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Comment by piyush_soni | Hacker News Reader

The exact same thing happened to me. I have a fairly successful Firefox add-on named 'Yahoo Mail Hide Ad Panel'[0], and it is one of the top-rated extensions on Mozilla's Add-on store. When I wrote it for Chrome, they removed it apparently after a complaint from Yahoo. Understandable, but I asked them how are the other extensions containing the same name not removed? No answer. I asked if "Hide Ad Panel for Yahoo Mail" would work, no response. I just gave up and decided not to write that extension for Chrome, just like OP did.

[0] : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yahoomailhide...

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I guess it is not using "Facebook" or in your case "Yahoo" in your extension name, but changing the content for a user of a Facebook or Yahoo page is what is triggering the remove of the extension. If it is against the TOS (or Platform Policy) I don't see how else they are supposed to react if the get a complain.

It's not the removal of add-on that pissed me off, but the lack of proper response on what would be the acceptable resolution. Not using the name would change the meaning as both of these are not general purpose ad blockers. Had they replied saying "for <their name>" is ok, I wouldn't have removed it. At least they could have replied with a flat 'No' to make things clear.

I quote:

> We cannot prevent from being "Flagged" and unable to reveal the reason of flagging.

What do you expect from them? They openly said they can not divulge more information about this. There is no "response on what would be the acceptable resolution" that is more proper, unless you assume they are straight out lying.

I don't see how an add-on posted on the Chrome store is subject to Facebook's ToS. It might be aiding people in breaking the ToS, but is there really a law against that?

Google makes the laws now. Governments are mostly irrelevant.

Well you've been quite extreme in this thread. I get your concerns, but I'd say that day is still very much far away. Libertarian lunatics like Peter Thiel certainly dream of it, but I really doubt it will become the reality, at least not over the whole world if indeed so in the already very corporate America.

Anyways, if the vision aspired by Thiel happens, those "libertarian" capitalists will be killed by revolts/uprisings in an instant. A world without tax nor regulation nor basic support for social equality never works. Just as explained in Capitalism in the 21st Century, if inequality is not addressed, there will be revolts and chaos. Extreme injustice can't dominate forever.

There is no law necessary, Google explicitly forbids publishing extensions that aide people in violating the TOS of third party services.

1. The Developer of such an addon may not have ever agreed to the TOS

2. Google is under no legal obligations to enforce a contract between Facebook and the Facebook user

3. The TOS applies to the user of facebook, not the developer of DOM manipulation Plugin

4. To the extent the developer agree to said TOS, it is largely open to interpretation if TOS have any legal authority at all beyond giving the ablity of platform operators to ban users for violating them. I.e Facebook's recourse would be to identify people using the plugin and then ban them from the site. of-course Facebook has no desire to actually ban anyone for using a public so they use legally dubious trademark claims.

IANAL, but this part from chrome webstore TOS

> You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Web Store, including the development or publication of Products ... that knowingly violates a third party’s terms of service,

sounds like publishing extensions which enable users to violate the Facebook TOS are not ok.

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