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Facebook Goes After Greasemonkey Script Developer

Posted by timothy on from the you-must-enjoy-our-obnoxious-messages dept.

palmerj3 writes "The popular Facebook Purity greasemonkey script (now renamed Fluff Buster Purity) has been used by thousands to rid their Facebook feeds from the likes of Mafia Wars, Farmville, and other annoying things. Now, Facebook is threatening the developer of this script. Does Facebook have the right to govern their website's design and functionality once it's in the browser?"

4 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point of this script? by iJusten · · Score: 5, Informative

    Facebook has inbuilt "ignore this"-feature. Every post has an X on the top-right corner, click it, and you can choose do you want to ignore application or the user who spams your newsfeed (in case you don't want to lose him/her from your friendlist). I did this months ago, and since then I've forgotten that Mafia Wars even exist.

    --
    Chronologically late.
    1. Re:What's the point of this script? by ZxCv · · Score: 5, Informative

      FB Purity blocks entire categories of posts: all application posts, 'x became a fan of y' posts, and others.

      Facebook's built-in hiding is done on a app-by-app and person-by-person basis. So every stupid new app that comes out has to be hidden individually.

      --

      Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
  2. Re:What threat? by Little_Professor · · Score: 5, Informative

    They aren't making him remove the script. The summary (and the script's author's site) are misleading.

    This is purely a trademark issue. Initially the guy called his script Facebook Purity, a clear violation of FB's trademark. He changed the name to Fluff Buster Purity but also still markets it as F***B*** Purity, which is again a violation of Facebook's trademark, albeit a little more tenous.

    If he just changes the name to something else there will be no issue. Noone is forcing him to take down his script, he just has to rename it to something that doesn't violate Facebook's trademark. Facebook are being no more evil than the Mozilla corporation who tightly control the Firefox trademark, even though the software itself is open source (hence Iceweasel etc and other silly names for adaptations of the software).

  3. Re:Thank you Facebook by paziek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thats weird. Here in Poland you can ask company/whoever to delete your personal data and they have to comply. And I mean DELETE, not stop displaying. It means no backup, not on paper, not anywhere.
    If you don't comply with such request, you will be forced to stop using ALL your personal data storage, in with case if Facebook had (they do?) some data center in Poland, they couldn't use it anymore, at least not for personal data.

    Seems like a common sense for me, keeping snapshots of personal data even tho that person doesn't want you to? What the shit?