Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

http://www.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/o76m7/facebook_intimidates_developer_bans_him_and_his/

by surfingdino • 15 years ago

172 83 15 years ago

reddit.com

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

>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.

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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

elemeno• 15 years ago

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

ww5203• 15 years ago

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

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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

Agathos• 15 years ago

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

k-mcgrady2• 15 years ago

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.

vectorpush2• 15 years ago

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.

qqqqqq• 15 years ago

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.

therandomguy• 15 years ago

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.

k-mcgrady2• 15 years ago

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

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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.

elliottcarlson• 15 years ago

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.

MBCook• 15 years ago

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.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

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.

mbell3• 15 years ago

>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.

Kriegar2• 15 years ago

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...

varenc• 15 years ago

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

zeratul• 15 years ago

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.

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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

josefrichter• 15 years ago

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.

kaonashi• 15 years ago

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

noarchy• 15 years ago

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.

bennytjia2• 15 years ago

I would hire him

bennytjia2• 15 years ago

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.

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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.

reinhardt• 15 years ago

Hopefully a hiring manager at Google will ping him soon.

mjwalshe• 15 years ago

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

anothermachine• 15 years ago

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.

surfingdino8• 15 years ago

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.

chc3• 15 years ago

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.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

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...

ig13• 15 years ago

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.

jfoutz2• 15 years ago

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.

icebraining• 15 years ago

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.

shadowmint3• 15 years ago

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.

ceol• 15 years ago

>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.

ig13• 15 years ago

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

code_duck• 15 years ago

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.

sdizdar• 15 years ago

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"?

dangrossman• 15 years ago

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

shortformblog• 15 years ago

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.

lazerwalker2• 15 years ago

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.

feralchimp• 15 years ago

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.

DanBC• 15 years ago

> 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.)

fauigerzigerk• 15 years ago

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.

neworbit• 15 years ago

OK, so where's the source ;)

atesti• 15 years ago

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

flexterra• 15 years ago

What about all the Like buttons everywhere?

eridius• 15 years ago

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

chuffindiesel• 15 years ago

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/

baby• 15 years ago

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 !

BIGGIRLSDONTCRY• 15 years ago

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

Kriegar2• 15 years ago

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.

ginacogeasca2• 15 years ago

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. :(

Facebook intimidates developer, bans him and his code for life

Related Stories