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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

Am I forbidden from wearing tinted glasses while looking at Facebook as well? After all, they "alter the experience".

If they put that clause in their ToS, and then decided to kick you off Facebook for wearing tinted glasses, they'd be well within their rights.

The ToS is irrelevant. They can kick you off FB for no reason at all, if they want.

They would be in their rights - legally speaking - but would it be reasonable? And would you expect it to happen?

Whether or not it is reasonable is besides the point here -- I was responding to a bad analogy.

Of course they can kick any Facebook user/group off for any reason, but I suspect they would have a hard time taking any sort of legal action against a plugin (or tinted glasses) that merely changes the way a user's browser interprets the resources loaded from Facebook.

Anyway, I think it's silly for Facebook to be going after tools that make users like Facebook more, as long as they don't somehow degrade the experience for others (spamming, etc)

> going after tools that make users like Facebook more

I suspect it has more to do with the fact that many of these tools strip ads.

I installed Social Fixer, and it doesn't strip ads, at least not by default.

I understand your point, however that isn't quite a valid analogy in this case.

The correct analogy would be:

Q) Am I forbidden from writing an application using the facebook API that tints/alters the color of the website?

A) Yes, you are forbidden from doing that.

This did not use the Facebook API. It completely circumvents it.

Yes. What they said. Social Fixer is not bound by any API TOS, because I do not use their API or any official mechanism they offer. I am not a Facebook Developer, and this isn't a Facebook App. This is, of course, intentional, because I don't want to be bound by the Developer TOS.

Unfortunately altering the FB experience, api or not is against their TOS.

If you're referring to point 3.11, then I don't agree. This is not the intent of this provision. This is clearly targeted at malware or other software that prevents the proper working of Facebook against the user's wishes. Otherwise, it would be a violation of their TOS to disable Javascript, change your font, or use custom CSS in your browser.

> This is clearly targeted at malware or other software that prevents the proper working of Facebook against the user's wishes.

Facebook could be defining anything that blocks or interferes with their advertising and revenue stream as malware.

He's explaining that he never accepted their TOS in the first place, because he never did anything that required him to.

It's pretty hard to develop an app that modifies the way a site is displayed to logged in users without being logged in to the site yourself...

Not true. I've created a browser extension that inserted a menu item to Facebook's menu for each facebook story. I didn't have to be signed in as a facebook developer to do that.

http://www.ex-parrot.com/pete/upside-down-ternet.html

Now, develop and debug it without being able to use HTTP or test it with live data in any way.

My apologies, I did not know it was completely separate. I had assumed it wasn't separate because that is what is listed as the reason for removing it.

This is quite unfair to you IMO...downright shameful of facebook to do this.

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