Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt | Hacker News Reader

Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt

uk.techcrunch.com

27 pointsnickb23 comments

Again, the future of the web is being written by petty acts of criminality. (aka civil disobedience, aka breaking stupid rules)

Just as the entertainment industry will eventually have to adapt to the reality of file-sharing, regardless of the fact that the law is on their side...the future of data portability will be driven by technology development and people's willingness to break the rules, not by the Facebook TOS.

Who cares? I don't mean to be flippant, this just seems like the definition of something that only matters to a lot of self-important bloggers.

I too don't quite understand the mentality of people who have 5,000+ 'friends'.

Caveat: I've never used facebook other than once when I signed up in order to take a peek at the documentation for Thrift ( http://developers.facebook.com/thrift ).

That said, my experience with Orkut is that it's next to trivial to end up with a bazillion friends. This is because friends never get dropped off your list and people outside your immediate circle often remember you when they see your name on someone elses list and consequently ask to be your friend regardless of the fact that you may not have spoken to them in a decade.

what matters is that Facebook would disable your account for attempting to get your data out of it. For this and many other reasons I've deleted my Facebook account (and it wasn't easy).

If the data is on facebook servers, it is on private property and they have every right to decide who has access to their private property.

I think the point is that it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the whole "social network" idea.

I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know, Google meets this standard.

I'm not saying that sites have to give users all the information they have about them, btw-- just that they should allow users to retrieve information they have supplied or been given by others. E.g. an email app should let you export (or at least not deliberatebly block you from exporting) emails you've sent and received. Contact info of people who've added you as friends seems in the same class as email sent to you.

> I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know, Google meets this standard.

While visting there, I've seen at least one whiteboard with a list of principles from (IIRC) their CEO, with "Don't hold users' data hostage" underlined.

> I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out.

I think so as well, but given that the sanctity of data ownership is a rather new phenomena - for example, you wouldn't ask your bank for all your transaction history - I can give that they may not feel that they are obliged to return it.

"you wouldn't ask your bank for all your transaction history - I can give that they may not feel that they are obliged to return it."

huh? Here in India you can ask any bank for your transaction history and they'll give it to you. You might have to go to the local branch and show id and wait while they print out the transaction history, but you'll get it for sure.

Well, you could probably do that here too, although they might make you pay for anything historical. I was thinking more from a web-app standpoint. It's not the greatest of examples, put the point is that the bank doesn't see themselves as under any real obligation to view your transactions as anything but their data.

can't vouch for all banks but I can tell you that my credit card company recently sent me (at my request) over 2 years of statements free of charge (came in about 24 envelopes in the mail).

That's roughly analogous to saying that Citibank, because your money is in their vaults, may come up with whatever conditions it pleases for you to access that money. It violates the spirit with which people agree to let a company store their property.

Many hospitals, actually, don't let you access your own medical chart. My guess, though, is that's more about doctors wanting freedom to write snarky comments without fear of retribution than it is about fear of competition.

no, you have a contract with citibank and there are laws in place that govern what they can do.

technically, he is probably more than correct about the "private property". In some "terms and service" listing I'm sure they state that using the service means they can do X, Y, Z with your data. You agree to it implicitly.

But talk of rights on private property and abusive terms is ridiculous for a service based company. The whole point is to make something users wants. Users don't want enemas or prison.

More relevant than ever: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87337

There's an easier way to quit. Create a new account with a separate email address (create a fake email address somewhere, use a fake name). Then add all the email addresses from your current account to your new one. When there are no email addresses associated with your account your old account is permanently deleted. You can then remove all your email addresses (except for the initial fake one). You will now have a blank facebook account that's not associated with your name and email address. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes.

Someone should create a web app that does it. Imagine if you could just go to http://quitfacebook.org, enter your username and pw, and it would do what you described. Like a step beyond Greasemonkey.

True, but the above link isn't about ease of quitting ... it's about doing your small part to fsck over Facebook. :P

Facebook is private property, so they can ban anyone they want (otherwise what is the point of the fourth amendment?)

What is true 'de jure' may not be true 'de facto'.

With technologies available to suck your information back out of Facebook (the new versions of which will presumably evade detection), and plenty of people happy to use them, the legalities of information ownership will be irrelevant.

OK, fair enough. But why does Facebook allow you to import data from other web services, like Gmail, but disallow you to export data from their database?

If they're going to be petty about that, Scoble's pettiness is justified in my mind.

He knew what he was doing all along.

"That's part of my job to see how good their terms of service are, and how well enforced they are." http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-face...

Since when is breaking a contract part of one's job?

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