Slashdot Mirror
Google Asks Users To Complain Against Facebook
dkd903 writes "A kind of war has been going on recently between Facebook and Google over a contact export issue. First, Google blocked Facebook access to the Gmail contacts API. To this, Facebook responded back with a new method to get Gmail contacts of a user (the download contacts option). And now Google has slapped back again at Facebook and asks users indirectly to file a data protectionism complaint against Facebook. When a Facebook user clicks on the Download Your Contacts button on the 'Facebook import contact via Gmail' page, the user is then redirected to a new page on Google's server, which looks something like this..." Can I just say that watching this is absolutely hysterical?
yeah zuckerberg. suck it up. you rode on the web culture getting to where you are. you cannot just go protectionist on us and become a control freak. share data, as others share data with you.
Read radical news here
Just registered a complaint. This is the right thing to do. People and corporations must be made aware that they have no right to hang on to user's personal data without giving them the choice to export it in an easy and convenient way.
Yes you may, but I don't know what you are talking about.
Can I just say that watching the founder of slashdot attempt to type a typo- and misspelling-free sentence is absolutely hysterical?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
/me reaches for the popcorn
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
These are the kinds of epic hypocritical arguments that rend holes in the space-time fabric. It feels like my head is going to explode.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I don't need Google to tell me to not like Facebook.
...that since I don't have a Facebook account, it's less hysterical to me, and more like watching retarded monkeys fling feces at each other, but miss (because they're retarded) so nothing actually interesting ever happens.
I gotta admit I don't get the whole Facebook thing. It seems like just another in the long string of hot social thing of the moment that's going to be supplanted by the next hot social thing of the moment in 3...2...1...
I highly doubt Google returns a Internal Server Error:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@digitizor.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at digitizor.com Port 80
....then everyone gets all of your private information...and your friends' private information....and their friends' private information
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
I loved how I was able to auto-add friends based on my Gmail contacts. It saved me so much time searching and adding manually. I still love how the picture from Facebook is integrated into my contacts automatically on my phone. I'm sure there are other examples I'm overlooking as well. The bottom line is, the data in my contacts in mine. The data on my Facebook site is mine. I'm accepting the risk by sharing the credentials of either site with the other. Take your turf war elsewhere guys and let me have my integration.
yeah zuckerberg. suck it up. you rode on the web culture getting to where you are. you cannot just go protectionist on us and become a control freak. share data, as others share data with you.
Google told me to complain to Facebook so I did. Then all my friends asked me why I was posting images of child porn on my Facebook wall. So I went back to Google and complained about that and now a Google van slowly circles my house twenty four hours everyday. I went on Google maps to look at my house but there's just an image of a smoldering crater and a Jolly Roger. I logged back on to Facebook and Zuckerberg had killed my farmer and was raping my livestock as the fields burned.
I'm scared. I don't think I'll get in the middle of this kinda stuff next time. You can have all my data locked up, I just want my Farmville to be okay! Why, piggy, why!? I loveded you, I loveded you piggy!
My work here is dung.
Google must be concerned because FB is becoming so big that it looks like Internet 2.0 itself. I bet search volume on FB is getting close to Google.com, and this is not even core business for FB. I hate FB as much as anyone else, but Larry or Sergey should take all their money and buy FB if they don't want to become "that other Internet company".
839*929
That warning page makes me want to move to Japan and marry Google.
So has anybody started a Facebook group yet?
Seems like they should stop all of this foreplay and just get a room already.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
His what?
Dark Reflection
For FREE. And for those who are going to import GContacts to FB just to post a complaint, you can do it here http://www.google.com/mail/help/contacts_export_confirm.html
I doubt it will as funny 'Taco, when Google decide to pull the same stunt with Slashdot. We're witnessing a pivot event in that companies history and culture.
This is the first time Google has ever actually attempted to wield power. What happens if they find they like it?
May the Maths Be with you!
Google: "after all, you should have control over your data."*
Me: "Yes, Eric, irreversibly and irretrievably delete all of my data."
Google: "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
* http://www.google.com/mail/help/contacts_export_confirm.html
Puts too much control in the user's hands. Better to drive a van around town "accidentally" collecting your emails and passwords over the course of three years.
I thought Google couldn't make any more waves since Mr. Rasmussen left?
I can certainly appreciate Google's stance on the subject. I've been saying for years its reprehensible how Facebook acts as a one way silo for personal information. They've gotten a bit better about it but only after getting raked over the preverbal coals for months and months. Frankly I don't trust Facebook as far as I can throw them which at their current size is close to nothing. Facebook has demonstrated time and time again that their focus is not on protecting users and providing value to the web. In fact quite the opposite, to move towards a AOLy version of the web where Facebook is the web. They're only as "open" as much as it benefits them, ie reduced PR exposure or added page views or users. However, this comparison is not an apples to apples. It is my understanding (and I could be wrong or things could have changed as they do on almost a daily basis at Facebook) that when you "import" friends from Google (or any other service) that Facebook is simply providing a matching service and only adding friends if they exist on Facebook. They are not acting as a contact list provider in the sense that I can not import my dogs website nor change my friends phone number if I like to use his home number instead of his cell number for his main number etc. Although it could be agreed that with all your friends on Facebook they are by default playing the roll of contact list and are not being fairly bi-directional. Facebook wants you messaging your friends within the confines of the system (more page views, more lock in, more details they can scrape about you) and is the main reason why they don't want you exporting your contacts.
This is like watching two rich kids fight, neither has experience in kicking ass the old fashioned way, they both want to buy the solution - I say bring on the lawyers, they need the money
Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
... so I followed the link in the article and checked the Register Complaint box and hit "Go"
... now back to the bit mines.
N/T
Am I the only one that doesn't see why this is such a huge deal? Facebook offers a convenient way to import a person's contact list into their site. They do not offer any convenient way to extract contact information out of their site. They have never offered a convenient way to export data from their site in their near 7 years of existence, and I've never heard big complaints about it. Solution: don't treat Facebook as your single source of a contact list. That's what other programs are for.
I understand there are privacy issues and whatnot, but that's not what this article is about. This article is complaining that a service allows you to import data but not export it. It's not like if I use Facebook's utility to import my gmail contact list that it is suddenly gone from gmail and never accessible again -- it's still sitting there for export into some other service.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
QQ-360 Battle Escalates into War.
Always fun to watch.
Facebook knows a lot more than you think, and they know a lot more about you than Google.
The stuff Google knows about is things on aggregate. They don't and can't "read your emails". The stuff Facebook knows is based on social networks, and very intimate.
Facebook knows what religion you are affiliated with, what part you vote for, what area of the city you live in, where you like to shop, where you work, etc. It knows your music preferences, movie preferences, and if you are likely to be a racist. And it knows all this stuff **without you inputting any of it**, simply because of the friends you keep and what **they** input, and their friends, etc etc.
And if you think Facebook *DOESN'T* know about this, you should see what their actual advertisement purchase page looks like, and the groups of people you can target - because most of the things I inputted above are specifically targettable for ads ("ie "Only show this ad to Christians living in Chicago"). Even Google does not have this creep-out factor.
How about the fact Google doesn't stop you at all? You can still click to go ahead with the gmail export. Google is trying to make all the non-Slashdot-Freedom-Fans aware that while Google lets you export your data freely, Facebook doesn't offer the same benefi.ts
Google isn't limiting Facebook's access, Google is warning users that they're giving away their contact information. That's hardly "limiting the rights of its users" or "holding data hostage".
This is Google's API. You don't have a right unless Google gives it to you. Facebook isn't allowed to easily leach off of GMail users contactlists, boohoo. At most it will give the judge a laugh before he throws it out.
Besides, the Slashdot Freedom Fans don't give their data to Google in the first place. They also drag any "friend" who does share his contact list with Facebook out on the street and shoot them. I'd defend that as a mercy killing.
This sig is intentionally left blank
(Now, if you could just bring back the "page previews" that you could select under "more search tools" that has been absent for a day or two now, I'd be a lot happier.)
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
apparently you didnt read the news that came up a few days ago. since a long while facebook has been importing gmail contacts of people, and google has been letting it. when google wanted to do the same, facebook refused. then when google took off that api that facebook used for importing contacts, facebook found another roundabout way to do it. now they are taking the gmail username/passwords from their users, and logging into their gmail accounts to import contacts. and google started complaining to users about it. the morons that are posing as users who are idiot enough to give a service a critical user/pass that allows access to all other services a major provider offers.
thats the situation. so, the fuckers here are the facebook.
Read radical news here
(Firefox, sadly not Chrome (yet?)).
AdBlock on Chrome? Not gonna happen man. Think about it - where does the provider of Chrome get most of its revenue from?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Is that a joke? There are a bunch of ad blockers for Chrome. My favorite is AdThwart. But the regular AdBlock works well also. They're at least as good, if not better, than the ad blockers available for Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror.
Maybe not
but Larry or Sergey should take all their money and buy FB if they don't want to become "that other Internet company".
...or, they could buy Diaspora*, GNU Social, and the like, then throw ressource and developpers at it (join the efforts of buzz ?) and try to develop a nice *decentralised* and *federated* social network system.
Then patiently wait (while still polishing the quality of the result) until the next usual FB privacy-blunder. Serve the now million-sized complain to FB, and publicly complain about how then don't do anything about it.
Publicy announce "Google DiaSocialZZ" (or whatever) and let the thing roll.
Okay, maybe Google has had a recent row of flops in its stint in the social world (Wave closed, Buzz un popular).
On the other hand they also have had excellent success when picking up the correct startup (Android, Docs, etc.).
So they might have success opposing FB, or at least bringing standards into the social realm (FB got already forced into standard regarding their chat system and an XMPP interface)
And given the giant that FB has become, Google probably is the only one with the necessary ressources to succeed.
PS:
Along the way, they could buy Zynga, too. For Google social, Android (phones, TV) and Chrome OS ports of games.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Cause there can only be one.