Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Goes After Greasemonkey Script Developer
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?"
No. They don't...
Sorry, you distributed content, we can throw it in the trash if we like
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
here comes the Streisand effect
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
You can hide all news feed posts from a certain application without using any addons. I don't see why they would be against this. I half-expected the "going after" him in the headline was to offer him a job before reading the summary.
Once it's in your browser, it's just a bunch of well formed data. These days almost any browser has extensions that may inadvertently modify this data, even without getting into specific tools like Greasemonkey.
If they really feel that strongly about a topic, they could try to obfuscate the data somehow, to make it more difficult to write such an extension. This would not be too hard on their part, though obviously more computationally expensive.
I agree, I don't think they have any legal right to stop the dev from creating a completely user-side tool. The only thing they could do (IMO) is block its functionality for users.
Facebook is getting more and more annoying. It's unfortunate how much of a deathchoke they have on social networking (I don't know very many people without facebook; it is my main mode of online communication).
It's known that an IPO is inevitable; if their motives have been in question now, it won't be when public stockholders are involved.
Time to hop on the next social bandwagon. How hard can it be to host asite with 400,000,000 unique VISITORS a month?
Of course they don't, but it doesn't matter because the developer can't possibly afford to defend himself so he'll comply because it doesn't matter if you're right if you're homeless. I wish judges were a little more liberal with SLAPP summary judgments against litigious corporations.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm going to install it now.
Thanks for bringing this to script to my attention, Facebook!
I don't see how this is any different than running noscript, or redirecting entries in your host file to 127.0.0.1... Even if this does go to court, I doubt Facebook would come out on top. Explaining to someone how browser content can be modified on the fly using GreaseMonkey might be a little tricky. No harm, no foul. Good luck Facebook, you money-hoarding bastards.
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
Had GS installed, but hadn't seen this script.
Thanks EffBee for letting me know about the script that keeps all your spam harvesting shit-ware out of sight.
even the mention of this story will upset their pr in dev community A LOT. we web developers, contrary to some who are developing for more closed platforms like ipod, do NOT like being herded, goaded, or ordered about. this will have consequences.
Read radical news here
Can I not telnet to facebook.com on port 80 and make a request by hand? Sorry, but their copyright ends after they distribute a URI over HTTP. What I do with the response is my prerogative. My browser does anything it wants to with your data... even if I'm not using a browser to connect to tcp/80 at the time.
To some extent. Ars Technica recently ran a short experiment where content was hidden if it looked like someone was running an ad blocker.
Note that these detection scripts are generally like 4 lines of javascript that depend on the fact that ad blockers look for urls patterns like "ads/*". If any site actually started seriously doing this, it would be easily worked around and probably turn into an arms race that the site would lose.
To be honest, greasemonkey is the equivalent of a spam filter. Without it, you're drowned by stupid apps updates you don't give a damn about. And facebook become unusable and utter crap.
So let them disable whatever and shoot themselves in the foot. I won't drop a tear when that happens.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I have a Facebook account that I signed up with bogus information to check something out once, but I don't remember which email I used to sign up or my password. However, I do happen to have a brother in college who extensively uses Facebook to connect to his campus' "scene." He is not one of those [mean adjective] people who plays stupid Facebook games and spams everyone with them. I think he'll enjoy knowing about this, and I know many of his college friends despise the annoying Facebook games. So, as a result of their attack on this developer who is breaking no laws, I am reading this /. post and my word of this wondrous script will be heard directly, and indirectly, but many Facebook users. Congratulations Facebook, you just shot yourself in the foot to spite your face (that's how it goes right?).
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
having lite set as default, and having the switcher link for those times when the feature is not yet ready in lite, helps greatly.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Let us have this discussion in facebook.. why waste slashdot resource for this ;-)
My supervisor at work just asked me the other day if I play Farmville.
So, what's the name of that site, mate? Anonymouscowardnumbersixpointeightthreebillion-giveortake.com? Sorry, Captian Luddite, but you're confusing the medium with the content. I'm 50 years old and have prodigiously developed abilities with Google Fu. After over a year of badgering to join Facebook—which I countered with arguments similar to yours, such as:
—I finally relented. Since doing so about a year ago, I've reconnected with a ton of old friends I couldn't find any other way.
As a shining example, two of us had an idea to start an ACTUAL website to gather material on musicians & bands we knew from our area, and from days and decades gone by. Despite sending tons of emails, and making tons of phone calls pleading for friends to get on board with the idea, nobody wanted to go to the trouble of contributing to it. I was even offering to send out pre-paid mailers for them to send me stuff to scan and audio/video material to digitize. It was just too much trouble for them
So, my friend and I started a Facebook group hoping to create a historic record of bands, clubs, & musicians from the Central Pennsylvania area, and in less than 2 months 360+ old friends and acquaintances have found each other again, to share hundreds of photos and stories, and to get back together to jam, or to go see each others' current bands.
I could also regale you with tales of smaller BBQs, ballgames, golf outings and beer bashes organized and thrown, of old loves rekindled, of new jobs found, of dogs and cats saved from being euthanized, of rare car parts bought & sold, of bands booking money-making tours in markets they would have otherwise never reached, of small group renunion cruises and vacations taken, and many more.
But apparently, you've explored it all enough to know that Facebook, MySpace and other SocNet sites are just for the pathetic, or the tech—challenged, or the kids...so good luck, and have fun with your decision to dismiss them out—of—hand. In the meantime, there are a whole shtload of us who are having tones of fun, both online and in meatspace, precisely because of them.
My Human Gets Me Blues.
...every other country than the US, they will accomplish what, exactly?
Any attempts to enforce EULAs would be laughed out of court in the rest of the world. Consumer rights authorities in the EU are currently investigating whether it even is legal to present EULAs to consumers since there's currently a court case pending in Finland where someone was blocked from using a free service because they had filled out bogus info about themselves and the EULA "obliged" users to disclose real info.
Ps. It would be nice if someone (a Finn?) has more info about that case, I can't come up with search terms that don't result in too many irrelevant hits and I just cannot remember the foreign names well enough.
um, there is a continent populated entirely by children?
The link in the Slashdot article links to a blog which links to a Facebook page which links to an ad-heavy web site and a Twitter log. Nowhere is the actual "legal threat" defined.
If the legal threat is real, post it to Chilling Effects.
.. to never ever using Facebook. Hurray! :-)
Insert
Does this script give you anything that lite.facebook.com doesn't already?
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.
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.
Wrong organization though, this sounds more like a case for the EFF. http://www.eff.org/
Facebook makes it easy to block applications - when a Farmville/Mafia wars post appears in your intray you just say "block this application" and you'll never see it again.
No sig today...
I see no details in the article. Looking at the developer's site, it seems their actions are:
- Shutting down the facebook profile associated with the script. This is poor behaviour, but entirely within their rights: it's their web site, if they don't want to support stuff like this it is their choice to do so.
- Threaten to take legal action to seize control of a domain called "facebookplus.org", which the author claims is entirely unrelated to him.
So, what's the big fuss about? The former is annoying, but hardly "threatening to close him down"; the second appears to be a case of mistaken identity which will go away if he ignores it. Or is there some other threat I haven't seen?
Lots of people here are totally missing the point.
Facebook isn't trying to stop people from writing scripts that modify the content of the page (get rid of spam), and if it were to go to court, this would not be the subject of the court case. The actual complaint is a trademark violation one for using the term "Facebook", and later, "FB". It also seems their lawyers are unable to do a whois search because they are also demanding he turns over a domain to them that he doesn't actually own.
However, the "cease and desist" (from the scant information that's actually avaialble if you go to the author's web page) is solely about trademark issues. Nothing about what the script actually does. This may or may not be heavy handed, I don't know - but what I can tell is that it has nothing at all to do with what the script does, merely what it was called.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
problem is, if you ban me from blocking unwanted content then I'll hold you responsible for the content you'll deliver to me. If you don't want the responsibility of the stuff your servers delivers to me, then no free lunch for you. You can't possibly force an agreement onto me forcing me to watch ads. Immagine how cars windshield will be if something like that would be possible.
You've put your content open and for free on the internet, if you want people to pay for it you build yourself a paywall (this also applies for you news agencies that like the traffic from google and then complain that to get the traffic your content had to be available for everyone on the web) - if you want an agreement that states that I can't block ads, fine, I'll sign it IF it states that you're responsible for any virus, malware, crash and nasty stuff that flash and javascript does these days.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah and I'm not interested in any of that or your gang/clique mentality. If someone really cares, they can take the tiny effort to type my name into Google and click on the first web site that appears (your suggestion that the domain name is modeled after a typical Facebook user name is proof of how much your brain has been warped). It's far easier to do that then to sign up for one of those sites, receive their constant spam and have to wade through page after blinking text, animated skull background page, scouring all of the "name9072", "name23897", "name893" accounts for the right person, all while fighting off the STD infected, sexual predator denizens, avoiding lawsuits for blocking ads and having their personal information sold for life because they can't ever delete their account.
Chances are, if someone is in my past, there is a damned good reason for it. I don't just lose contact with people that I care about like you apparently do.
Sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are nothing more than gossip and popularity contests. I left all of that behind at school years ago. Nobody cares what you ate for breakfast. Nobody cares that you saw some guy with a broken tail light on your way home. Nobody cares that your toilet got clogged because you took an extra large dump after eating 5lbs of beans.
Then we talked about other Facebook games, games for the Wii and how his dog ate the sensor bar, talked about MMOs a bit (He'd never played one, didn't really "get" them, eh, whatever) and then HIS boss came in the room and we talked about work stuff because lunch was drawing to a close.
This is interesting! Do you have a Twitter feed I can subscribe to?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Never heard of this until now. *Definitely* looking into it.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
I'd never had known about this script if Facebook had left well enough alone. I'm installing the script now, and encourage everyone else to do the same. I do know how to block FB apps, but am still annoyed by the occasional status update or event invite that includes stuff I don't wanna see. Yippee Skippee! (Don't you just love the Streisand Effect?)
Wow, so meeting people and having a good time you consider a "gang/clique" mentality? That's quite a strange perspective you've developed there from down in your mothers basement.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
No I just ramble wherever I happen to be at the moment.
I don't get why they care if THEY themselves offer so many ways to avoid all that crap.
I think your upper-case letters there pretty much answer the question. It's all about control. Facebook has become in fact what AOL and Prodigy and Delphi all imagined they'd be: the walled garden where their users stayed most of the time, only venturing from the home base out into the wide Internet to bring stuff back "home".
The "lite" offering is good from Facebook's point of view because it keeps in users who might stray otherwise. But a third-party script which messes around inside the garden without their consent or control -- that's a problem.
Maybe its time we start pushing distributed social networking.
Think "HelloWorld" from years ago, but more modern. HelloWorld was great, just ahead of its time.
http://www.cooperatingsystems.com/index.htm
Try hanging out with adults then.
Last March, 54% of Facebook users were 26 or older (with 30% being 35 or older). I'm friends with my next door neighbor; she and her husband are retirees.
I've never had, nor will I ever have a Facebook or Myspace account. I'm not into teen events and gossip so I just don't see the point.
I bet you don't own a TV, either.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I used to run with a real gang. We used Face-Mash. the hot social networking system built around drugs, guns, and alcohol. It brought us all together to enjoy our common bond - beating people close to death, robbing, stealing, etc.
So yeah, I can see how it could be compared to Facebook.
It will be much harder if you realize that the ads are not served by the content creators, but by thirth party servers (like google and yahoo).
You can fix that, but don't forget that advertisers do some real strange Stuff you really do not want to integegrate that in your reputable website.
As long as adblockers stay under a certain threshold you do not want to spend the time to block them, you need enhoug time filtering out the ads that get really annoying (popovers YOUR content, sounds, high cpu usage flash content, NSFW stuff).
facebook could fight content filters, but might loose that technological battle.
and hey, Fluff Busting Purity only got a letter, i don't see anything beyond that at this moment.
Ever stop to think maybe he likes it that way?
No one is questioning whether or not he should or shouldn't be on Facebook. It's not for some people. Not everything is (for example, while I use Facebook, I just dont' see as much point to Twitter and have never sent a tweet in my life - doesn't mean I degrade those who do use it though).
The primary concern was over his accusation that if you're on Facebook you should start hanging out with adults - the implication being that adults don't use Facebook. That's absolutely off-base and inaccurate. I'm 28, have good job, and own my own home. I have a Facebook account. All of my friends have Facebook accounts. Virtually every single person I went to school with has a Facebook account. Many of their parents have a Facebook account. Nearly everyone at work has a Facebook account. The 55 year old millionaire that in charge where I work? Facebook account.
Whether or not you identify with it or not, labeling it as something only children or teens mess with is inaccurate. There's either a problem with your data or your definitions. In reality, rather than saying "Start hanging out with adults", he would been more accurate in saying "I don't like Facebook and here's why . . .", in which case I think the world owes him a resounding "WE DON'T CARE!!!!".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
And facebook become unusable and utter crap.
You're assuming this has not already happened.
You would be wrong.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert