Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/01/03/facebook-blocks-scoble-for-downloading-his-contacts/

by nickb • 19 years ago

27 23 19 years ago

uk.techcrunch.com

ojbyrne• 19 years ago

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.

axod• 19 years ago

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

bayareaguy• 19 years ago

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.

cstejerean3• 19 years ago

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).

tomjen2• 19 years ago

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.

run4yourlives3• 19 years ago

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

karzeem• 19 years ago

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.

pius2• 19 years ago

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

cstejerean3• 19 years ago

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.

tomjen2• 19 years ago

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

sethjohn2• 19 years ago

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.

batasrki• 19 years ago

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.

sethjohn2• 19 years ago

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.

jakewolf• 19 years ago

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?

Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt

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