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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

This is like saying that Chrome, Edge or Firefox are “third parties”.

Embedding user agent functionality into the OS is not the same as third party access.

Talk to me when a device manufacturer is caught exfiltrating this user data off the phone and then aim your pitchforks at them.

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Google, Firefox, and Edge are not Facebook so yes they are third party.

That’s not what the term means. User agents which render Facebook UI components are not “third parties” to my Facebook data anymore than my monitor manufacturer is a third party to my Facebook data while I am viewing the pixels in the screen.

> my monitor manufacturer is a third party to my Facebook data

It actually is. Your monitor, on the other hand, can be considered a part of yourself for the purposes of viewing the data.

If it somehow sends sensitive information back to its manufacturer, thought, that would be a new, different can of worms.

They are the second party -- the user.

Facebook never has any interaction with the human user, they only interact with the user agent.

And does it upset you that when a user signs into facebook in one of these browsers, facebook allows the browser access to that user's data and even data of that user's friends? Even when those friends have explicitly disabled sharing of facebook data with third parties?

HN has reached a level of popularity where its attracted too many non-engineers that love jumping into these threads with ignorant, reactionary, hyperbolic responses. every post on uber/tesla autopilot has at least a few people calling for elon to be tried for manslaughter for car accidents. really shows the stupidity of the mob. this thread is another great example. if only it were benign and didn't have real, foolish policy implications like the GDPR

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