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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
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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
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.