Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life | Hacker News Reader

Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

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172 pointssurfingdino83 comments

Facebook terms of usage https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

Section 3.2:

"You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission."

Seems writing a bot that automatically takes actions on a user's behalf would clearly violate the Facebook terms.

Banning bots is perfectly reasonable behaviour for any site, a badly written bot, especially one that's distributed to large numbers of users could very easily cause a denial-of-service attack because of sloppy programming.

Facebook probably should have just dropped the developer a friendly email rather than a letter from their lawyers and banning the developer might be going over-far, but there's nothing wrong with them wanting to ban the plugin.

Just to be picky, wouldn't the users of the plugin be responsible for violating the tos? I'm sure he tests his plugin on facebook, so, bam. gone. but... shouldn't the 135,000 fans who (presumably) use his browser plugin be banned as well? They are clearly violating the tos.

Well, a ToS is not law, so there's no obligation to enforce it, so it's up to FB to decide, and I don't see what would they gain from that. They got the app gone, they don't really benefit from having 135000 more people hating them.

IANAL,

Is that true? I thought if a company made claims like that, they sort of had to do stuff about it. it seems like the dev could show, here's hundreds of thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing, why single him out? I think those tos claims are more use-it-or-lose-it kinds of rules.

Nope, it's civil law, your basically free to arbitrarily decide how and who to enforce it against (subject to anti-discriminatory laws and the like)

Have you ever read the Facebook TOS fully?

I challenge you to find a single game on the site that does not violate one of their extremely vaguely worded clauses.

This is basically just a "We can, for any reason, at any time, ban you. Suck it up."

That's why I've lost all interest in the Facebook platform.

Too much of this nonsense going on.

>This is basically just a "We can, for any reason, at any time, ban you. Suck it up."

It probably had to do with his plugin enabling users to play Facebook games without actually playing them. I'm sure game creators want a human looking at the ads in (and next to) their games, so it's no wonder he was banned.

If you don't agree with the terms you can,

1) not develop for Facebook 2) break the terms and accept the risks involved 3) come to an agreement with Facebook with different terms

Plenty of people have taken each of these routes

I can see why they'd want to ban browser plugins that affect their site.

I've seen a few people create things like this which can cause problems for the users, and support. Many people install plugins which affect specific sites, or greasemonkey scripts, and then don't understand what is coming from the actual site and what comes from the plugin. Then, when the site is updated, the plugin/scripts can cause unexpected errors and the users often blame the site, not the third party code they're running.

So, I think that actually plugins like this are irresponsible and I wouldn't want people creating them for anything I owned.

>but it also seriously limits his chances of finding employment as a programmer.

That doesn't sound quite right. TOO HOT FOR FACEBOOK!!! could look great on the right résumé.

The whole thing is just what we've come to expect from facebook by now tbh.

I'd say it limits his chances of finding any employment where facebook is used for communication.

To my mind, that sounds like a good thing. My employer using Facebook for communication sounds just terrible.

not only terrible but irresponsible

If that limits his chances of finding a programmer job, his talent is very limited.

Employers often do background checks and if they find out he was banned by Facebook that may work against him.

Background checks ping public records for things like convictions and residence history. There is no way a "ban from Facebook" would show up on one of these.

Background checks these days pretty typically include your name being googled, especially if it's in tech.

How do employers find out the ban? I thought it's a private matter. Does Facebook have a list of all banned developers?

He published the info on the internet. Will be easy to find using Google.

So it's like he put it in his resume. I am sorry. I feel sorry for the guy, and I don't know whether Facebook is justified in banning him. But if Facebook doesn't want to play ball, just move on.

I found it and I wasn't even looking for it.

In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell and all computer systems are Facebook.

For anyone curious, this a reference to Demolition Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFiDoOgRTpk

It could cause problems for him if the company he wants to work at uses the Facebook API. The work might be done through the company's account but the company may not want to risk Facebook finding out he is part of their team and shutting them down.

True, but it does suck to be banned from the ubiquitous platform in which you've spent time becoming highly specialized.

edit: Apparently he developed a browser plugin that doesn't use Facebook's API, so it looks like this may actually be a decent endorsement.

Yes it does. But programming is one of those nice fields where you can usually pick up the pieces and relearn things pretty quickly if doors happen to close on you.

Highly specialized in facebook API? If you are a half decent developer you can easily pick up any API in few days if not in few hours.

Not on facebook. It feels like IE6 in development. About one billion pittfalls and the documentation is not helpful most of the time.

Here is a snippet from Friendly Gaming Simplifier Message Board:

   On the day of 6th January 2012 02:05 GMT+1, I have  
   received a legal note from Perkins Coie attorney company, 
   which is representing Facebook Inc., based in Menlo Park, 
   California.

   According to this note I must follow all of the below 
   demands „In order to avoid further escalation of this 
   matter”:
   - Stop offering the FGS Browser Software, or any other 
   software that interferes with Facebook’s intended 
   limitations or impairs the proper working of Facebook,
   - I must cease and not access the Facebook site(s) and/or 
   services for any reason whatsoever.

I cannot find explanation why he got this message.

It doesn't look like they provided any explanation, just gave a "fair" warning, "In order to avoid further escalation of this matter."

What's really funny about telling him he's not allowed to use any Facebook services is that, short of blocking all connections between his computer and Facebook's servers, he can't. Even if he never goes to facebook.com again, he'll still encounter Like buttons and other FB social plugins on many, many sites.

I don't know if HN is that stupid...

Here's my story. I made a facebook website using their API in a bad way. EXACTLY like this story, that guy knew he was using facebook's API in bad way. I got 100.000 fans on my facebook app and then they closed it, banned me domain and banned me from using the API again. It doesn't mean I'm banned from using their API again... they're saying a lot of things they don't do... and it doesn't mean also that I can't work for a company that need a facebook developer (and that would be a shitty job).

sorry for my english I'm french.

but this article is sensationalism !

1. FB's lawyers sent him a letter asking him to stop. No more, no less.

2. Being 'banned from FB' is not really a legally defined classification for human beings, and HR organizations are paid to care about actual legal reality.

3. If he's not using FB APIs or other licensed information, how are FB's options for "further escalation" anything more than a louder brand of saber rattling? All it takes is one good lawyer looking to stand up to Goliath pro-bono, in a case that we know would be very highly publicized, and suddenly all the downside to a court battle is on FB's end. On what legal theory could FB hope to receive damages?

4. Despite all of the above, sometimes knuckling under and running for cover is the right move. A good programmer knows his limitations, and he's under no obligation to stick his neck out.

> On what legal theory could FB hope to receive damages?

Possibly: Increased costs of support to 130,000 people using unapproved software in combination to Facebook, who get weird results from the software when Facebook updates something and blame Facebook not the software, and who bitch and moan to Facebook for support? (Obviously most people don't bother with support, and they just complain to friends.)

The problem with real life David v Goliath cases is the disproportionate distribution of risk. An individual losing a court battle against a big coroporation may leave him (and possibly his family) financially crippled for the rest of his life. That's why civil law is a complete farce.

In this particular case I see very little justification for even trying to play David in spite of Facebook's grotesque overreaction.

Its important to note he was developing a browser extension and was not interacting with Facebook's exposed APIs.

He wasn't "banned for life". He received a "cease and desist" letter from Facebook's lawyer that threatened (bluffed) to escalate their challenge against the game. It's classic scare tactic employed by lawyers for unethical clients.

He quotes "I must cease and not access the Facebook site(s) and/or services for any reason whatsoever." There is not EOL date in his statement.

It's not the "for life" anothermachine is disputing, it's the "banned." What he received sounds like a simple nastygram. I could send you a letter demanding that you give me your house, but that wouldn't mean that you are obliged to do so.

He's not a US citizen, he doesn't have funds to fight Facebook and he cannot count on the lawyers to help him for free. They used disproportionate force against him. I'm sure he will remember that lesson.

If he's not a US citizen and he isn't in the US, what's he got to lose by continuing to distribute the plugin? Any judgement against him would be pretty much pointless.

> I could send you a letter demanding that you give me your house, but that wouldn't mean that you are obliged to do so.

Considering that his only two choices are to leave voluntarily or to be forced out and that Facebook can take down his Facebook pages or ban his IPs on their own, I'm not sure what point there is in arguing over whether or not being given that choice qualifies as being "banned."

There is no evidence that Facebook actually would force him out, just that some lawyer decided to include some text in a nastygram. That was the point, as I understood it.

Why do you believe that Facebook is willing to sick their lawyers on him, but unwilling to shut down his Facebook pages?

I would assume somebody in FB just said the lawyers "this guy is using our API in a way we do not condone, send him C&D so he would stop" and the lawyers made it as broad as possible since if they make it too broad nothing bad happens but if it's too narrow and the guy finds a way to wiggle around it it's their fail. Nobody in FB probably cares if the same guy would ever post a status on FB or share a picture of lolcats. They just wanted the plugin to be removed. If they also spread some fear around so nobody else does it too - it's even better for them, even though it's not what they probably cared about too much.

Yeah, sure, I get that they just want to scare him and would prefer not to escalate to legal action. But they don't need a court order to block him from Facebook or to take down his pages. If they're out to "spread some fear", why wouldn't they do that as well?

It's not that I believe them to be unwilling, not any more than I believe they would be unwilling to delete your account. I just am not convinced that they want to delete his account any more than they want to delete yours. All I know they want is for him to stop sending his robot.

I don't think that's quite a fair comparison. As the proprietor of a brick-and-mortar business, you have the right to refuse service to anyone. Facebook is exercising their equivalent right here by refusing to let him use their online services.

The "stop distributing your browser plugin" is a nastygram cease and desist, yeah, but there's nothing wrong with Facebook banning him.

Why was he banned? I can't seem to find the reason on the reddit page or the developers blog post.

I can't find any additional info. If there was nothing wrong with the plugin for 18 months and now they're using all legal powers to intimidate him, I'd say someone got wind of money-making opportunity.

This is the first time I am reading about the plugin, but it seems to have automatically gone through a users timeline to find posts where their friends were sharing in-game items. While this may not have been cheating at the game, Facebook could possibly see the automated browsing as a circumvention of viewing their ads.

I've never heard of the plugin before, but it looks like it did some of the tedium of clicking on the game status updates for you. (If someone can give a good description, I would love to see it).

My guess is that FB doesn't like the software doing this because it means the users aren't doing it themselves, and thus aren't able to see the ads they would have otherwise, cutting down on revenue.

The only other reason I can think of that would make any sense is that the games servers might have had load issues (since the plugin could act faster and on more things than a human). However, I would put my ad theory above as far more likely.

Facebook, like craigslist, has a history of extreme prejudice against any form of automation or scraping of its site. I think that your suggestion about ads is correct. Suppose one of these alternate interfaces took over a large chunk of the market. How would Facebook present any advertisement to these users? They'd have to go the twitter route and insert ads directly into feeds.

>The only other reason I can think of that would make any sense is that the games servers might have had load issues (since the plugin could act faster and on more things than a human). However, I would put my ad theory above as far more likely.

Also consider that many facebook games operate with a micro-transactional model where you CAN buy stuff with in game currency earned by the 'tedious clicking' but if you want to speed things up, you can buy currency with real cash. If the 'tedious clicking' is mitigated by a plugin, then the pressure to pay real cash is decreased, costing the app developers revenue

So, this plugin reduces facebook's ad revenue, reduces app developer's revenue and if the application uses facebook credits as currency, facebook loses its cut of lost developer revenue as well. Its' not at all surprising that facebook went after it.

The key issue here is that is was a plugin that acted like a robot on the site.

Effectively they only thing that Facebook can do about that sort of application is ban people using it.

However, just like the Wow Glider saga they chose to pressure the developer instead. However, unlike that, it was just a browser plugin. No magical API calls, or anything like that.

I couldn't care less about micro-transactions, ad views and the spamware Facebook applications: Facebook is doing this because they can't take the bitter pill of banning _users_ who violate their TOS; instead they will attack the developer of said tool.

There is no justifying their actions.

fail.

Sorry but this post reeks of of personal hatred toward facebook and contains little value.

Regardless of the method chosen to attack this issue at the end of the day this hurts both their bottom line and their app developer's bottom line, which hurts the user base as a whole. Clearly your not a facebook user, so frankly, your opinion doesn't matter to them as long as your the minority.

Of course they would go after the source of the issue instead of their profit center (users). Are you really arguing that Facebook is evil for not attacking their users? I mean really its terrible of them to focus on their users and their profit centers over a singular third party developer, absolutely terrible.

I have a feeling if this article was titled "Facebook bans 50,000 users" you would have come here and made the same "I hate Facebook" argument.

Don't be silly. Of course I use Facebook. Most people do.

I have no time of day for the developers of the spamware that fill it, but that's not the issue here.

A plugin that does not in any way use the Facebook api is just a stand alone application.

This is exactly what Cory Doctorow is talking about with the war on general purpose computing. A company flailing wilding and applying bad (legal) pressure to bare against the issue of people using their computers to do something the company doesn't like (in this case automating game actions) is the wrong solution.

I don't understand your position at all. In essence it appears to be "if they don't use our API we have no recourse at all, its all fair use". Along the same lines any bot that automates any computer game is "ok", even if it destroys an entire industry of professional gaming, any application that scraps web data is "ok", etc. HN even blocks that kind of use.

Friendly Gaming Simplifier description

Browser extension that will allow you to collect bonuses and requests from many Facebook games

Friendly Gaming Simplifier is a Firefox and Google Chrome extension that simplifies the process of accepting gifts and bonuses from your Facebook Games neighbors.

Friendly Gaming Simplifier also features support for sending gifts.

The Friendly Gaming Simplifier add-on is cross-platform and it works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Requirements:

· Google Chrome or · Firefox 4 to 9 · Facebook account

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Facebook-Gam...

http://mac.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Facebook-Games-Simpli...

This sounds very similar to the Missing e situation that Tumblr users are facing:

http://shortformblog.tumblr.com/post/15046201810/missing-e-t...

Essentially a plugin got really popular to the point where it was starting to cause problems. Tumblr hasn't gone so far as to get lawyers involved, however, but they have put a message up for regular users of the plugin, suggesting they turn it off.

Hmm,

There is a little more on this here:

http://blog.games.com/2012/01/06/facebook-friendly-gaming-si...

"...the plug-in had racked up an impressive following of players "in-the-know," who kept the project a secret for fear of such an outcome..."

Maybe such a plugin shouldn't be disallowed by Facebook but it seems like it wasn't surprising to many people that it was...

Apparently, FGS was banned because one lone game developer made it a point to complain. This particular browser extension was both the least intrusive, and smoothest working, of its' kind. The developer also worked WITH the game developers. so that this extension worked in a way that the game developers agreed to.

The myriad explanations as to "why" this happened can be found in these two articles, at the least, and in the comments to them.

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-727662

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-728485

For those who seem to believe that this was anything other than an UNREASONABLE action on the part of Facebook, I suggest that the only way to make REASONABLE would be to enjoin other, BIGGER programs that do what this one did and more. Programs that allow you to do things that one CANNOT do in-game, which is not something this browser extension did.

Is not cheating definitively, this program is doing nothing else that collect from our walls, the items from the walls is free, so we don't have the possibility to collect stuff for which we suppose to pay... just collect the postings, if nobody took it before you...and with FGS, in 2 clicks you can collect hundreds...that's why all the ill people on Facebook was so in need of this program. For the people like me it was good, because when I come home after a whole day of work, I can collect item posted 12 hours before. And another wonderful thing which this FGS is doing, is that is receiving and sending back hundreds of gifts with 1 click. Having this wonderful FGS, we start to play 6-7 games, now without it, many of us are forced to quit playing and because many are on Facebook just for play, we'll close the Facebook accounts also. :(

I would hire him

The fact that

1. a developer could create a working product that is live and used by a lot of users. 2. a developer could create something that draws a significant attention from a huge company like facebook since it turns out that the product has significant impact that it's actually all over the news when facebook tries to limit it.

These to me would not be a strong reason for hurting a chance of employment. On the other hand, this is the kind of developer you want to work with.

These things can bite you when you least expect them. Say you hired him to write a web app and later on the users (or investors, or clients) want to have FB login. Now you need to fire the guy or separate him from the FB login implementation, testing, and use. The guy's got a huge target mark on his ass.

Maybe I'm missing something, but generally when doing any type of Facebook/social integration type work, I'm not using my personal account, but rather one dedicated to that purpose (i.e. the client's). How in the world would Facebook know (big brother, tin foil hats, etc. etc.) if this guy is running API calls and send in their secret police? It seems incredibly unlikely to me that, by working through a client (or even a fake profile) and taking part in the thousands++ API calls that occur daily, that there would be any issue here.

No it's just a cease and desist letter, even if he did comply its not a binding agreement. And even if he did agree facebooks systems are so automated that he would likely recieve an invite to use their systems which would nullify the ban. People banned from casinos often receive invitations to visit the casino which nullify the ban via the casinos marketing efforts.

> even if he did comply its not a binding agreement.

They're claiming he violated the ToS, which probably is binding. Moreover, they can take direct action to boot him from Facebook.

I think Facebook is being silly here, but I don't see why people appear to think that they wouldn't follow through on their threats.

Hopefully a hiring manager at Google will ping him soon.

Google are not fans of scraping and people running robots on their sites :-)

I have a question which is more legal related. It is "public" secret that US government (and other governments) have and use persona management softwares which clearly violate Facebook terms of usage. The question is: does Facebook has any legal standing against that? Can Facebook or other social networks sue government for offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unite...

OK, so where's the source ;)

Here: http://code.google.com/p/fgs/source/checkout

I NEED HELP FINDING OUT ABOUT SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN PLAYING A PRETTY NASTY GAME WITH ME, IS ANYONE WILLING TO HELP?

limits his chances of finding employment as a programmer??

Why exactly? Facebook API is st and no good programmer wants to develop on top of it.

No good programmer wants to, but does so anyways because of Facebook's marketing potential.

Want isn't the same as "need" here. People will pay you to develop apps with FB integration. That's enough to sway plenty of developers.

What about all the Like buttons everywhere?

It's the Facebook subreddit, that's a custom style set on that subreddit. The like buttons are actually reedit upvote buttons.

All the info regards the FB v FGS fiasco can be found here;

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1911115...

https://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/savefgs

http://www.zdnet.com/tb/1-112687#1_112687_2285681

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-728485

http://thedailyattack.com/2012/01/07/facebook-intimidates-de...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Arkadiusz-flies-Rzadk...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-bans-browser-plu...

http://journalxtra.com/games/facebook-bully-fgs-cease-desist...

http://facebookkit.com/facebook-bans-browser-plugin-fgs-and-...

http://rddweb.com/fgs-facebook-zynga/

http://blog.games.com/2012/01/06/facebook-friendly-gaming-si...

http://www.sims-social.com/2012/01/help-save-fgs.html

http://www.ixwebhosting.mobi/facebook-disable-plug-ins-more-...

http://www.cityvillechat.com/news/facebook-attacks-citizen/

hi, I'm new in here and made an account just because I saw you talking about Arkadiusz Flies and his FGS. FGS is not a bot as others, as I am just a simple user of the computer, I'm not able to explain you what it is, but before judge Flies, please inform yourself, and after, when you'll understand that he is completely innocent, you'll give me and 30.000 others some help. FGS is the best ever, is completely different of other bonus collectors, has his own browser which has nothing to do with cheating and collecting unpaid stuff. Wwe can collect with one click hundreds of bonuses from our friends walls, nothing stgealing...just the stuff we loose because we have to go to work sometimes :) We've started to believe that facebook want to legally steal the program from Flies... Please help...this kind of bullshit can happen to anyone if we don't stand up. Facebook is taking advantage because Flies is a student, he can't pay for a legally action against this Facebook. Yes, we thought about Google +, but I don't know if Google is a good platform for FGS and...what's the sense to go in Google, when our games 20-30 there are not yet on Google... If Google will accept all these games, millions of people will leave for good this shit Facebook. We're waiting just a little sign from Google, in the meantime we made all accounts and took Flies in our circle. Till then, we need all the help we can find.

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