4 ms·
Show HN: BuddyHack - Mess with your friends' Facebooks
- TobbenTM 14y agoWould anyone care to explain roughly what it does?
- milesokeefe 14y agoThis is what it looks like when you give it permission: http://i.imgur.com/nAvhx.jpg http://i.imgur.com/nAvhx.jpg Pretty self-explanatory once you get to that page, but there should be an explanation on the index.
- gailees 14y agoThanks for the input...will get on that ASAP.
- mjpa 14y agoWithout trying it for obvious reasons, going off the HTML, I'm guessing it just posts a load of status updates on various topics, eg "Posts ridiculous lyrics and statuses about love for artists like Nickelback."
- interg12 14y agoAnd API access will be revoked in 5...4...3...2...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nslater 14y agoI call BS. There is a snowball's chance in hell Facebook have seen this, let alone approved it. One of the options is to defriend everybody. How is this not a malicious action?
- gailees 14y agoThat option is a joke and isn't an actual option. If you click it we give you an alert: "you can't actually be that mean."
- nslater 14y agoThe other options allow you to post content on someone else's behalf, without their consent. That is unauthorised access, and probably against their ToS. I would be extremely surprised, and concerned, if it was not. Your footer is just hilarious of course. You claim that you do condone unauthorised access to other people's Facebook accounts, on a site who's only function is to let you make unauthorised access to someone else's Facebook account.
- interg12 14y agoAgreed. How is this any different than taking over a friends email account or cell phone and deleting data or sending malicious messages? There is nothing interesting or clever about this.
- michiel3 14y agoRemove all friends sounds malicious to me. Must say that I haven't tried the app myself.
- gailees 14y agoThat button doesn't actually do that. It's a joke we added in.
- antiterra 14y ago"Did a friend leave Facebook open? Mess with it now" sure sounds like encouraging unauthorized access to me, tiny "in no way encourages" message notwithstanding. If it actually removes all friends like the button says it does, that's definitely malicious. Further, the "We only use the word Hack in our name to concisely disclaim the site's ability to mess with one's facebook account." makes very little sense at all. Did you mean proclaim instead of disclaim?
- gailees 14y agoThat option is a joke and isn't an actual option. If you click it we give you an alert: "you can't actually be that mean."
- nslater 14y agoIf it doesn't encourage, it certainly enables. The whole point of the site is to let you exploit unauthorised access to somebody else's Facebook account. The footer is a non sequitur.
- kmfrk 14y agoYour app gives Facebook bad publicity. That's pretty much the gist of it. See Breakup Notifier[1] and Girls Around Me[2] for services that did nothing else but highlight what the platform allowed people to do. Breakup Notifier (later Crush Notifier) later managed to get on Facebook again, so if (when) you get shut down, try contacting the guys behind the service to see what they did. There are a couple of HN submissions about them. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255232 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2255232 [2]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/girls-around-me-creeper-app-just-might-get-people-to-pay-attention-to-privacy-settings/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/girls-around-me-creeper-app...
- peterhunt 14y agoHey guys - I'm one of the FB engineers at Penn. This app has a great looking design but definitely goes against the spirit of the platform as well as our TOS. With that said, next time please seek us out at the hack (I have a hard time believing anyone OK'd this) and we can work with you to ensure that your app can be funny but still benefit users in a meaningful way.
- gailees 14y agoClarification: FB representatives here only ok'ed the use of our flavors concept, not the spirit of our app. While setting a facebook flavor alone isn't against the Facebook TOS, we realize that directly encouraging people to jump on their friends' Facebooks is clearly against the spirit of the platform.
- nslater 14y agoFacebook can't revoke the API, because the site clearly states in the footer that "Buddy Hack in no way encourages the usage of any Facebook account other than your own." That seems waterproof to me.
- gailees 14y agoLet's say your friend just left their Facebook logged in at your house or got up from their laptop to go to the bathroom for a minute. You're tempted to mess with their Facebook, but don't know where to start or don't have enough time. Just go to http://buddyhack.com http://buddyhack.com, sign in with Facebook, and we will help you hilariously mess with your friend in under a minute!
- kurtvarner 14y agoI appreciate how they were mature and stayed away from inappropriate content. The hack can still be funny without the need to be gay, racist, sexest, etc. I personally like the "It's Your Birthday" one. Props guys!
- freeslave 14y agoIt would appear it's already been blocked by FB: "An error occurred with Buddy Hack. Please try again later."
- gailees 14y agoyeah....someone reported us for our defriend all button; that button is actually a joke and just gives an alert "you can't actually be that mean"
- gailees 14y agoWe just got reported by several users and got temporarily restricted on Facebook.
- nslater 14y ago"temporarily"
- eugenez 14y agoI am an engineer working on Platform Integrity at Facebook. Just as friends can't consent to transferring friend data outside of an app, they also can't consent to an app taking actions on their friends' behalf (such as posting a story when the friend didn't consent to it). Even if it's funny.
- gailees 14y agoIt's people taking actions on behalf of themselves.
- gailees 14y agoPeople just happen to be using it innapropriately.
- carbocation 14y agoBecause you're inducing them to do so. I think your app is funny, but the language makes it clear that the intent is at odds with FB's platform rules.
- interg12 14y agoIt can't be used appropriately.
- nbpoole 14y ago
- artursapek 14y agoHow would you "quickly undo" an action that defriends everybody?
- creativityhurts 14y agoThat would be a pretty bad joke but it someone doesn't sign out of their Facebook or email account on a share computer, they kind of deserve it.
- nslater 14y agoIf you've removed any language suggesting that this should be used to gain and exploit unauthorised access to somebody elses Facebook account (I presume that means you will be registering new domain name for the app) then what is the point of it any more? Why would I want to click a button to post a bunch of fake stuff to my wall? That would be like #poopin yourself. Utterly pointless.
- gailees 14y agohttp://hackmyfacebook.com http://hackmyfacebook.com People are hitting the site and using it. I wasn't sure if it was a real use case either; but our conversion rate for hitting the site and actually using it is even higher than before, so I guess some people think otherwise.
- gailees 14y agoThanks for all the feedback...Be sure to check out http://hackmyfacebook.com http://hackmyfacebook.com