to block it. Ideally, such cases should be tested in court, but there is such a huge imbalance between opponents, that it seems UK system is inadequate in equalizing it.

throwawaysea 5y ago

The problem is these social media platforms are so big, they represent our only practical public space for societal discourse. These are ubiquitous and fundamental services in the modern era. They need to be treated as utilities and common carriers. We can’t just let unfair discrimination and censorship hide behind claims of private ownership for this kind of platform with that kind of reach.

pmlnr 5y ago

Apparently you weren't there when FB had APIs, Farmville et al, and got rich on people developing things on their "plarform".

pcthrowaway 5y ago

I think the problem with this argument is that Facebook isn't "just" a store. For many people, it can't be avoided. Businesses rely on facebook for advertisement, creating business pages, running promotions, offering support, and engaging with customers/users. People rely on facebook for access to sometimes critical resources (think about how many emergency relief efforts require you to use facebook). Marketplace, etc. Identity management. Being banned from facebook isn't like being banned from any one store, it's increasingly becoming more like losing access to your identification, payment information, bank card, or passport. For companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google which are becoming so completely integrated with the fabric of society, governments should regulate how and when they can restrict access.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

Do you view Apple as correct when it prevented companies from notifying customers about the 30% cut on digital services for purchases and subscriptions made through the App Store? If not where do you draw the line? https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/28/21405140/apple-rejects-facebook-update-30-percent-cut https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/8/28/21405140/app...

jakelazaroff 5y ago

IMO the thesis of the "Facebook is a private company" argument is that moderating or banning people isn't violating some fundamental right to freedom of speech. It's not to say that they should be immune from criticism for doing so.

atoav 5y ago

If I owned a telephone company and people complained about telephones I would do... nothing. Because it is none of my fucking business I guess.

scotuswroteus 5y ago

Yeah, as long as they get literally no money through contracting with the government

tomohawk 5y ago

This is a false equivalence. Facebook is a monopoly. If you owned the only store in the country (or the store that had 70% or more of the market), it would be outrageous to assert a right to toss people out for their opinions. Monopolists must not be allowed the same leeway as ordinary businesses. This is a lesson we already learned the hard way many times. Monopolies must be held to a much higher standard, which they must meet or be broken up.

utbabya 5y ago

I disagree, I think the influence of tech companies along with the wealth and power it brings make thinking about this problem with the sole dimension of private vs public entity obsolete. FB and other social medias are wealthier than most nations on earth. They empower users having thoughts they allow with reach as the right to publish, information to make more efficient decisions from the ease of access (think e.g. local group or marketplace). Which on the flip side means losing access is not far from being punished in a social credit system. It's roughly the same as the idea of having internet being a basic human right, depending on which country or city you're from, being banned from certain social media fundamentally impact your everyday life. Note the distinct difference between them and traditional mega corps is the network effect. Even disregarding this, I think the closer analogy is access to public forum, which is more fuzzy than implied here. See e.g. https://www.dmlp.org/book/export/html/1244 https://www.dmlp.org/book/export/html/1244 whereas in this case it's like the shopping mall example but it's not just for business. I'm a degoogle and desocial-media person so I feel the tradeoff first hand. Ultimately we don't need them, but what it means is that the world would evolve faster than you, so to catch up you have to work harder, the opportunity cost of not using these products is high. Of course that wouldn't change my decision because I don't want to pay in the form of being a product, being stalked and manipulated. The entity I get these power from shouldn't have a fundamental conflict of interest against me. I'm not sure about the solution tho. Following this line of though the obvious one would be having a publicly owned social media as a basic right, then private companies can compete on top of that. But then it's gonna be terrible in other aspects.

louisbarclay 5y ago

After they kicked the guy out of the store, they told him that for the rest of his life he can't help anyone else use the store less, because he was once in the store

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

quickthrower2 5y ago

Yeah it’s a bit like your a big tobacco company and someone is selling nicotine patches.

MarkG_109 5y ago

No. It's more like someone who advises people on responsible liquor consumption, and then gets barred from the liquor store. And also FB threatened legal action against the creator to remove the app, which is outrageous. Using the liquor store analogy, it's like the Liquor store then seeks to coerce the advocate to stop publishing advice on responsible drinking, because the owner of the store wants its customers to get sloshed 24 hours a day. It's simply not right. While Facebook has a right to bar someone for inappropriate use of its service, Facebook has no right to bar someone due to advocacy work being done outside of it (and the Unfollow app just helps people do what Facebook itself allows its users to do, that being to unfollow friends and groups without unfriending them -- it's not encouraging anything illegal). Facebook is a monopoly. It should be better regulated. Its actions are completely irresponsible.