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Meta has banned the personal Facebook accounts for everyone on our team

310 points by Ajedi32 4y ago

Eleison23 4y ago
It seems like the mildest action that could be taken; perhaps they will proceed to DMCA takedowns.
lmz 4y ago
These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...
- shakezula 4y ago
  > These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. Good, you should be able to choose who you do business with, or at least that’s what conservatives argued for years.
  - standyro 4y ago
    Pretty sure “the free market” has decided that Parler and Truth Social are terrible social media products based on their relative lack of adoption
    - tenpies 4y ago
      Give it a few. It's only a matter of time until the Leftist tech platforms ban a critical amount of content producers and make themselves irrelevant. After all, each creator you ban represents a multiple of monetizable viewers that you just partially or totally told "don't come to my site". Take Rumble for example. It still has a substantial amount of gristle, but a growing amount of mainstream content. It is also now a publicly listed company undergoing hockey stick growth at a time when most companies are not.
      - 1270018080 4y ago
        I don't think there are any "leftist" social media platform. Maybe explicitly leftist subreddits if that counts? But overall, there are normal people platforms and right wing propaganda platforms. Is this the effect where anything left of fox news is "communism"? I hadn't heard of Rumble until now. But I'm just seeing some putin defense, covid conspiracy, and joe biden is a terrorist videos. And the UX is early 2010's.
        godmode2019 4y ago
        Welcome to 2010 YouTube were adults can decide what information they want to consume.
        1270018080 4y ago
        Adults most vulnerable to right wing propaganda, the demographic famous for making good decisions for themselves and those around them.
    - anticensor 4y ago
      Social networking space is not a true market due to the fact common users are not buyers or sellers in them.
    - loa_in_ 4y ago
      Free market did enormous amount of terrible, short sighted choices. I am living in a (moderately) free market country, which isn't USA and government moderation is a never ending war with evolution of ways to circumvent regulations. These are only in place to try to keep food products from harming people eating them. I use food as an obvious example, but it applies to all branches of economy - electronics, insurance policies, gambling, clothing, meat, produce, etc. All in pursuit of profit over humanitarian needs. Always trying to evade detection by means of misdirection, "accidental" omission; surely even bribery.
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      that isn't facebook's problems that they regular folks don't want to join a bunch of fascist platforms. No one is -owed- an audience of a billion people. I don't think the -means- of those shoudl be blocked. ISP, cloudfront, AWS, etc shouldn't be able to block such orgs (as long as they aren't doing anything illegal) as they are providing a source that means the internet does fall apart because they are providing the most basic of what makes up the web/internet and it's easy to argue that they should be able to pick and choose like a facebook/amazon/twitter/etc, who provide something that isn't a commodity.
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
    Not exactly. You can't deny baking someone a carrot cake because they are gay for example. But you can deny baking them a cake that represents a gay celebration, for example asking to have two male figured on top, or delivering it to a gay wedding. I don't think you should be able to ban someone because you don't like them. If it's the case that you should, why doesn't Facebook scrape off and ban known sexual offenders list? Criminals? Should someone that beat their exwife in 1987 really be on Facebook, let alone be able to look up his victim? I personally think people should be allowed on unless they break the actual rules of the platform on the platform.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  the personal account of the president, an important and not pedantic distinction because as a citizen he has no more rights than anyone else, despite having a lot of might. The president's not a king or a queen who can just walk into whatever place he or she wants, in my book a win for the rights of private citizens and companies in a Republic.
  - lmz 4y ago
    Personal account? He was forced to unblock users: https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts
- gpm 4y ago
  Obviously they can, the surprise is that they did. Vindictive actions like this are rarely profitable, they tend to scare people off from doing business with you.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    Unless you're a monopoly and then you can do whatever you want because your customers have no alternative. Which Meta is (well, it's a duopoly with Google). Anyway Meta's customers, and the only entities it cares about, are large ad buyers. None of them will give a crap about this random app and these random human beings getting banned. This has zero impact on their ability to continue writing checks to Meta and continue getting in front of your eyeballs. If anything Meta's customers will be happy about the ban since this app caused fewer people to see their ads.
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      There are plenty platforms out there besides meta; numerous places, fox comments, stormfront forums, gab, truth social, 4 chan, reddit, your own blog, twitter. No one can say that there aren't other platforms.
      - safety1st 4y ago
        Meta is a monopoly. It doesn't matter that other platforms exist. Those platforms don't make a lot of money (at least in the US) and whether you're a monopoly or not is about money. (You also don't need 100% - essentially if you have a lot and you have the power to distort the market, you're a monopoly.) The business of social media is ads. In the US the vast majority of social media ad spend goes to Meta. Thus, monopoly. Google and Meta hold a duopoly over digital ad spending in general. The FTC agrees and is suing Meta for monopolizing social media and the "metaverse." Anything could happen with these lawsuits but they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think they had a good case.
- bobsil1 4y ago
  *These companies can ban a terrorist from abusing their platforms as a terrorist control channel, banning him years too late due to their corrupt incentives.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    These companies don't ban real terrorists, though: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-taliban-accounts-213501287.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-tali...
  - 93po 4y ago
    Is this the narrative now? Tr*mp is a terrorist? Are we holding the same standards against previous presidents, too? Is drone striking Americans without due process also a terrorist move? Or are we only going to focus on the one president that said mean things on Twitter?
    - bobsil1 4y ago
      *that tried to lynch VP, Congress via tweets
      - 93po 4y ago
        So we're just making stuff up now? This tweet doesn't exist.
        bobsil1 4y ago
        https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/card/trump-s-tweet-about-pence-seen-as-critical-moment-during-riot-fmPxoFkeoTKxi0NqPLCL https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/c...
- ninth_ant 4y ago
  Most any business can ban a president. Put up a sign in your gas station and poof, you’ve banned Joe Biden. What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned. The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.
ipsum2 4y ago
Privacy proponents should cheer for this. Legally Meta must take down the app to comply with FTC's order (obligatory not a lawyer): https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-billion-facebook-settlement-record-breaking-and-history-making https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-bi... > Another way the FTC says Facebook violated the order was by failing to adequately assess and address privacy risks posed by third-party developers. Other than getting developers to click an “I agree” terms-and-conditions box when registering an app with the Facebook Platform, Facebook didn’t screen developers or their apps before giving them access to massive amounts of data that users had designated as private. Of course, in the wrong hands, information like that can grease the wheels for identity thieves and fraudsters. > The order imposes additional requirements to address Facebook’s illegal conduct. For example, Facebook must implement a stringent program to monitor third-party developers and terminate access to any developer that doesn’t follow the rules. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-billion-facebook-settlement-record-breaking-and-history-making https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-bi...
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? If not, you're twisting things to the point of deception. Facebook is supposed to crack down, yes, but it's a specific thing they're supposed to crack down on, not ad-removal.
  - ipsum2 4y ago
    > Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? Yes, the app is downloading private user messages (ostensibly to show a modified messaging interface) and private photos, according to their feature list. This isn't a simple DNS-level ad-block, its acting as a proxy where the app developers can intercept and see all data. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy, just a dummy link: https://www.theogapp.com/ https://www.theogapp.com/
    - chucklenorris 4y ago
      Proxying.. i don't think it means what you think it means. By that logic they should ban all of google's employees because chrome "proxies" information from facebook's servers (i.e. chrome shuffles private data from facebook's servers to user's eyeballs)
dredmorbius 4y ago
Backstory?
- defrost 4y ago
  They developed an app that decouples Instagram from the money stream (for Meta) > Get the OG Instagram experience. > Remove ads and suggested content, create completely customized feeds, download content, turn off read receipts, and more.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Thanks.
cercatrova 4y ago
Well, what did they expect? Does anyone think a company will sit around while you strip their app of their revenue source and republish it? Now I'm all for trying, I use adblockers and SponsorBlock, but we all know that they're unofficial methods that could be taken down at any time. That's exactly what happened to Vanced.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Well, what did they expect? It would be good if companies did not ban you on one site for violating the TOS of a completely different site.
  - joshuaheard 4y ago
    I could see banning the app, and maybe their business accounts. But to track down the developers and ban their personal accounts seems rather extreme.
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870 https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870 Except for the part where the TOS explicitly states that you will be banned from all Metas products…
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      No, not except. That is a bad thing, and putting it in the TOS does not change whether it is a bad thing.
      - voidwtf 4y ago
        I don’t disagree on that point. I’m just making it clear it was in the TOS. I don’t want my gmail account permanently because of a comment I made on YouTube, nor do I think that should be commonplace. I’m not sure what the best solution is though. I once worked for a server hosting company that had a few different “branches”. It was pretty common to see different types of misuse or abuse. Whether it be credit card theft, hosting copyrighted content, or hosting phishing sites. I would go out of my way to monitor for and ban all associated accounts at all branches of the company. Not because I wanted to ban their personal accounts, but because 99% of the time those associated accounts would immediately engage in the same behavior. You can sit there all day playing whack-a-mole, or you can exterminate the mole.
minimaxir 4y ago
It's worth noting that the app received $1M in preseed funding: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-free-instagram-feed/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-... It's also worth noting that the Instagram API is extremely locked down for typical users (which is the reason why there hasn't been a clone like this) as it is limited to Businesses and Creators, but the app demonstrates features not available by the official API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere, even without a business: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1574811387737407490 https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1574811387737407490
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  > They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere The question is - how do we even allow it do be legal? Not being able to reverse engineer applications running on your own devices is some kind of bullshit dystopia, tolerated only because average citizen is not technical enough to realize how dystopian it is.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    I have some trouble with "telling a third party developer they can't replace parts of your server-driven app for their own profit is a dystopia."
    - seba_dos1 4y ago
      Are you using any browser extensions that do something with website content?
      - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
        No, and that isn't equivalent
etchalon 4y ago
"We explicitly violated the terms of service for a website and you'll never guess what happened next."
- tarakat 4y ago
  The company retaliated against their employees through unrelated services it happens to also own? Is this the kind of free market we want? Turf wars?
  - voidwtf 4y ago
    Each employee willingly participated. I understand the feeling, but these weren’t random people that had nothing to do with a company action. These were all individuals who took part in the act. I agree it’s petty, and yes this is what many free market proponents want (unless free market is just a convenient guise to get what they want).
    - tarakat 4y ago
      > I agree it’s petty The pettiness isn't the problem, the extra-legal power that consolidation of capital and media enables is. Competition in the market ceases to be about the best product at the best price, and becomes a game of strategic alliances and power abuse instead. Edit: To clarify once more: Facebook may have a legitimate interest in keeping this company off Instagram. What it does not have is a moral right to use unrelated properties for retaliation. This is what I meant by "extra-legal" - it's using its market power to punish a company, instead of the courts. If Instagram was independent, it could not engage in this sort of business-warfare.
      - voidwtf 4y ago
        This wasn’t competition though. This was straight up theft of resources/services. What? “extra-legal”? Don’t mix this with other behaviors Meta/Facebook/Instagram engage in, I hate them for all the bullsht they get away with too. However, this isn’t that, this is someone trying to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform explicitly against their terms of service and without reimbursing them.
GoodJokes 4y ago
Get off Facebook idiots
zephrx1111 4y ago
Personally, I feel Meta has the right to do so.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Do they have the right to do so today? Of course. Should they have the right to do so? Definitely not, and that's why we want to see laws in this space changed.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    I don’t see how you can be so sure that they “definitely” shouldn’t. This is a very complex issue with strong arguments on both sides.
- gubernation 4y ago
  [flagged]
voidwtf 4y ago
1. Violating TOS 2. No clear privacy policy (re: how does the app protect and utilize user info) 3. Circumventing user access/security policies Maybe I missed something, but it sounds like everyone on their team participated in multiple violations on Meta’s platform. I admire what they were doing, trying to polish a turd, but I don’t think they should get upset when they get sh*t on their hands. Meta/Facebook/Instagram are a cancer that needs to be excised. No amount of plastic surgery will cure the rot within. The platform exists only to get users into a feedback loop that they can use to advertise to you. Best of luck to the team, hopefully they come to see this as a positive thing, find alternative solutions, and never have to deal with that garbage platform again.
defrost 4y ago
Breaking:: > UN1feed says Apple removed The OG App, which let users create and share Instagram feeds without ads and suggested posts, from the App Store; the app ranked #50 [1] https://www.techmeme.com/220928/p47#a220928p47 https://www.techmeme.com/220928/p47#a220928p47 [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-og-app/id1637701040 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-og-app/id1637701040
i_dont_know_ 4y ago
This is honestly the exact reason I haven't tried to develop a facebook app or extension... I've heard that the smallest mis-step can get your account suspended like this. Not like a 'here's a warning' but 'you read a variable you shouldn't have, now your whole account is deleted'. This isn't usually a problem, except Facebook has a pretty unique position in our society. It might be the only social media some of our immediate family have. It's the de-facto social media presence for some smaller community organizations (like parent groups) and hobby groups. A ban from Facebook is a lot more deeply impactful than being banned from, say, gmail or something. I could understand if they sent the developers a cease-and-desist or initiated some sort of legal action with this as a potential consequence. I could even understand blocking the app until it was resolved. But actually searching up the dev team and banning their personal Facebook accounts for something they're building on Instagram... This makes it so much scarier because Oculus is also Meta, and the community there is still heavily reliant on developers to grow since Meta has sunk so much money into it and it still hasn't quite found its footing in the market. Do they think more people are going to develop for it if a potential consequence is their facebook account will be perma-banned as a first-resort? Would you be willing to experiment on that platform? Anyways, I'm no gazillion-dollar monopoly, but it seems vindictive more than good business sense.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  > Facebook ... might be the only social media some of our immediate family have It's funny how prevalent this meme is. But I'm not expected to have an AOL account just because it's the only social media grandpa has. Or MySpace just for Aunt Lolita's sake. No, they are both supposed to get Facebook accounts because that's what cousin Ralph has. And I'm supposed to move for the same reason. Well, if Ralph wants me to know what he ate for dinner, he can find me at my local bbs.
naet 4y ago
If it was a really good app you made, why not also make your own backend and completely decouple from meta? If you build an app using the meta platform in a way that is a clear violation of their tos, the app will obviously be killed the second it gets popular. If I was running a service and another company attempted to do this to my service (violated my TOS, built on top of my private API in a way that striped all my revenue and repackaged it under their name, etc) I would definitely ban them...
- minimaxir 4y ago
  The problem is that the only reason the app is getting press is because it's a ripoff.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Is NewPipe a "ripoff" too?
- rabuse 4y ago
  Because the backend is the difficult part that tends to cost a lot of money in resources/infrastructure.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > If it was a really good app you made, why not also make your own backend and completely decouple from meta? Because of the network effect.
- agileAlligator 4y ago
  It's not just the app that was killed (which would be understandable), it was their personal facebook accounts that were in no way linked to the app.
bitwize 4y ago
If you're helping violate Meta's ToS, do you have a legitimate reason why you think they should tolerate you?
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  Can you imagine the poor intern that's just answering phones or delivering coffee, proud to have their first job, and loses their social media account? Sorta funny. It also seems extremely petty considering they KNOW this company has endless fake accounts they use, and losing their personals doesn't really mean much other than a personal loss.
amatecha 4y ago
Oh wow, this app got pulled from everything because it's an unofficial 3rd party client for Instagram? I'll say it again, companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients. They don't have to explicitly support them, but taking action to explicitly thwart them (and writing ToS that forbids them) should be outlawed. There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them. Tech companies get to exploit the public under the guise of something useful, while also getting to completely dictate the terms of that usage. The only thing that limits their exploitation of users is the laws applicable in the relevant jurisdictions (and sometimes not even that). Too bad looking out for the rights of users is apparently just a complete non-issue to anyone in power.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Without control of the client, it gets much harder to fight abuse.
  - amatecha 4y ago
    If you've ever worked on an online service, you might realize that what you ship for the client is almost irrelevant -- it can all be reverse engineered and an unofficial client can _always_ be created. This happens for all online services, even if it's just someone's data-mining app running on a local machine. The number one rule is "never trust what comes from the client", because it's trivial to create carefully-crafted network calls to basically do whatever the API allows (and sometimes more than what was supposed to be allowed). So, obviously 3rd party clients are thus able to perform malicious acts, but existing laws already forbid this. My suggestion to ensure 3rd party clients are always legally permitted isn't mutually exclusive with existing laws protecting the creators of services and software. :)
    - xvector 4y ago
      "Never trust the client" is true, but in practice, some control over the client still helps reduce abuse if you make third party clients a lot harder (eg remote attestation.)
keyme 4y ago
So a Newpipe for Facebook? Finally. For sure more difficult to pull off, but good luck!
vxNsr 4y ago
Remember when Facebook built out an app platform on top of their website, it was all good until they made it clear they didn’t care at all about the developers and just saw them as a way to increase their control of the market.
yieldcrv 4y ago
Instagram has a chronological feed now, just in case you missed it
blondin 4y ago
i don't have enough backstory on this. but i find it troubling that they banned personal accounts. the developers speculate that they used linkedin to source their personal accounts. aren't developer and personal accounts separate on facebook?
annadane 4y ago
And yet Meta was involved with things like Free Basics, or forcing the Oculus account with a bait and switch, and repeatedly lying about Whatsapp - but I'm sure this Instagram thing is much worse, somehow
pGuitar 4y ago
good
efitz 4y ago
Maybe I’m just a graybeard but all this is reminiscent of the shenanigans that Ma Bell pulled. Not exactly the same but similar. History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, as they say. There’s a very simple solution here: common carrier. Treat social media as a modern utility. No viewpoint discrimination, censorship, algorithmic social manipulation or proprietary on-ramps. The bad behavior has gone on long enough.
- heisenbit 4y ago
  There is one thing worse: Typically these phone carriers had a duty to provide service in exchange for their monopoly. Here FB can ban you from their monopoly playground piercing the liability shield working for a legal typically company gives you.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  There is plenty of freedom out there. If someone wants to be a Nazi/Antifa/Climate Skeptic (not you but the usual suspects) and try to stir up murderous crowds/riots/etc then do it on your own platform. There is Gab, Stormfront, Fox News comments, etc for that. There is no lack of platforms out there. All you have to have are the $$ and the grit.
AlexandrB 4y ago
Modern ad-funded software is less a "bicycle for the mind" and more a "hamster wheel for the brain". Of course third party clients would be seen as a threat - they empower the user.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  It's a threat because 3rd party clients like this circumvent payment for the service via ads. If you don't like the terms, don't use the service. There are plenty of alternatives.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    If I'm allowed to close my eyes or mute the volume when an ad is playing why shouldn't I be allowed to get a machine to do this for me?
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Because you can use another service where you pay in money instead of attention like Apple products and services. Let’s not pretend like there aren’t many other alternatives
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        That's not actually answering the question. Is it legal to look away from ads or mute the volume? If so, it's just as legal to delegate this work to a machine (or to an assistant you hire), or at least, it should be just as legal, though again, I'm not sure that any law has been broken here. Breach of ToS != breach of law. Whether to use the service or not is a completely different question, but when it comes to Facebook, the problem is the network effects. Facebook has a monopoly on humanity's social fabric in a lot of locations, and since they don't want to intentionally interoperate and cooperate with third-party clients (so your Apple-branded client won't be able to message someone on Instagram), adversarial interoperability is the only way out.
warent 4y ago
This is a parasitic company that got swatted away like flies from the engorged Meta pig. Seeing this "OG App" complain about Meta, and Meta fighting back, is truly like two turds fighting over which is worse. It's all crap in the end.
dleslie 4y ago
Many folks on here might be too young to remember, but there was an era where cable companies served premium channels with a scrambled signal to all customers, and sold access by way of attaching the appropriate filter. In fact, all channels were protected in this way, with your cable box holding the necessary filters. Albeit, some were merely hidden by a band pass filter and not scrambled. Anyhow, those arguing that third party clients ought to have access to the API are making a similar argument to those who wanted to use third party filters to access channels they hadn't paid for. Why, it would go, if the cable company didn't serve the signal then it wouldn't be available to be used. Which is not unlike claiming that the data provided by a private API is free for the taking. It's not, and it's certainly not with the consent of those endeavoring to keep the API private, even if it's accessible.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  If a third party can build a box to decrypt your encryption without you providing a key, then instead of suing the third party out of existence, you should pick a new encryption algorithm that's actually secure. Consider this analogy: should Master Lock be able to sue companies that make padlock shims, since several of their locks are vulnerable to shimming attacks?
  - Matheus28 4y ago
    If people use weak locks on their house I should be able to pick them and let myself in, right?
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      No. My point is if you do that, only you should get in trouble, not the company that made the lockpicks you used.
      - Matheus28 4y ago
        The companies that made the lockpicks have the argument that they're only to be used by professional locksmiths in the process of opening a lock that the owner has authorized them to, which is legal. Selling a tool that only has illegal uses would quickly lead to trouble. The third party clients can only be used in a way that violates the ToS.
computerfriend 4y ago
Yet another argument for why you shouldn't list your employer on LinkedIn.
abigail95 4y ago
Why haven't they also banned adblock developers too? Should they? There is no logical difference between: Creating a new web browser that renders HTML from www.instagram.com and manipulating it via extensions. The OG app that renders JSON from api.instagram.com. If we can do one, why not the other?
fzeroracer 4y ago
God I hate having to defend Facebook in any way shape or form, but this is the right call. Not only is this company sort of suspicious looking at it, but as another user brought up they don't even have a privacy policy. I have no clue what the extent of data or permissions their app has once you sign in as a user. This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen because they're siphoning data using a reverse engineered API. You could argue 'what's the worst that could happen' but if they're inserting themselves into the middle of that process, they can effectively behave as that user and request anything they wanted as that user. OAuth exists for a reason and it's to ensure that users are made aware of what exactly an app is requesting on behalf of them and so that full chain can be properly tracked. If you really want to argue that third party clients should be allowed then it should be from the standpoint of forcing companies to offer something along those lines, not this. People defending this app is horrifying from a security standpoint.
TobyTheDog123 4y ago
It is absolutely incredible to me that people are defending Meta in this thread. - Yes, Facebook had the right to do it. They're terrible for doing it, though. Meta is terrible? No way! - I'm extremely exhausted of the "tough luck, it's a private company" shtick when it fits someone's personal interests, but cry corporate capitalistic Hell when it doesn't. - There is nothing I've seen in the Apple Developer Guidelines that would warrant it being removed, though I'm open to this (it's been a while since I've read the full thing) Perhaps we should ban accounts over iframes next?
- dnissley 4y ago
  You don't think this violates apple's developer guidelines? Just persusing them, I can see violations of sections: 1.6 Data Security 4.1 Copycats 5.1.1 Data Collection and Storage 5.2 Intellectual Property 5.2.2 Third-Party Sites/Services 5.2.3 Audio/Video Downloading
  - RamblingCTO 4y ago
    I think they also statically analyse the code. So who knows what weird thing they did to circumvent auth.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Why would they have to circumvent anything? The app relies on the user providing valid credentials, no circumvention needed. It just has to mimic an official client.
      - RamblingCTO 4y ago
        > Why would they have to circumvent anything? The app relies on the user providing valid credentials, no circumvention needed. It just has to mimic an official client. Somebody else said they're using oauth. Afaik, instagram does not provide a public API. So it seems like they abused oauth for that?
userbinator 4y ago
I wonder how many who think Meta are in the right here are themselves using things like adblockers, other browser extensions that modify page content to their liking, even Reader Mode, or basically anything other than a "I'll bend over and take it" attitude towards everything they use, because you're a hypocrite if you do.
- Matheus28 4y ago
  I think Meta is in the right, and I use an adblocker on my browser. If they stopped serving me content because I'm using an adblocker, I would have to accept it or disable my adblocker on their website. There's nothing hypocritical about this position. They allow me to use their content in this way so I will, if they didn't, I wouldn't. Working against their explicit wishes (circumventing anti-adblock) is what's wrong. I'm unable to block their ads on my phone app, so I use it less, but when I use it, I have to see ads.
  - katbyte 4y ago
    Yep, when I go to a page that blocks content because I have an ad blocker on I don’t even try to bypass it or inspect source and edit to remove it - I just go elsewhere.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Working against their explicit wishes The companies want you to look at all their ads and be indoctrinated to them. They'd even get you to drink a verification can if they could. Is this the world you want to live in? Part of personal freedom is about being able to do what you want on your own property, even if others don't like it.
nobrains 4y ago
Have Meta heard of the Streisand effect?
sfmike 4y ago
hot take: AT&T and the old monolithic services are great. I'd rather have a contract I can't really cancel easily, then an account that gets permabanned because of black box can't tell you reasons that can't be helped and no human service.
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
Not sure what's wrong here? You fuel the monopoly, you suffer the consequences. You have no real power against them and you still actively support them by creating tools for them. PSGWSP.
ansh_nanda 4y ago
Founder of the company behind the OG app here. Just wanted to give my thoughts on the whole situation. This is in addition to our official statement here: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1575217497011200001 https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1575217497011200001 I want to start off by saying that everyone in this whole comments section has been making points as if what they are saying is "fact". Nothing here is "fact" because there are no laws around API usage. I don't think lawyers even know what HTML or JSON mean. Everything here is an opinion and there are clearly opinions on all parts of the spectrum. Meta is currently completely within their rights to put in their terms of service that there should be no 3rd party clients, there should be no way to access their APIs, etc. That is true. However, we believe that shouldn't be the case. People should be allowed to have the freedom to choose how they use platforms. People should be allowed to control which apps access their data and what they do with it. Some people in the comments mentioned that this is very similar to "Ma Bell" and the whole anti-trust situation along with that, and it very much is. We are stifling innovation and creation of jobs, wealth, and truly wonderful products in the social space because of the stronghold Meta has over the market. For example, both Brazil (PIX) and India (UPI) have open instant payment systems that came about due to Government anti-trust regulation that encouraged competition. This led to a boom in digital payments and was a huge boon for both countries. If you have tried either of these systems, you would know that they are leagues ahead of more "modern" countries like the US. By not allowing interoperability and portability of social networks, and user data at large, we are stifling the growth of the economy and of the products that can be built. Listen, this is no small amount. Social networks were responsible for onboarding the first billion people onto the internet. These tools now help everyone in the world communicate at all times. Do not underestimate the impact they have and the reduction in value across the world because they are not interoperable. Users who use UPI in India have a choice of over a dozen payment apps, that work with all banks, and they can send money to any other bank, instantly, 24/7! This is HUGE. Similarly, social networks that allow for portability and interoperability will allow for dozens of different apps that fit specific use-cases, allowing for more internet users, and a greater value to the entire world. So, we built OG because we thought this was the first step to realize this vision of the social internet that was truly open, portable, and interoperable.
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
One of the replies nailed it: >look on the bright side, now you don't have to use facebook any more.
hrbf 4y ago
So a group of developers gets their app and accounts banned because they violated the terms of service of a major platform. They built a third-party client for Instagram, fully aware that this use-case is a violation of the terms they agreed to. Now they complain because the obvious happened. Not only that, on Twitter they complain about Apple removing their app and not a dozen of similar but different apps. All larger issues regarding infrastructure providers and user rights aside (and that’s a big swipe), this is childishly silly. It’s the equivalent of stealing some merchandise from a big box store, getting caught and claiming that it should be okay because “everyone’s doing it”. No, it is not okay. And I say that as someone who fundamentally despises Facebook/Meta. Effective regulation needs to happen resulting in a different set of incentives driving actors like Meta. However, unnecessary stunts like this will only ever cause a storm in a glass of water. Stunts like this are also intellectually dishonest – they confuse, twist and blend different issues together just to try to amplify their outrage potential until they dissolve into meaninglessness. If the developers are actually serious about this, I’m at a loss for words. Then again, maybe that’s today’s social media in a nutshell.

310 points by Ajedi32 4y ago

It seems like the mildest action that could be taken; perhaps they will proceed to DMCA takedowns.

lmz 4y ago

These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...

shakezula 4y ago
> These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. Good, you should be able to choose who you do business with, or at least that’s what conservatives argued for years.
- standyro 4y ago
  Pretty sure “the free market” has decided that Parler and Truth Social are terrible social media products based on their relative lack of adoption
  - tenpies 4y ago
    Give it a few. It's only a matter of time until the Leftist tech platforms ban a critical amount of content producers and make themselves irrelevant. After all, each creator you ban represents a multiple of monetizable viewers that you just partially or totally told "don't come to my site". Take Rumble for example. It still has a substantial amount of gristle, but a growing amount of mainstream content. It is also now a publicly listed company undergoing hockey stick growth at a time when most companies are not.
    - 1270018080 4y ago
      I don't think there are any "leftist" social media platform. Maybe explicitly leftist subreddits if that counts? But overall, there are normal people platforms and right wing propaganda platforms. Is this the effect where anything left of fox news is "communism"? I hadn't heard of Rumble until now. But I'm just seeing some putin defense, covid conspiracy, and joe biden is a terrorist videos. And the UX is early 2010's.
      - godmode2019 4y ago
        Welcome to 2010 YouTube were adults can decide what information they want to consume.
        1270018080 4y ago
        Adults most vulnerable to right wing propaganda, the demographic famous for making good decisions for themselves and those around them.
  - anticensor 4y ago
    Social networking space is not a true market due to the fact common users are not buyers or sellers in them.
  - loa_in_ 4y ago
    Free market did enormous amount of terrible, short sighted choices. I am living in a (moderately) free market country, which isn't USA and government moderation is a never ending war with evolution of ways to circumvent regulations. These are only in place to try to keep food products from harming people eating them. I use food as an obvious example, but it applies to all branches of economy - electronics, insurance policies, gambling, clothing, meat, produce, etc. All in pursuit of profit over humanitarian needs. Always trying to evade detection by means of misdirection, "accidental" omission; surely even bribery.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    that isn't facebook's problems that they regular folks don't want to join a bunch of fascist platforms. No one is -owed- an audience of a billion people. I don't think the -means- of those shoudl be blocked. ISP, cloudfront, AWS, etc shouldn't be able to block such orgs (as long as they aren't doing anything illegal) as they are providing a source that means the internet does fall apart because they are providing the most basic of what makes up the web/internet and it's easy to argue that they should be able to pick and choose like a facebook/amazon/twitter/etc, who provide something that isn't a commodity.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  Not exactly. You can't deny baking someone a carrot cake because they are gay for example. But you can deny baking them a cake that represents a gay celebration, for example asking to have two male figured on top, or delivering it to a gay wedding. I don't think you should be able to ban someone because you don't like them. If it's the case that you should, why doesn't Facebook scrape off and ban known sexual offenders list? Criminals? Should someone that beat their exwife in 1987 really be on Facebook, let alone be able to look up his victim? I personally think people should be allowed on unless they break the actual rules of the platform on the platform.
Barrin92 4y ago
the personal account of the president, an important and not pedantic distinction because as a citizen he has no more rights than anyone else, despite having a lot of might. The president's not a king or a queen who can just walk into whatever place he or she wants, in my book a win for the rights of private citizens and companies in a Republic.
- lmz 4y ago
  Personal account? He was forced to unblock users: https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts https://mashable.com/article/trump-unblocks-twitter-accounts
gpm 4y ago
Obviously they can, the surprise is that they did. Vindictive actions like this are rarely profitable, they tend to scare people off from doing business with you.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Unless you're a monopoly and then you can do whatever you want because your customers have no alternative. Which Meta is (well, it's a duopoly with Google). Anyway Meta's customers, and the only entities it cares about, are large ad buyers. None of them will give a crap about this random app and these random human beings getting banned. This has zero impact on their ability to continue writing checks to Meta and continue getting in front of your eyeballs. If anything Meta's customers will be happy about the ban since this app caused fewer people to see their ads.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    There are plenty platforms out there besides meta; numerous places, fox comments, stormfront forums, gab, truth social, 4 chan, reddit, your own blog, twitter. No one can say that there aren't other platforms.
    - safety1st 4y ago
      Meta is a monopoly. It doesn't matter that other platforms exist. Those platforms don't make a lot of money (at least in the US) and whether you're a monopoly or not is about money. (You also don't need 100% - essentially if you have a lot and you have the power to distort the market, you're a monopoly.) The business of social media is ads. In the US the vast majority of social media ad spend goes to Meta. Thus, monopoly. Google and Meta hold a duopoly over digital ad spending in general. The FTC agrees and is suing Meta for monopolizing social media and the "metaverse." Anything could happen with these lawsuits but they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think they had a good case.
bobsil1 4y ago
*These companies can ban a terrorist from abusing their platforms as a terrorist control channel, banning him years too late due to their corrupt incentives.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  These companies don't ban real terrorists, though: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-taliban-accounts-213501287.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/twitter-refuses-ban-tali...
- 93po 4y ago
  Is this the narrative now? Tr*mp is a terrorist? Are we holding the same standards against previous presidents, too? Is drone striking Americans without due process also a terrorist move? Or are we only going to focus on the one president that said mean things on Twitter?
  - bobsil1 4y ago
    *that tried to lynch VP, Congress via tweets
    - 93po 4y ago
      So we're just making stuff up now? This tweet doesn't exist.
      - bobsil1 4y ago
        https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/card/trump-s-tweet-about-pence-seen-as-critical-moment-during-riot-fmPxoFkeoTKxi0NqPLCL https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump/c...
ninth_ant 4y ago
Most any business can ban a president. Put up a sign in your gas station and poof, you’ve banned Joe Biden. What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned. The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.

ipsum2 4y ago

Privacy proponents should cheer for this. Legally Meta must take down the app to comply with FTC's order (obligatory not a lawyer): https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-billion-facebook-settlement-record-breaking-and-history-making https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-bi... > Another way the FTC says Facebook violated the order was by failing to adequately assess and address privacy risks posed by third-party developers. Other than getting developers to click an “I agree” terms-and-conditions box when registering an app with the Facebook Platform, Facebook didn’t screen developers or their apps before giving them access to massive amounts of data that users had designated as private. Of course, in the wrong hands, information like that can grease the wheels for identity thieves and fraudsters. > The order imposes additional requirements to address Facebook’s illegal conduct. For example, Facebook must implement a stringent program to monitor third-party developers and terminate access to any developer that doesn’t follow the rules. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-billion-facebook-settlement-record-breaking-and-history-making https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-bi...

Dylan16807 4y ago
Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? If not, you're twisting things to the point of deception. Facebook is supposed to crack down, yes, but it's a specific thing they're supposed to crack down on, not ad-removal.
- ipsum2 4y ago
  > Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy? Yes, the app is downloading private user messages (ostensibly to show a modified messaging interface) and private photos, according to their feature list. This isn't a simple DNS-level ad-block, its acting as a proxy where the app developers can intercept and see all data. Their website doesn't even have a privacy policy, just a dummy link: https://www.theogapp.com/ https://www.theogapp.com/
  - chucklenorris 4y ago
    Proxying.. i don't think it means what you think it means. By that logic they should ban all of google's employees because chrome "proxies" information from facebook's servers (i.e. chrome shuffles private data from facebook's servers to user's eyeballs)

dredmorbius 4y ago

Backstory?

defrost 4y ago
They developed an app that decouples Instagram from the money stream (for Meta) > Get the OG Instagram experience. > Remove ads and suggested content, create completely customized feeds, download content, turn off read receipts, and more.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Thanks.

cercatrova 4y ago

Well, what did they expect? Does anyone think a company will sit around while you strip their app of their revenue source and republish it? Now I'm all for trying, I use adblockers and SponsorBlock, but we all know that they're unofficial methods that could be taken down at any time. That's exactly what happened to Vanced.

Dylan16807 4y ago
> Well, what did they expect? It would be good if companies did not ban you on one site for violating the TOS of a completely different site.
- joshuaheard 4y ago
  I could see banning the app, and maybe their business accounts. But to track down the developers and ban their personal accounts seems rather extreme.
- voidwtf 4y ago
  https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870 https://help.instagram.com/581066165581870 Except for the part where the TOS explicitly states that you will be banned from all Metas products…
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    No, not except. That is a bad thing, and putting it in the TOS does not change whether it is a bad thing.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      I don’t disagree on that point. I’m just making it clear it was in the TOS. I don’t want my gmail account permanently because of a comment I made on YouTube, nor do I think that should be commonplace. I’m not sure what the best solution is though. I once worked for a server hosting company that had a few different “branches”. It was pretty common to see different types of misuse or abuse. Whether it be credit card theft, hosting copyrighted content, or hosting phishing sites. I would go out of my way to monitor for and ban all associated accounts at all branches of the company. Not because I wanted to ban their personal accounts, but because 99% of the time those associated accounts would immediately engage in the same behavior. You can sit there all day playing whack-a-mole, or you can exterminate the mole.

minimaxir 4y ago

It's worth noting that the app received $1M in preseed funding: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-free-instagram-feed/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/og-app-promises-you-an-ad-... It's also worth noting that the Instagram API is extremely locked down for typical users (which is the reason why there hasn't been a clone like this) as it is limited to Businesses and Creators, but the app demonstrates features not available by the official API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere, even without a business: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1574811387737407490 https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1574811387737407490

seba_dos1 4y ago
> They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere The question is - how do we even allow it do be legal? Not being able to reverse engineer applications running on your own devices is some kind of bullshit dystopia, tolerated only because average citizen is not technical enough to realize how dystopian it is.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  I have some trouble with "telling a third party developer they can't replace parts of your server-driven app for their own profit is a dystopia."
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    Are you using any browser extensions that do something with website content?
    - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
      No, and that isn't equivalent

etchalon 4y ago

"We explicitly violated the terms of service for a website and you'll never guess what happened next."

tarakat 4y ago
The company retaliated against their employees through unrelated services it happens to also own? Is this the kind of free market we want? Turf wars?
- voidwtf 4y ago
  Each employee willingly participated. I understand the feeling, but these weren’t random people that had nothing to do with a company action. These were all individuals who took part in the act. I agree it’s petty, and yes this is what many free market proponents want (unless free market is just a convenient guise to get what they want).
  - tarakat 4y ago
    > I agree it’s petty The pettiness isn't the problem, the extra-legal power that consolidation of capital and media enables is. Competition in the market ceases to be about the best product at the best price, and becomes a game of strategic alliances and power abuse instead. Edit: To clarify once more: Facebook may have a legitimate interest in keeping this company off Instagram. What it does not have is a moral right to use unrelated properties for retaliation. This is what I meant by "extra-legal" - it's using its market power to punish a company, instead of the courts. If Instagram was independent, it could not engage in this sort of business-warfare.
    - voidwtf 4y ago
      This wasn’t competition though. This was straight up theft of resources/services. What? “extra-legal”? Don’t mix this with other behaviors Meta/Facebook/Instagram engage in, I hate them for all the bullsht they get away with too. However, this isn’t that, this is someone trying to build a platform on top of someone else’s platform explicitly against their terms of service and without reimbursing them.

GoodJokes 4y ago

Get off Facebook idiots

zephrx1111 4y ago

Personally, I feel Meta has the right to do so.

josephcsible 4y ago
Do they have the right to do so today? Of course. Should they have the right to do so? Definitely not, and that's why we want to see laws in this space changed.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  I don’t see how you can be so sure that they “definitely” shouldn’t. This is a very complex issue with strong arguments on both sides.
gubernation 4y ago
[flagged]

voidwtf 4y ago

1. Violating TOS 2. No clear privacy policy (re: how does the app protect and utilize user info) 3. Circumventing user access/security policies Maybe I missed something, but it sounds like everyone on their team participated in multiple violations on Meta’s platform. I admire what they were doing, trying to polish a turd, but I don’t think they should get upset when they get sh*t on their hands. Meta/Facebook/Instagram are a cancer that needs to be excised. No amount of plastic surgery will cure the rot within. The platform exists only to get users into a feedback loop that they can use to advertise to you. Best of luck to the team, hopefully they come to see this as a positive thing, find alternative solutions, and never have to deal with that garbage platform again.

defrost 4y ago

Breaking:: > UN1feed says Apple removed The OG App, which let users create and share Instagram feeds without ads and suggested posts, from the App Store; the app ranked #50 [1] https://www.techmeme.com/220928/p47#a220928p47 https://www.techmeme.com/220928/p47#a220928p47 [2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-og-app/id1637701040 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-og-app/id1637701040

i_dont_know_ 4y ago

This is honestly the exact reason I haven't tried to develop a facebook app or extension... I've heard that the smallest mis-step can get your account suspended like this. Not like a 'here's a warning' but 'you read a variable you shouldn't have, now your whole account is deleted'. This isn't usually a problem, except Facebook has a pretty unique position in our society. It might be the only social media some of our immediate family have. It's the de-facto social media presence for some smaller community organizations (like parent groups) and hobby groups. A ban from Facebook is a lot more deeply impactful than being banned from, say, gmail or something. I could understand if they sent the developers a cease-and-desist or initiated some sort of legal action with this as a potential consequence. I could even understand blocking the app until it was resolved. But actually searching up the dev team and banning their personal Facebook accounts for something they're building on Instagram... This makes it so much scarier because Oculus is also Meta, and the community there is still heavily reliant on developers to grow since Meta has sunk so much money into it and it still hasn't quite found its footing in the market. Do they think more people are going to develop for it if a potential consequence is their facebook account will be perma-banned as a first-resort? Would you be willing to experiment on that platform? Anyways, I'm no gazillion-dollar monopoly, but it seems vindictive more than good business sense.

supportlocal4h 4y ago
> Facebook ... might be the only social media some of our immediate family have It's funny how prevalent this meme is. But I'm not expected to have an AOL account just because it's the only social media grandpa has. Or MySpace just for Aunt Lolita's sake. No, they are both supposed to get Facebook accounts because that's what cousin Ralph has. And I'm supposed to move for the same reason. Well, if Ralph wants me to know what he ate for dinner, he can find me at my local bbs.

naet 4y ago

If it was a really good app you made, why not also make your own backend and completely decouple from meta? If you build an app using the meta platform in a way that is a clear violation of their tos, the app will obviously be killed the second it gets popular. If I was running a service and another company attempted to do this to my service (violated my TOS, built on top of my private API in a way that striped all my revenue and repackaged it under their name, etc) I would definitely ban them...

minimaxir 4y ago
The problem is that the only reason the app is getting press is because it's a ripoff.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Is NewPipe a "ripoff" too?
rabuse 4y ago
Because the backend is the difficult part that tends to cost a lot of money in resources/infrastructure.
josephcsible 4y ago
> If it was a really good app you made, why not also make your own backend and completely decouple from meta? Because of the network effect.
agileAlligator 4y ago
It's not just the app that was killed (which would be understandable), it was their personal facebook accounts that were in no way linked to the app.

bitwize 4y ago

If you're helping violate Meta's ToS, do you have a legitimate reason why you think they should tolerate you?

phpthrowaway99 4y ago
Can you imagine the poor intern that's just answering phones or delivering coffee, proud to have their first job, and loses their social media account? Sorta funny. It also seems extremely petty considering they KNOW this company has endless fake accounts they use, and losing their personals doesn't really mean much other than a personal loss.

amatecha 4y ago

Oh wow, this app got pulled from everything because it's an unofficial 3rd party client for Instagram? I'll say it again, companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients. They don't have to explicitly support them, but taking action to explicitly thwart them (and writing ToS that forbids them) should be outlawed. There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them. Tech companies get to exploit the public under the guise of something useful, while also getting to completely dictate the terms of that usage. The only thing that limits their exploitation of users is the laws applicable in the relevant jurisdictions (and sometimes not even that). Too bad looking out for the rights of users is apparently just a complete non-issue to anyone in power.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Without control of the client, it gets much harder to fight abuse.
- amatecha 4y ago
  If you've ever worked on an online service, you might realize that what you ship for the client is almost irrelevant -- it can all be reverse engineered and an unofficial client can _always_ be created. This happens for all online services, even if it's just someone's data-mining app running on a local machine. The number one rule is "never trust what comes from the client", because it's trivial to create carefully-crafted network calls to basically do whatever the API allows (and sometimes more than what was supposed to be allowed). So, obviously 3rd party clients are thus able to perform malicious acts, but existing laws already forbid this. My suggestion to ensure 3rd party clients are always legally permitted isn't mutually exclusive with existing laws protecting the creators of services and software. :)
  - xvector 4y ago
    "Never trust the client" is true, but in practice, some control over the client still helps reduce abuse if you make third party clients a lot harder (eg remote attestation.)

keyme 4y ago

So a Newpipe for Facebook? Finally. For sure more difficult to pull off, but good luck!

vxNsr 4y ago

Remember when Facebook built out an app platform on top of their website, it was all good until they made it clear they didn’t care at all about the developers and just saw them as a way to increase their control of the market.

yieldcrv 4y ago

Instagram has a chronological feed now, just in case you missed it

blondin 4y ago

i don't have enough backstory on this. but i find it troubling that they banned personal accounts. the developers speculate that they used linkedin to source their personal accounts. aren't developer and personal accounts separate on facebook?

annadane 4y ago

And yet Meta was involved with things like Free Basics, or forcing the Oculus account with a bait and switch, and repeatedly lying about Whatsapp - but I'm sure this Instagram thing is much worse, somehow

pGuitar 4y ago

good

efitz 4y ago

Maybe I’m just a graybeard but all this is reminiscent of the shenanigans that Ma Bell pulled. Not exactly the same but similar. History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, as they say. There’s a very simple solution here: common carrier. Treat social media as a modern utility. No viewpoint discrimination, censorship, algorithmic social manipulation or proprietary on-ramps. The bad behavior has gone on long enough.

heisenbit 4y ago
There is one thing worse: Typically these phone carriers had a duty to provide service in exchange for their monopoly. Here FB can ban you from their monopoly playground piercing the liability shield working for a legal typically company gives you.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
There is plenty of freedom out there. If someone wants to be a Nazi/Antifa/Climate Skeptic (not you but the usual suspects) and try to stir up murderous crowds/riots/etc then do it on your own platform. There is Gab, Stormfront, Fox News comments, etc for that. There is no lack of platforms out there. All you have to have are the $$ and the grit.

AlexandrB 4y ago

Modern ad-funded software is less a "bicycle for the mind" and more a "hamster wheel for the brain". Of course third party clients would be seen as a threat - they empower the user.

chaostheory 4y ago
It's a threat because 3rd party clients like this circumvent payment for the service via ads. If you don't like the terms, don't use the service. There are plenty of alternatives.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  If I'm allowed to close my eyes or mute the volume when an ad is playing why shouldn't I be allowed to get a machine to do this for me?
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    Because you can use another service where you pay in money instead of attention like Apple products and services. Let’s not pretend like there aren’t many other alternatives
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      That's not actually answering the question. Is it legal to look away from ads or mute the volume? If so, it's just as legal to delegate this work to a machine (or to an assistant you hire), or at least, it should be just as legal, though again, I'm not sure that any law has been broken here. Breach of ToS != breach of law. Whether to use the service or not is a completely different question, but when it comes to Facebook, the problem is the network effects. Facebook has a monopoly on humanity's social fabric in a lot of locations, and since they don't want to intentionally interoperate and cooperate with third-party clients (so your Apple-branded client won't be able to message someone on Instagram), adversarial interoperability is the only way out.

warent 4y ago

This is a parasitic company that got swatted away like flies from the engorged Meta pig. Seeing this "OG App" complain about Meta, and Meta fighting back, is truly like two turds fighting over which is worse. It's all crap in the end.

dleslie 4y ago

Many folks on here might be too young to remember, but there was an era where cable companies served premium channels with a scrambled signal to all customers, and sold access by way of attaching the appropriate filter. In fact, all channels were protected in this way, with your cable box holding the necessary filters. Albeit, some were merely hidden by a band pass filter and not scrambled. Anyhow, those arguing that third party clients ought to have access to the API are making a similar argument to those who wanted to use third party filters to access channels they hadn't paid for. Why, it would go, if the cable company didn't serve the signal then it wouldn't be available to be used. Which is not unlike claiming that the data provided by a private API is free for the taking. It's not, and it's certainly not with the consent of those endeavoring to keep the API private, even if it's accessible.

josephcsible 4y ago
If a third party can build a box to decrypt your encryption without you providing a key, then instead of suing the third party out of existence, you should pick a new encryption algorithm that's actually secure. Consider this analogy: should Master Lock be able to sue companies that make padlock shims, since several of their locks are vulnerable to shimming attacks?
- Matheus28 4y ago
  If people use weak locks on their house I should be able to pick them and let myself in, right?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    No. My point is if you do that, only you should get in trouble, not the company that made the lockpicks you used.
    - Matheus28 4y ago
      The companies that made the lockpicks have the argument that they're only to be used by professional locksmiths in the process of opening a lock that the owner has authorized them to, which is legal. Selling a tool that only has illegal uses would quickly lead to trouble. The third party clients can only be used in a way that violates the ToS.

computerfriend 4y ago

Yet another argument for why you shouldn't list your employer on LinkedIn.

abigail95 4y ago

Why haven't they also banned adblock developers too? Should they? There is no logical difference between: Creating a new web browser that renders HTML from www.instagram.com and manipulating it via extensions. The OG app that renders JSON from api.instagram.com. If we can do one, why not the other?

fzeroracer 4y ago

God I hate having to defend Facebook in any way shape or form, but this is the right call. Not only is this company sort of suspicious looking at it, but as another user brought up they don't even have a privacy policy. I have no clue what the extent of data or permissions their app has once you sign in as a user. This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen because they're siphoning data using a reverse engineered API. You could argue 'what's the worst that could happen' but if they're inserting themselves into the middle of that process, they can effectively behave as that user and request anything they wanted as that user. OAuth exists for a reason and it's to ensure that users are made aware of what exactly an app is requesting on behalf of them and so that full chain can be properly tracked. If you really want to argue that third party clients should be allowed then it should be from the standpoint of forcing companies to offer something along those lines, not this. People defending this app is horrifying from a security standpoint.

TobyTheDog123 4y ago

It is absolutely incredible to me that people are defending Meta in this thread. - Yes, Facebook had the right to do it. They're terrible for doing it, though. Meta is terrible? No way! - I'm extremely exhausted of the "tough luck, it's a private company" shtick when it fits someone's personal interests, but cry corporate capitalistic Hell when it doesn't. - There is nothing I've seen in the Apple Developer Guidelines that would warrant it being removed, though I'm open to this (it's been a while since I've read the full thing) Perhaps we should ban accounts over iframes next?

dnissley 4y ago
You don't think this violates apple's developer guidelines? Just persusing them, I can see violations of sections: 1.6 Data Security 4.1 Copycats 5.1.1 Data Collection and Storage 5.2 Intellectual Property 5.2.2 Third-Party Sites/Services 5.2.3 Audio/Video Downloading
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  I think they also statically analyse the code. So who knows what weird thing they did to circumvent auth.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Why would they have to circumvent anything? The app relies on the user providing valid credentials, no circumvention needed. It just has to mimic an official client.
    - RamblingCTO 4y ago
      > Why would they have to circumvent anything? The app relies on the user providing valid credentials, no circumvention needed. It just has to mimic an official client. Somebody else said they're using oauth. Afaik, instagram does not provide a public API. So it seems like they abused oauth for that?

userbinator 4y ago

I wonder how many who think Meta are in the right here are themselves using things like adblockers, other browser extensions that modify page content to their liking, even Reader Mode, or basically anything other than a "I'll bend over and take it" attitude towards everything they use, because you're a hypocrite if you do.

Matheus28 4y ago
I think Meta is in the right, and I use an adblocker on my browser. If they stopped serving me content because I'm using an adblocker, I would have to accept it or disable my adblocker on their website. There's nothing hypocritical about this position. They allow me to use their content in this way so I will, if they didn't, I wouldn't. Working against their explicit wishes (circumventing anti-adblock) is what's wrong. I'm unable to block their ads on my phone app, so I use it less, but when I use it, I have to see ads.
- katbyte 4y ago
  Yep, when I go to a page that blocks content because I have an ad blocker on I don’t even try to bypass it or inspect source and edit to remove it - I just go elsewhere.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Working against their explicit wishes The companies want you to look at all their ads and be indoctrinated to them. They'd even get you to drink a verification can if they could. Is this the world you want to live in? Part of personal freedom is about being able to do what you want on your own property, even if others don't like it.

nobrains 4y ago

Have Meta heard of the Streisand effect?

sfmike 4y ago

hot take: AT&T and the old monolithic services are great. I'd rather have a contract I can't really cancel easily, then an account that gets permabanned because of black box can't tell you reasons that can't be helped and no human service.

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

Not sure what's wrong here? You fuel the monopoly, you suffer the consequences. You have no real power against them and you still actively support them by creating tools for them. PSGWSP.

ansh_nanda 4y ago

Founder of the company behind the OG app here. Just wanted to give my thoughts on the whole situation. This is in addition to our official statement here: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1575217497011200001 https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1575217497011200001 I want to start off by saying that everyone in this whole comments section has been making points as if what they are saying is "fact". Nothing here is "fact" because there are no laws around API usage. I don't think lawyers even know what HTML or JSON mean. Everything here is an opinion and there are clearly opinions on all parts of the spectrum. Meta is currently completely within their rights to put in their terms of service that there should be no 3rd party clients, there should be no way to access their APIs, etc. That is true. However, we believe that shouldn't be the case. People should be allowed to have the freedom to choose how they use platforms. People should be allowed to control which apps access their data and what they do with it. Some people in the comments mentioned that this is very similar to "Ma Bell" and the whole anti-trust situation along with that, and it very much is. We are stifling innovation and creation of jobs, wealth, and truly wonderful products in the social space because of the stronghold Meta has over the market. For example, both Brazil (PIX) and India (UPI) have open instant payment systems that came about due to Government anti-trust regulation that encouraged competition. This led to a boom in digital payments and was a huge boon for both countries. If you have tried either of these systems, you would know that they are leagues ahead of more "modern" countries like the US. By not allowing interoperability and portability of social networks, and user data at large, we are stifling the growth of the economy and of the products that can be built. Listen, this is no small amount. Social networks were responsible for onboarding the first billion people onto the internet. These tools now help everyone in the world communicate at all times. Do not underestimate the impact they have and the reduction in value across the world because they are not interoperable. Users who use UPI in India have a choice of over a dozen payment apps, that work with all banks, and they can send money to any other bank, instantly, 24/7! This is HUGE. Similarly, social networks that allow for portability and interoperability will allow for dozens of different apps that fit specific use-cases, allowing for more internet users, and a greater value to the entire world. So, we built OG because we thought this was the first step to realize this vision of the social internet that was truly open, portable, and interoperable.

RamblingCTO 4y ago

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago

One of the replies nailed it: >look on the bright side, now you don't have to use facebook any more.

hrbf 4y ago

So a group of developers gets their app and accounts banned because they violated the terms of service of a major platform. They built a third-party client for Instagram, fully aware that this use-case is a violation of the terms they agreed to. Now they complain because the obvious happened. Not only that, on Twitter they complain about Apple removing their app and not a dozen of similar but different apps. All larger issues regarding infrastructure providers and user rights aside (and that’s a big swipe), this is childishly silly. It’s the equivalent of stealing some merchandise from a big box store, getting caught and claiming that it should be okay because “everyone’s doing it”. No, it is not okay. And I say that as someone who fundamentally despises Facebook/Meta. Effective regulation needs to happen resulting in a different set of incentives driving actors like Meta. However, unnecessary stunts like this will only ever cause a storm in a glass of water. Stunts like this are also intellectually dishonest – they confuse, twist and blend different issues together just to try to amplify their outrage potential until they dissolve into meaninglessness. If the developers are actually serious about this, I’m at a loss for words. Then again, maybe that’s today’s social media in a nutshell.