Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension, but then we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits.
I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
It's not the point. The point is: Sure Facebook can do that, but the fact that they do shows us how dishonest the people working there are with all the claims they make.
Facebook has the right to do this, we have the right to call them out on it just the same.
Would the leadership of a gym be compromised and hypocrites if they banned someone who used their gym to tell others that working out is harmful and they should stop exercising at the gym? Would banning that member indicate that the owners of the gym don't care about the health of their users and instead put profits over well being?
Your argument only works and sounds credible because most people on this site believe Facebook is harmful. If people don't share that belief, then it doesn't follow that Facebook is being hypocritical because they are banning someone who is using their product to defeat the product.
I've been seeing this idea a lot on HN, that we're just in this echo chamber and the general public doesn't have the same opinion. This notion isn't supported by the data[1]:
> 57% believe Facebook is “primarily a harm to society” and 71% believe the company “prioritizes profits, even if it might cause societal harm.”
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/07/23/mark-zu...
Looking at the poll, there were only a thousand "registered voters" that were meant to be a representative population of the America, which I'm gonna give a hard pass.
https://accountabletech.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Accou...
tl;dr his evidence, even if we assume the issues you bring up are significant, outweighs your lack of any, so I am leaning in his favor
The evidence here is sufficiently poor to provide minimal value. Poorly collected data can often be worse than no data, as it can mislead you.
No it doesn't. It depends on the fact that I don't know the opinions of other people at all. But I can infer that the selection biases of "registered voters" (which I think is a far bigger confounding factor than anyone is giving it credit for), and self-selection make it too difficult to extrapolate to the population of US citizens.
On the no-harm side, I see nothing.
On the harm side, I see a study about which someone has raised some concerns.
I understand you have concerns about the study design, but I'm not confident that they affect the outcome in such a way that the study provided zero evidence for Facebook being viewed as harmful.
Is there a study which doesn't run into the same concerns which says the opposite of this one?
I personally also think Facebook is harmful.
This seems like a fairer analogy to me since this extension is dealing with a component facebook put in to drive "engagement" that is viewed by a lot of people as an anti-feature - some people like it: Miles, who hangs around the gym for the conversation, really likes the fact that he bumps into people more often in the cool-down room... but most people wish that feature had never been added.
Add all of that to the fact that Facebook is the only tool Facebook allows on Facebook (so there are no competing gyms) and the tool becomes even more justifiable. Is it still quite legal for Facebook to C&D this guy - absolutely - but they're definitely not acting in their user's best interest.
Attacking the gym on the basis that its owners do not want patrons who are using the very gym as a means of compromising it is not a valid argument as to why the gym's owners are hypocrites, causing harm, and putting profits above the well being of their customers.
I think there are some really strong reasons why facebook actually does cause actual harm and I'm not certain why you're being so defensive over that point - but my argument doesn't even involve facebook "causing harm" - it's just involves them having a terrible UX.
If Facebook was really acting in their users interests, a look at the extension's reviews would have immediately told them that this benefited at least some users. And even if the extension conflicted with the terms of service, the right thing to do would be to have some employee at Facebook work with the extension author to make the extension comply, or implement such a feature as a first party feature.
But what I assume could have happened is some department of Facebook trawls through app stores looking for unauthorized references to Facebook. There is no oversight as to whether an extension benefits users or not -- Facebook just sends a cease & desist all the same. That IMO is neglectful -- for every app takedown, there should be careful review as to whether it actually harms anyone. The fact that that review did not happen shows that FB does not care about the user.
The more cynical possibility is that someone at Facebook realized that this was hurting their revenue stream.
[1] https://browser-addons.com/unfollow-everything-for-facebook/
[2] https://twitter.com/gchaslot/status/1410843427164598275?lang...
[3] https://crxcavator.io/report/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajo... (4.3/5 rating)
Unfollowing everything restores a user's agency when using the service, which is where it should be.
A better analogy than those I've seen. Facebook is like a wildly popular hookah spot, probably partially due to the fact that this hookah spot is knowingly putting crack in the hookah (in a world where maybe not everyone knows how bad crack is.)
In comes a guy who, yes against all the "rules", hands out mouthpieces that filter out the crack. How bad is this guy now? How do we feel about him?
> But by unfollowing everything, you eliminate your News Feed. This leaves you free to use Facebook without the feed, or to more actively curate it by refollowing only those friends and groups whose posts you really want to see.
Cuts the crap and reduces the addiction, but still leaves Facebook in place. Like any addictive behavior, it’s not wrong on its own.
I'm fine with Facebook closing this developer's account, I'm not fine with the developer being forced to make his tool disappear, under the threat of litigation.
Considering that genocide has been organized on it? Yes. It's absolutely harmful.
Your grossly reductionist argument doesn't really add much to the discussion.
How many people have a similar view of facebook as dangerous?
Surely they can fight against it by changing how the platform works, or ban it if it was hosted somewhere on FB, or ban the author because he wrote something that hits their core business, but sending a cease and desist for an extension that is hosted elsewhere is like a tobacco company sending C&D letters to people selling anti smoking patches or telling publicly that smoking is bad for health. WTF!, this is bullying plain and simple; I already stay away from everything related to FB as much as I can (I knew about the recent FB outage by the evening news, didn't even turn on the tablet with Whatsapp that day), but I will try hard to turn that nearly 0.1% use to 0%.
> I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
Exactly. At least Google removed the "Do no evil" part from their mission.
i.e. I'm so used to the hypocrisy that I don't really think about it, because everything they do is bad.
Why? It's a Chrome extension. They can ban the user and the extension will rot. That seems like more than enough power.
So I think facebook can by disabling the API, but won't do that since there are extension that it does like.
Whether FB has legal grounds to go after users using such an extension would depend on the user terms, which I don't really know. It would be fairly egregious and risky for FB to do so.
But I think if someone were to open source such an extension, this someone probably does not him/herself expose to a legal risk (speaking as a non-lawyer, and not giving legal advice)
Drone manufacturers already do so, you can’t fly drones within 50km of an airport or whatever, can’t fly them above 30 meters depending on where you are, and the software enforces this.
Books on Kindle and Movies on iTunes can be yanked away as you read or watch them.
Now, when it comes to software that isn’t even hosted on your computer, what do you expect?
Putting a swimming pool in your truck bed doesn't stop people from buying Fords.
a good response would be one that starts with respectable principles and values and proceeds according to those, even when it costs money
of course, that won't happen voluntarily, because money
at the moment, the only principles they consistently apply seem to be: protect zuckerberg first, company profits second, everything else third, but that's just my perception -- they should make clear what their principles are so we can judge whether or not they consistently stick to them, and whether or not we need legislation to nudge those priorities around for the good of society
I suspect in the US this would have been handled differently but loser pays against a company that can afford to inflate costs by millions per week to make an example....
Can we ever take a company that says this seriously? Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I never do.
People can wax poetic about freedom of speech, the right to bear arms etc.
But if there is a large separatist group that has historically wanted to destroy your country the first chance it gets, and members regularly commit violent acts to do it, would you really fight for the right to arm them all to the teeth, and then let them organize larger and larger rallies and shows of strength?
Freedom ain’t free, and sometimes the cost can be a little too high:
Neo-fascist autocracies here we go! (they're just cheaper)