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Facebook Suspends Personal Data-Sharing Feature
Suki I writes "Facebook has 'temporarily disabled' a controversial feature that allowed developers to access the home address and mobile numbers of users. The social network suspended the feature, introduced on Friday, after only three days. The decision follows feedback from users that the sharing-of-data process wasn't clearly explained and criticism from security firms that the feature was ripe for abuse."
Tell users they can earn stuff to use on FarmVille, and people won't care so much anymore.
As an applications developer, lacking this feature means that I cannot increase my budget to hire more programmers and produce a better product. Without the personal information I have nothing to sell to advertisers, and must rely on much lower advertisement rates and donations from users.
Users will suffer from lower-quality apps, and I'm sad that Facebook has taken this step. In a world of openness, this is a huge step backwards.
I don't want to go back to a "pay to play" internet. Please lobby FB to reenable these features if you also believe in keeping the internet free.
3 days was enough for most of the big apps to collect most of the data from the nearly entire userbase.
Consider again Facebook's recent proposal that they become the new unified messaging service. Every email, text and IM goes through them.
And consider again how many times Facebook opens up private data and hands it out.
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I, for one, am shocked, shocked! that Facebook of all companies has introduced something so invasive!
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that with Facebook and other so called free stuff that they are the product that is being sold.
Another attempt by Facebook to undermine its users' privacy? I'm shocked!
Facebook introduces some hugely draconian abuse of privacy, then 'backs off' - lather, rinse, repeat. And every time this happens, their users, and the public-at-large, get more and more immune to the controversy, and more and more immune to the abuse. That's why Facebook, and Google, and your-favourite-evil-giant-company, and your-country's-government, do this kind of thing.
Sadly, as a society, we keep falling for it, over and over again.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If there was a $5/month social network that had no ads and guaranteed privacy, I'd consider joining it.
If there was an open-sourced not-for-profit social network that had no ads and worked to ensure privacy, I'd consider joining that, and donating to it.
Otherwise, you're at the vendor's mercy. And like they say, there's a zucker born every minute.
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Seems like this is how Facebook continues to do it. Expose the users without telling them that they're going to do it, wait for the backlash. If there's enough, backpedal on the decision. But only after giving the parties interested in the data plenty of time to mine a ton of it, making the reversal pretty much pointless.
Well played, Facebook. Yet another example of why you don't post anything on the Internet that you don't want known publicly.
"I give you private information on corporations for free and I'm a villain. Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he's 'Man of the Year.'" Julian Assange