Site Lets You Simulate a Facebook Hack, Goes Viral at PennApps | Hacker News Reader

Site Lets You Simulate a Facebook Hack, Goes Viral at PennApps

techland.time.com

16 pointsgailees40 comments

I really don't understand the difference between this app and me posting a status on Facebook saying I am pregnant, then coming back later and saying, "I'm not pregnant, I got hacked."

It's a lot quicker, and we've already done the work for you.

Wow, anything gets in the press these days. It's a 20 min, 1 page website. Get over it guys.

Have you tried it....it's actually quite a good time :)

Says the guy who made it...

I built this product, because several times I wished something like it existed; now, I enjoy using it.

Yes, I'm biased, but I didn't just build this app just to build it; I built it for my own use, and I think it's fun to use :)

i am confused, why would you want to do that to your own Facebook account???

Try it. It's hilarious. Also, if you read the TIME article, originally it was intended to be used on your friends Facebook's when they left it open at your house or left their laptop for a moment when you were working next to them.

Then we got a lot of backlash about that; we realized it was even funny to do one of the hack flavors to yourself. For some reason, people enjoy being hacked on Facebook as long as it isn't malicious.

so i assume the app could be used in a similar method to your previous concept, but with all of the backlash (especially from Facebook) you had to make it seem like you would want to hack yourself?

We highly condone misuse of the app, but yes it can still be used in that way.

condemn

As someone who is older than the college age crowd, it seems pretty inane. I'm sick of political posts so would probably ignore those in someone else's feed. Having kids or dropping out of school to do a startup don't sound like crazy ideas to me, either. I actually think the idea is pretty funny, but the options are unimaginative, or perhaps I'm just too far distant from the target demographic.

We've had a pretty good response so far with our current options while at the same time being able to stay away from any profane, offensive, or really malicious content; however, we would love to have expanded options for other target demographics outside of college students.

Do you have any ideas for options that would be more well-targeted at your demographic?

We already personalize options to some of the user's basic fb info, but have yet to come up with buttons that we think other specific age groups would be more likely to use.

I probably don't have any real gems but generally, non-sequitur stuff that clearly wasn't an intentional post is the most funny, as it jumps out an makes you wonder what the hell is going on. Promotion of weird/bad products, i.e. spam. The 4chan FB hacks from that christian message board a couple years back were actually pretty funny, albeit juvenile and insulting. Maybe the heuristic would be that a good percentage of one's friends think you were hacked without you knowing about it, but nothing too shocking or harmful. Just my $.02, I did think it was a neat idea.

Agree about the options. When I have "hacked" one of my friends Facebook accounts when they left their phone around, I definitely had different thoughts on what to write. And maybe that is where my disconnect is, I can't imagine wanting to write what I would put on someone else's account as a joke on my own account. The idea is much funnier to me when used on someone else's account (their original idea I guess).

I had the same reaction. However, I've learned that different people use and see computers, the internet, and these social tools differently. It goes beyond not seeing the implications of posting certain types of content or exposing too much personal information, sites like Facebook are there to entertain themselves, their friends, and family. People have grown up with enough virus infections, identity theft and other digital shenanigans that it is a part of their life.

It was originally called Buddy Hack (to be used if a friend leaves Facebook logged in), but I presume someone made them change it to Hack My Facebook. More confusing, less liability.

Facebook banned the app when the point was to hack another account.

They put the app back up under a new name / context to comply and demo the app.

Exactly...we realized that people were even using Buddy Hack to mess with their friends by "hacking" their own Facebook's, so we pivoted to Hack My Facebook.

Wow. As somebody who has participated in PennApps in the past and actually visited this year for the Friday night kickoff, let me just say that it is a damn shame that this is getting so much of a negative reaction because there are so many other great projects that came out this year.

https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-fall-2012/h...

How are we clowns? People actually use and enjoy using what we built at PennApps; why should that be looked down upon?

We had fun building our hack, and people have fun using it.

So let me retract that after reading some of the other posts - in the end what you guys did was still pretty slick and I'm sure you learned a lot. So sorry for being reactionary myself.

Thank you. I'm glad you understand. We weren't trying to downplay any of the other apps at all; our app just caught some traction, and we were happy about that.

Sometimes I wonder if this kind of thing is a complete waste of talent. Smart kids, wasting it on stupid webpages.

I mean....if nothing else, we are learning from the experience, but I definitely don't think it's a waste of our time.

But it is because no one will ever even use it.... spend time on something that people will use or that has meaning

And what are you building today? Jesus, what a derisive attitude.

Sometimes it's great to build, just to build. If I was worried about spending every single waking moment of my life in the most productive way possible, I would not even get to live, nor would I sleep very much haha.

Stacey, we've already had hundreds of people use the site and have received great feedback from many of our users. Sure, it's not something people use every day, but I definitely think it brings some good-hearted humor into people's lives.

Even if it just brings people a few laughs, I'd say that this product has meaning, and that I am proud of it.

I wrote a Hello World program today. No one will ever use it, so must have been a waste of my time. All along I thought I was building experience and learning the language.

You're on the wrong site if you think utility is a factor in choosing a project to work on. The hacker mindset is that a project is worth doing just because it's possible to do it, not necessarily because there's any good reason.

Hellllll yeah....this is exactly the mindset that we need to promote in students to inspire them to hack with passion.

If you go on tracing the "meaningful" work you've been doing all this time, you'll probably end up with something leisurely. This is just very close to that, seeming "meaningless".

Let's face it, most of the work we do is an effort to improve and/or increase your leisure time.

Think about it.

As a U-M/MPowered alum, I am very excited about this project as an example of the kind of creative approaches leveraging modern web infrastructure to tap into a newly emerged social behavior. I strongly expect this experience will be applicable to your future activities :-)

Are you joking?

"I am very excited about this project as an example of the kind of creative approaches leveraging modern web infrastructure to tap into a newly emerged social behavior."

Please tell me you are joking... This is a fun useless app. Don't use weasel words to make it look like something it isn't.

People use it; it is not useless.

Just because something is useless doesn't mean people won't use it. But I agree - this has a use. Not something I'd use or even think to create mind you, but a use nonetheless.

The event is one for creative outlets. Even a low-utility project like this that goes viral provides many lessons applicable to more economically-stimulating projects in the future.

I don't disagree with the value of solving serious problems, but this sort of behavior should not in any way be discouraged. I think I would dislike working in that kind of environment!

It's just a Hackathon. It's meant to just build something for the sake of building it. I made something that lets you stage an internet argument through a Pokemon battle. I don't think I am a "smart kid wasted on a stupid webpage".

TIME decided to write about our shift from Buddy Hack to Hack My Facebook

Our new pivot doesn't include any of the encouragement against the spirit of the Facebook platform or the fake "defriend all" button that our original app contained.

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