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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
Wrong organization though, this sounds more like a case for the EFF. http://www.eff.org/