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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?"

6 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Thank you Facebook by mukund · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You don't let me export my data directly. You play games threatening to disable my account if I try to export the data by using a 3rd party script. Your employees are able to access my private information easily. I just hate logging into your website these days.

    I'm going to delete my Facebook account. I can hear how my friends are doing by calling them once in a while.

    --
    Banu
    1. Re:Thank you Facebook by cbope · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Whatever you do, don't delete your account. That just gives FB a snapshot of your current profile to keep for all eternity. If you want FB to keep as little data on you as possible, it's really quite simple although it requires patience. Gradually remove all information and apps from your FB profile, in the end leave only the bare minimum that's required to keep the profile alive. Then leave it that way for a while, at least a year or two. Then delete the account.

      FB can't possibly keep backups of every state of your profile and eventually they will be overwriting your older data with your updated and reduced profile footprint. Eventually this means they will have little data on you. Do it gradually, so it does not trip un-known snapshots of your profile which might be saved for longer.

    2. Re:Thank you Facebook by lena_10326 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Gradually remove all information and apps from your FB profile, in the end leave only the bare minimum that's required to keep the profile alive.

      I remember watching a video of a Facebook developer giving a presentation on their data storage architecture. I can't find the video, but the gist of it was that they use a homegrown flat file structure for archiving data which includes image data. External to the archives is an index which points to offsets into the archive files. New data is appended at the end and deleted data gets dereferenced, so the deleted data still resides inside the archive. The developer even mentioned that it was possible to recover the deleted data and then proceeded to speek a little on the privacy concerns because technically the data persists forever because they don't run jobs to condense the archives. This is non-intuitive to even well informed users.

      --
      Camping on quad since 1996.
  2. Re:But Facebook lets you block App stories by AmigaHeretic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yeah, or you can also just use:

    http://lite.facebook.com/

    I don't get why they care if THEY themselves offer so many ways to avoid all that crap.

  3. or Free software fundation take over by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FSF could take over his legal cost. And then facebook is fucked, because the publicity combined with the probability that FSF would not drop the issue, would force them to accept and put them in a bad light. The question is could in such a case the FSF try to get the judge facebook to pay for their lawyer cost if facebook lose, which they would do.

  4. Re:No... by msclrhd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ah, this is a trademark issue, not a "we don't want the script modifying our site" issue.

    I can kind of see this for "Facebook", but then the developer is not creating a "FaceBook2" or "NewFaceBook" site that competes with Facebook.

    Like others here, I don't see Fluff Busting (FB) being a trademark infringement though. If it is, it is rather tenuous.