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Facebook really couldn't have been more generous to this guy. He's really milking the free publicity, too, with all the talk of this being the end of the road (
by Rudism 14y ago
Facebook really couldn't have been more generous to this guy. He's really milking the free publicity, too, with all the talk of this being the end of the road (which clearly it won't be, since there's nothing to stop him from continuing work using an alternate account). I can't even imagine what Facebook was thinking, they must have known that attempting to shut this down would backfire.
If I were Facebook and I really didn't want this extension or others like it to stay afloat, my approach would be simple... hire one guy whose only job is to monitor new releases of these extensions, and then make minor structural changes to the Facebook site that break them as soon as they're out. Become the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. When the extension keeps breaking within a day or two of each release, users would get fed up and stop using it, the devs would get overwhelmed with bug reports and complaints, and they'd all die slow, quiet deaths.
- sethbannon 14y ago"Facebook really couldn't have been more generous to this guy." Yes they could have. They could have not banned him for building a browser extension.
- hnriot 14y agoI think you missed the point entirely. Facebook have just become his marketing department.
- downandout 14y ago"...there's nothing to stop him from continuing work using an alternate account..." Actually, there is. He's been informed by Facebook that they have revoked his right to use their site, which is their right. Any update that he issues to to the plugin would be solid evidence that he had been back on Facebook. In a US legal system that regularly bows to the will of large corporations, he could not only be sued, but also charged with a crime under the CFAA (unauthorized access) should he simply open another account.
- drcube 14y agoI don't see why other people can't test his software for him. I'd do it. FB Purity is the only thing keeping me on Facebook, so I have no qualms about risking my account for it. I'm gone as soon as it stops working anyway.
- philip1209 14y agoIf he open sources the project, it would be interesting.
- gamache 14y agoInversion: until he open-sources it, I am not interested in his plight in the slightest.
- ryguytilidie 14y agoseems fair. Refuse to use common sense until someone open sources years of work.
- MartinCron 14y agoIf you're not trying to be civil and respectful, please try. If you are trying, please try harder. Thanks.
- drcube 14y agoThis is actually the solution Facebook has taken. I'm an avid FB Purity user and almost every single update is a workaround for minor code changes on the site that serve no purpose except to break FB Purity. Maybe there wasn't one guy whose full time job was to break FB Purity, but it was definitely one of their goals.
- Narretz 14y agoWhy does Facebook even care? Most of the stuff the extension does is covered by AdBlock anyway.
- ThomPete 14y agoThey are already doing this even for people who use it legally.
- Dylan16807 14y agoYou really think it's a good idea for a company to be that petty and passive-aggressive to its users?
- gurkendoktor 14y agoThe only way it would hurt the company is if someone would let the world know about their motives. But even that would be easy to deny.
- lessnonymous 14y agoAs someone who's done a lot of data mining, I'm always surprised to find that sites with lots of data don't do this. Your output generator just needs to randomize some class names and throw a couple of pointless elements around the place to make it MUCH more difficult. There's one site I've scraped that has code like this: <div class="name"><span class="first_name">...</span> <span class="last_name">...</span></div><div class="street_address">...</div>
- r00fus 14y agoHow is this marginally difficult to parse? A CSS3 selector could easily just get this - in jQuery: $('div span').attr('class') will easily give you the expression that returns all the classnames - easily mapped to whatever output you want.
- ucho 14y agoHe was actually giving example of page that is ridiculous easy to mine.
- tlavoie 14y agoYou know, this appears to be pretty much what they do already. It would shock nobody to find they'd hired some poor sod for just this purpose.