'Dating' Site Imports 250k Facebook Profiles

mark72005 sends this snippet from Wired: "How does a unknown dating site, with the absurd intention of destroying Facebook, launch with 250,000 member profiles on the first day? Simple. You scrape data from Facebook. At least, that's the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched Lovely-Faces.com this week, with profiles — names, locations and photos — scraped from publicly accessible Facebook pages. The site categorizes these unwitting volunteers into personality types, using a facial recognition algorithm, so you can search for someone in your general area who is 'easy going,' 'smug' or 'sly.' ... [The creators] say they will take down a user’s profile if a person asks, and the site doesn’t have any indication they are actually trying to make any money. Instead, it’s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths. Moreover, it’s a bit funny hearing Facebook complain about scraping of personal data that is quasi-public."

Comments

More Please....

[tha_mink]

Sounds like a great idea, just waiting for the lawyers to get involved to make it official.

Re:More Please....

[Locke2005]

Gee, what are the chances that the Facebook Terms of Service explicitly forbids scraping all the profile data and using it on another website? These two guys are probably going to have their Facebook accounts canceled! Other than that, I'm not sure what recourse Facebook has.

Re:More Please....

[v1]

>Other than that, I'm not sure what recourse Facebook has.

If they agreed to those TOS and then violated them, possibly quite a lot.

Not that I'm even slightly a fan of 88 page long TOS "by clicking here I agree I've read and accept all of the above" agreements, they are often enforceable.

Re:More Please....

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Uh...if you breach the terms of service, then you can no longer use the service. Wow, no facebook?? sounds AWFUL

Re:More Please....

[Katsury]

Not that I'm even slightly a fan of 88 page long TOS "by clicking here I agree I've read and accept all of the above" agreements, they are often enforceable.

I have to wonder how much their lawyers get paid to take apart an 88 page book and find loopholes/defenses in it to use against the other party.

Re:More Please....

[icebraining]

It possibly depends on whether they had to accept it to view the profiles or not. I can view this guy's name, photo, some fiends and 'likes' without having to explicitly agree to any ToS.

Re:More Please....

[v1]

agreeing to TOS forms a contract. it tens to be disputable, but you're agreeing to something in exchange for using the service.

In such a contract, if you then receive the benefit of their service, and they do not in exchange receive the benefit of your honoring the terms, that's grounds for damages. It doesn't merely entitle them to dump you, they can sue for breach of contract and damages. If your dishonoring of the terms causes provable harm, (for example but not limited to monetary or reputation/brand) the damages can be quite high.

Re:More Please....

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Assuming they're members of FB in the first place -- since the profiles are publicly available.

Re:More Please....

[Seumas]

I'm going to go rob your house. But don't worry, it's just a prank to teach you about alarm systems.

Re:More Please....

[nschubach]

Is it really stealing if you put all your stuff out in the street for others to browse through?

Re:More Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a great idea, just waiting for the lawyers to get involved to make it official.

Yup with things like this in their site popping up they are pretty much fucked. Typo is theirs.

Errore :
1146: Table 'facefacebknew.searched_keys' doesn't exist

MGC: Many sites have done this before including Facebook its nothing new, yet Facebook has historically won it's fights in courts in this type of regard - when it wants to.

Re:More Please....

[Merk42]

The 2005 Discovery Channel show It Takes a Thief?

Re:More Please....

[Arccot]

It possibly depends on whether they had to accept it to view the profiles or not. I can view this guy's name, photo, some fiends and 'likes' without having to explicitly agree to any ToS.

That's a bit different, though. You haven't agreed to the TOS, and as such Facebook hasn't agreed to provide you a license to copy the photo. I would think its either a copyright violation if they never agreed to the TOS, or a contract violation if they did.

Re:More Please....

[Em Adespoton]

...such as "This is being used as satire" -- protected speech, use of IP, and all that.

Now, people in countries that have stricter personal information laws than the US might be able to sue both organizations (FB for leaking PII and these other guys for publishing without notification).

Re:More Please....

[Galestar]

Who's to say that these people agreed to their TOS?

Re:More Please....

[icebraining]

But Facebook doesn't own the copyrights of the photo.

It's definitively a copyright violation, but Facebook can't sue for that, only the copyright owner (the photographer, usually, unless it's a work for hire).

Re:More Please....

[aethogamous]

I've always wondered... can you sue someone for the harm done to your reputation that was caused by the public's reaction to your suing them in the first place?

Re:More Please....

[vlueboy]

FB turned 7 years old yesterday (+/- 1 day). It's cringe-worthy that up till year 6 FB still had a pivacy "bug" where such-like protected pages could be farmed to get all their friends' names by just refreshing. One the plus side, it really helped when the person didn't show their picture and had an ambiguous name.

Re:More Please....

[v1]

I don't think any legal systems currently support recursion. Maybe in an update or two.

Re:More Please....

[funfail]

...and if they don't really "take" it but take a "copy" of it?

Maybe it is a dumb question..

[gblackwo]

Why not just make it a facebook app? Is there any rule that you have to use facebook's APIs to gather data for your app?

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[nlawalker]

itâ(TM)s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths

Making it a Facebook app would have largely defeated the point. The impact is made greater by removing the data from the context of Facebook entirely and putting it up somewhere else in another context.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[the_one_wesp]

Honestly, I don't know why they didn't. I half expected the article to say that some game that 95% of my friends have been playing for 2 years was actually a front for gathering data for this dating site.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[memnock]

I know /. has more than 250,000 accounts, but wouldn't it be great if they could do a Mashup of the Facebook accounts and random /.ers? Commander Sarah Palin Taco.

Of course, /. might lose some traffic if some of their members actually start getting out of the basement and dating.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[Stregano]

One step at a time here. I am working on the basement part.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[Culture20]

I know /. has more than 250,000 accounts, but wouldn't it be great if they could do a Mashup of the Facebook accounts and random /.ers? Commander Sarah Palin Taco.

Of course, /. might lose some traffic if some of their members actually start getting out of the basement and dating.

If Commander Taco was really Sarah Palin, I'd date her, except she's married.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[gnapster]

I tried that, once. Got a nosebleed.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[Cwix]

Try little balls of toilet paper stuck up your nose, and bring gum. They both help with the altitude difference.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[SomeJoel]

If Commander Taco was really Sarah Palin, I'd date her, except she's married.

Let's go over your fantasy:

(a) Commander Taco is really Sarah Palin. <-- Check!
(b) Taco/Palin would date you. <-- Check!
(c) You would date a married woman. <-- No Way!

That's an interesting place to inject reality...

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[gnapster]

Aha. I will have to give that a shot next time. Need to find the stairs again, though. It has been quite some time since my last attempt.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[Cwix]

Wow, you don't know where the stairs are? How does your mom deliver Doritos, Mountain Dew, and pizza?

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[gnapster]

She uses the dumbwaiter, but I haven't been able to fit in there for 35 years.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[Cwix]

Send a note up the dumbwaiter, perhaps they can start an excavation to get down the stairs. :)

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[gnapster]

Don't have anything to write with! :/ I sent an email, though. She usually checks it within a week.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[pilkch]

Fire exclamation mark. Fire exclamation mark. Fire exclamation mark. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Great story!

[Anonymous Coward]

lovely-faces.com no longer exists. Brillant!

Re:Great story!

[Anonymous Coward]

It exists, but it's getting DDoSed by curious Slashdotters.

Re:Great story!

[gnapster]

I wonder how often the slashdot effect is caused, not by truly overwhelmed servers, but by hosting services automatically cutting off service because the site went over its bandwidth allocation.

Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

But if someones wife happens along and sees their spouse on a new dating site there's gonna be hell to pay for this particular " joke"

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Korin43]

If your wife trusts a random website over you, then your relationship has more serious problems than this.

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Phaedrus420]

Not to mention the fact that wife is going to need to explain what she was doing on new dating site in the first place. Of course, maybe it will all be for the better, like that song about liking piña colada.

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[6ULDV8]

Or, "if your wife is cruising date sites and sees you, maybe you should take the hint that she's already done with you."

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[gnapster]

If my wife gets on my case, I'll just ask her why she is on the site, too!

Actually, my wife's profile info is more likely than mine to show up on such a site, because of our respective privacy settings.

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[ptbarnett]

My wife would be amused if she found that, because the only public picture on my Facebook profile includes BOTH of us.

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

They need only sweep those people based on the "single" setting on their profiles. I think its a great idea as a single....WOW!

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite to the contrary! If she searches for a partner and all she finds is your profile, she probably has the partner she was looking for already.

That's a lot of photos

[TaoPhoenix]

Aren't photos copyrighted? So wouldn't this be a trillion dollar copyright violation?
Oh wait, we learned that copyright vio gets cheaper in bulk.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[Anonymous Coward]

If its all from public profiles why not just link to the profile pictures? After all why host them yourself when FB will do it for you.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[recoiledsnake]

Because they will kill the new site's referrer requests ASAP.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[EdIII]

Oh wait, we learned that copyright vio gets cheaper in bulk.

Depends on your level of citizenship. The bottom rung of citizenship is actually the opposite since the cost of infringement is a geometric progression with the cr being the size of largest penis on the music labels payroll. Which does explain why some NBA members have titles like "director of creative stuff".

Of course the premium level of citizenship, or the C-Corp level, gets fantastic discounts on such violations and in some cases gets a saving throw based on the number of Senators under their influence and can have zero liability in most cases.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[Caerdwyn]

Aren't photos copyrighted?

Not necessarily.

Incorrect. All works which are copyrightable, ARE copyrighted the moment they are created, including photography. No exceptions. You do not need to register or claim copyright in any way; it is yours exclusively by default. You hold all rights unless you have explicitly granted those rights to others. You need do nothing to reserve all rights to yourself. Public display does not grant public license. (It never ceases to amaze me that people still claim "you put it on the Internet so it's public domain"... those people either also probably still believe the Earth is flat or are shooting off their mouths to try to justify illegal and unethical behavior.)

That being said, when you upload info or a photo to Facebook, you are granting Facebook many rights (it's part of the terms of service). Facebook doesn't outright own your photos, but you have granted them a perpetual nonexclusive license to use those photos.

However, that doesn't allow sites not affiliated with Facebook to use the photos on their own site (though deep linking kinda-sorta skirts that). You haven't given Facebook the right to sublicense your copyrighted materials to unaffiliated third parties. Additionally, if a third-party site implies that the "scraped" users are in any way voluntarily endorsing or participating in the third-party site, or are attaching false statements to the taken profiles (i.e. "I'm looking for a date"), that's a textbook case of fraud as defined by the law (a false statement of a material fact, knowledge on the part of the fraudster that the statement is untrue, intent on the part of the fraudster to deceive the alleged victim, justifiable reliance by the defrauded person on the statement, and injury to the alleged defrauded person as a result. Definition paraphrased from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud)

All that being said, it's funny as hell that Facebook, the number one mass purveyor of exploitative privacy-compromises, is suddenly up in arms about getting as good as it gives. Karma's a bitch, ain't it, Zucky ol' bean?

Re:That's a lot of photos

[Belial6]

Not true. In the US, all photos taken are automatically under copyright. It has been well established that there is no need for a work to be involved in a commercial venture to be under copyright. By the letter, copyright is unworkable though. Those family photos you put on facebook are being used in a commercial venture. Facebook uses them as media to draw viewers of advertisements. The people in most of those photos did not sign a model's release. Thus, the use of those photos would technically be an IP violation. Of course regular people don't get protection under copyright, so nothing will be done.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[HeckRuler]

RANDOM ENCOUNTER!
You face a -dead hooker in the trunk
Roll a felony saving throw with a -3 media frenzy penalty

Re:That's a lot of photos

[SimonTheSoundMan]

So, if these people get sued, perhaps Google and other search engines should get sued too?

Re:That's a lot of photos

[imthesponge]

Sorry, nothing can be done about this because copyright is evil and "information wants to be free!"

Re:That's a lot of photos

[TaoPhoenix]

Great reply, and perfectly along the lines I was leading into.

However Karma being a bitch is standard fare for rich types who can then afford to bend the rules of the Matrix. (Reloaded really was more clever than people gave it credit for.)

What comes around...

[vux984]

Isn't this how facebook got its initial data too? By scraping the websites of Universities for student profiles.

Re:What comes around...

[kevinNCSU]

Isn't this how facebook got its initial data too? By scraping the websites of Universities for student profiles.

No. It started by only allowing university students with specific .edu addresses to join, starting with only Harvard and then expanding to more and more colleges before they finally opened it up to High School students and then anyone. It was limited to universities because Zuckerburg's own social network was a university and they are a good target demographic, not because they had pages to pre-scrape user data from. To my knowledge no college would post such user data on a public website anyways as it'd be an extreme breach of that student's privacy.

Re:What comes around...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you're on Facebook you have accepted that you don't care about privacy. I don't really see a problem with this new web site..

Re:What comes around...

[0100010001010011]

No, this is how it started:

According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not, and "used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the 'hotter' person".

Mark Zuckerberg co-created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.
To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard's computer network, and copied the houses' private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student "facebook" (a directory with photos and basic information). Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online.

From Wiki, with sources linked on it.

/ And seriously slashdot, still no italics? WTF.

Re:What comes around...

[foobsr]

And seriously slashdot, still no italics? WTF.

Nerd.

CC.

Re:What comes around...

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

The <i> tag has been deprecated for quite a while now. Use the <em> tag instead.

Slashdot apparently felt like enforcing the switch... although the old D1 comment posting page still says that <i> is an allowed HTML tag. (Granted, I don't think they maintain the D1 pages much.)

Re:What comes around...

[Anonymous Coward]

Facemash is not the same as Thefacebook (later, Facebook), whose initial database was populated differently.

Re:What comes around...

[georgesdev]

Here you are :)

Re:What comes around...

[halcyon1234]

One of the many "newstyle" fuckups.  You need a user style to fix this (and to actually emphasis quotes):

i
{
font-style: italic !important;

}

.quote
{
font-style: italic !important;
background-color:#E1E1E1;
}

hrmmm

[sabrex15]

Already /.ed... jeeze. With 250,000 "users" they should be able to handle a small slashdotting, right?

How can I update my Lovely-Faces.com profile?

[Locke2005]

It's seems their "facial recognition algorithm" has categorized me as a "stalker" and "potential date-rapist"!

Re:How can I update my Lovely-Faces.com profile?

[LearnToSpell]

"[He] called me a 'rapist' and a 'recluse.' I'm not a recluse."

Re:How can I update my Lovely-Faces.com profile?

[uncanny]

It's seems their "facial recognition algorithm" has categorized me as a "stalker" and "potential date-rapist"!

or they were using your criminal record

Re:How can I update my Lovely-Faces.com profile?

[Anonymous Coward]

Julian, is that you?

No profit for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Start "dating" site.
2. Copy competitor's profiles.
3. ???
4. NO PROFIT FOR YOU!

Re:No profit for you!

[the_one_wesp]

3. Get Slashdotted!

Fixed that for ya :)

Thinking more...

[shia84]

Those people running the site behind the "make people think more about data" link should be made to think more about server capacity

Second link slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

google cache linky

So what..

[fysdt]

Microsoft copies Google and they copy Facebook :)

I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

This is illegal in pretty much every country on earth who has laws, it's called identity theft, making false profiles on behalf of someone is without doubt the stupidest idea I've ever heard of when trying to make a point. And on top of that state that "you can contact us if you want your profile removed". No scrubs, it should say "you can contact us if you want us to have your picture and profile on the lamest site of the century".

Re:I believe

[alen]

once in a while i get friend invites from people all over the world i've never met. i ignore them. i guess that's how they got access to people's facebook profiles.

annoying thing about gmail is that it will add people to your contact list only if you were on a receive list for a big email. one time as a joke i sent invites to everyone who i had an email address for in my gmail. most people i've never met. a lot of people accepted blindly

Re:I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

> on a receive list for a big email.

receiving list

> i sent invites to everyone

invitations

Back to NOUN SCHOOL for you!

Re:I believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to NOUN SCHOOL for you!

Ah a pedantic asshole.. Here taste your own medicine.
"NOUN SCHOOL" is not the correct way to capitalize words.

Re:I believe

[FrootLoops]

Ah a pedantic asshole.. Here taste your own medicine.

Ellipses have three dots. :)

Re:I believe

[karmac0ma]

Don't be silly.

If you RTFA, and maybe if you read the artists' statements on this work, you'll find out it's obviously meant to pull things to an extreme in order to make a point. Which is the big problem of having so much personal information centralised and controlled by a private company, as well as the very foggy status of such information -- you're crying out for seeing it on a (fake, in case you missed it) dating site, but having that information relayed to ad companies almost never elicits strong reactions such as yours.

tl;dr: it's not a dating site, it's an art project, don't create straw men.

sounds like Zucky's "FaceMash" program

[peter303]

The Social Network movie captured the original Zuckerberg hack described in the Harvard Crimson. They just did it on a larger scale.

Re:sounds like Zucky's "FaceMash" program

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is exactly what I thought.

Re:sounds like Zucky's "FaceMash" program

[Stregano]

What's wrong zucky-poo? Mad that somebody is making a FREE site using easier and more public techniques, but essentially doing the same thing you did to get rich? Don't play dirty unless you fully expect others to do it right back to you.

Re:sounds like Zucky's "FaceMash" program

[neoform]

More like Facebook itself.

Zuckerberg scraped all the photos from the Harvard directories when he first launched facebook... without consent of course.

Re:sounds like Zucky's "FaceMash" program

[HarvardAce]

More like Facebook itself.

Zuckerberg scraped all the photos from the Harvard directories when he first launched facebook... without consent of course.

You are confusing FaceMash, which did do this, with "TheFacebook" (later just "Facebook"), which did not. The two, aside from both being created by Zuckerberg and both including the word "Face" in the name, are not related. Everything that was on the site when facebook launched was provided by the actual students.

Porn star profiles

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a member of Yahoo Personals, I was always sure to report users who had photos of famous porn stars for their profiles. Then I found out that Yahoo was responsible for the fake profiles:
  http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/08/30/yahoo-class-action-lawsuit-settled/

Apparently, dating sites are still playing the same old game.

Re:Porn star profiles

[Spykk]

Be that as it may I think you should continue researching the physical attributes of famous porn stars. Just in case.

Heheh

[mewsenews]

I think someone just saw the social network and wanted to make their own facemash.com

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

[Anonymous Coward]

lovely-faces.com:

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Apache Server at lovely-faces.com Port 80

Too bad.

Unethical but totally expected

[dkleinsc]

A dating site's value is directly correlated with how many other members sign up. Ergo a new competitor trying to get into the big-picture marketplace either needs to create fictional people to attract members, or they need to pull in people who didn't intend to sign up to get things going.

Mark Zuckerberg, for all his many faults, started the right way - serve a tiny market that generally is looking for other people in that market.

Re:Unethical but totally expected

[Nemyst]

You're missing the point - the creators are doing this as a prank. They intended it to feel weird because they think people need to realize how much information they're giving away to the entire world on Facebook and other public pages.

Re:Unethical but totally expected

[neoform]

Mark Zuckerberg, for all his many faults, started the right way...

.... by taking the photos of every student at Harvard (without permission or consent) and adding them to facebook.

Re:Unethical but totally expected

[kevinmenzel]

i know this has been corrected before, but you are thinking of facemash, not thefacebook.

Re:Unethical but totally expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure this is the fourth post of yours accusing Zuckerberg of taking photos for Facebook without permission. As you have been corrected in all the other posts, he did not do this with Facebook at all, but instead did this with "FaceMash."

Re:Unethical but totally expected

[BitZtream]

Mark Zuckerberg, for all his many faults, started the right way

So since you clearly have no clue how facebook started other than their marketing speech ...

You do realize Zuckerberg did the exact same thing when starting Facebook right?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator-survives-ad-board-the/

He did nothing right except steal from others, he showed exactly how to be perfectly unethical and have the unwashed masses thing you're great WHILE you rape.

Site Down

[hduff]

So, DTF?

Re:Site Down

[Anonymous Coward]

DHS strikes again!

Re:Site Down

[BadPirate]

We had 20,000 hits in the first 2 hours. Ahem... 20 million.

Re:Site Down

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO I believe they were infringing on Facebooks content and ICE took their domain down.

even in thier database

[will_die]

Error message on the site that it could not access the table 'facefacebknew.searched_keys'

Re:even in thier database

[drpimp]

They seem to have deleted a table (or someone did it for them???)

Re:even in thier database

[_0xd0ad]

Yikes, that would be terrible... they'd have to re-scrape all that publicly available data all over again...

(Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time...)

Lovely What?

[Suffering Bastard]

At first I thought the summary said "Lovely-Feces.com" and I got nervous wondering if I remembered to lock down my Poo Pix Daily Journal. I don't think you wanna scrape that.

Re:Lovely What?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Poo Pix Daily Journal?

awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

awesome

It's the ultimate electronic hookup

[buckeyeguy]

The quarter-million fake accounts here can reply to the presumably equal number of fakes on match.com. Pardon me while I go register DNS names for virtual wedding sites; they're sure to be a hit!

Date-rapist? So what?

[Cajun Hell]

It's seems their "facial recognition algorithm" has categorized me as a "stalker" and "potential date-rapist"!

Oh, just date rapist, not a forcible rapist? Don't worry, half the chicks out there (the ones who vote Republican) won't see that as red flag.

Search

[bhebing]

Funny that. If you go their homepage, the statistics search has an error, which reads: Last keywords searched: Errore : 1146: Table 'facefacebknew.searched_keys' doesn't exist They're not even trying!

Big minimum damages

[Animats]

Let's see, statutory minimum $500 damages in California for commercial use of your image without permission, times number of women in California on Facebook...

Re:Big minimum damages

[diskofish]

It hardly could be considered commercial because it was done as a joke and no money is changing hands.

Re:Big minimum damages

[JTsyo]

It's not a commercial site though. They don't collect any money, so not even a not-for-profit.

Re:Big minimum damages

[Anonymous Coward]

That must be a good defense to use.

"Honest Your Honor, I only killed those four people as a joke!"

Let me know how that works out.

Lovely-Faces.com /.'d or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe little bobby tables got added in the mix.

http://xkcd.com/327/

Why would anyone want to use Lovely-faces.com anyw

[kabloom]

Why would anyone want to use Lovely-faces.com anyway? The response rate for people sending out messages to these 250,000 members has got to be zero. I'm not really interested in dating someone who doesn't respond to messages and won't talk to me, so the site's totally useless.

Re:Why would anyone want to use Lovely-faces.com a

[PhreakOfTime]

The response rate for people sending out messages to these 250,000 members has got to be zero

Not really. It doesn't take a genius to craft up some boilerplate emails to send out to people for an initial contact. An automated script could easily handle that.

And you have to keep in mind the human factor, that even with a few nibbles, someone on a dating site is more than likely going to have the mindset of 'Im sure the NEXT one will be it'... There's always a 'next one' after all. People tend to have a hard time realizing when they are being 'duped', and will usually not admit to themselves, therefore continuing their previous actions that landed them there in the first place.

More and more

[somedudeincanada]

Sites like this are going to keep coming, here is another that is doing close to the same thing. http:\\secureyourfacebook.com

great idea indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

privacy is dead once you give away all your datas! somebody needs to teach the sheep.

Why you should never pay for online dating help

[Shivetya]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9OtAvuobLwgJ:www.okcupid.com/z/yf2

This article was originally posted on Hackers News, but its a great story

Re:Why you should never pay for online dating help

[c0mpliant]

A friend of mine linked me to this article the other day. Really interesting and true from my experience as well although I will say this though. Its written by the makers of okcupid and is written to suggest you should sign up there

I can hear it now....

[bdrees]

Woman: Why in the hell are all these women calling you.
Man: Honey, it’s just cause someone hacked my face off of face book and put it on a dating website

Unethical?

[FrootLoops]

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but why exactly is this unethical? The data is publicly available and TFA's screenshot (the real site is apparently /.'d) only says "[Lovely Faces] lists real people, sincerely positing their real data and picture" which is not a lie (modulo marketing exaggeration that everyone seems to be happy glossing over) as these people posted their data to Facebook. Suppose for a moment there was no implication whatsoever that the people listed on Lovely Faces intentionally signed up. In that case, what's wrong with collecting publicly available data and putting it into one site? Is the issue entirely that people expect dating site profiles to have been created by that person, and Lovely Faces doesn't smash that expectation?

Scraping data violates Facebook's Automated Data Collection Terms, though in what way are those binding? I don't have to explicitly agree to anything to view some information, like certain profile's pictures.

I agree it is unethical to take someone's picture, point at it, and say "this person endorses this site" when they actually don't. It doesn't seem unethical to take someone's picture and put it on "the online database of pictures of people". Most people seem to be saying the scraping itself was unethical, while I disagree. I think it's just the implied endorsement.

Re:Unethical?

[chrismcb]

While I realize the general consensus at slashdot is the copyrights are bad and everything should be free (because everyone is greedy and they don't want to pay for anything). But copyrights do exists. For something like this it is illegal to copy the data from facebook, and then publish it as your own data. Just because it is public doesn't mean you can copy it. There is also the ethics of saying "we have a quarter million people looking for love in all the wrong places" when it reality it is a dozen people.

Re:Unethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unethical to disobey http://www.facebook.com/robots.txt , and the only way to get your bot exempted is through the link you gave.

What you can claim though is that Facebook is evil for locking public data behind

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

or that Facebook users are stupid for putting their public profile on a site that locks it down in this way.

Re:Unethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose for a moment there was no implication whatsoever that the people listed on Lovely Faces intentionally signed up.

This supposition greatly changes the situation; it's no longer the same question. As others have stated, this site is billing itself as a dating site. If I'm happily married, and a single friend of mine happens to see my face on this site, it would be reasonable for them to assume that I'm a cheating scumbag. This has real consequences for real people. They do not have the right to imply that I signed up for their service, and this is not a minor point.

Even with your supposition, "the data is publicly available" does not imply that they have a right to do anything they want with the data. (See any /. story that even tangentially mentions free software or the GPL.) In particular, they do not have the right to redistribute it from their site.

Re:Unethical?

[SnowHog]

It's just reason number 2,438 that I'm not on Facebook. Identity theft, stalkers, data mining advertisers, over-reaching law enforcement, annoying colleagues/classmates, etc., etc. It's amazing to me that so many voluntarily participate.

Re:Unethical?

[FrootLoops]

There is also the ethics of saying "we have a quarter million people looking for love in all the wrong places" when it reality it is a dozen people.

Certainly; as I said, false implied endorsement seems clearly unethical. Similarly lying (perhaps by implication) about the source of data seems clearly unethical. But supposing "the online database of pictures of people" clearly said that its pictures came from any and every publicly available online source, I don't see what's wrong with it scraping Facebook's data, morally. Not all publicly available sources seem to meet the same criteria, though. Suppose I went to the public library, got a recent book, scanned it, and posted it online. I'd say my library signup acts as an agreement (perhaps implicit) to respect copyright law with the library's books. I don't see any reasonable implicit agreement in the online case, since Facebook's public data is so incredibly easy to access. If I implicitly agree to something just by visiting a web page, and it doesn't warn me in any way what I'm agreeing to, I could accidentally agree to horrific things, which is just a stupid system of morality.

I have no idea what the law would say about data mining in a case like this, but morally I just don't see the problem.

Re:Unethical?

[BitZtream]

Neither is really unethethical as soon as you remove one thing from the equation.

People still think something posted on the Internet is private.

Thats the problem. This new site did exactly what we've done since the internet was created, take publicly accessible data and mash it up into something useful for them. The Internet was BUILT ON AND FOR this sort of thing to happen.

It wasn't until the general public started using the web that this became a problem. Note, I say 'the web', not 'the internet'. Its really only what people do on the web that gets them bent out of shape. People get upset because they think that they can leave things on a public network and it mysteriously stays private and secure without them even having to THINK about it.

Okay, so it is wrong of them to imply these people wanted to be part of their site, but the solution isn't to chastise them for doing so as a punishment as that really accomplishes absolutely nothing.

How about we start educating people about how retarded their facebook posts are by showing them its basically like putting a flyer up with all that shit on it in a grocery store. Educating the ignorant masses as to the fact that there is no privacy on the Internet is the proper start.

We also need to stop using the word 'privacy' in relation to the internet ESPECIALLY IN WEB BROWSERS. Stop calling it fucking private browsing for instance, there is not a thing private about it, its just a little more difficult to correlate. Not much though.

Facebook is not private no one has any right to bitch about someone making a copy, false advertising is another story.

Love the intro

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Lovely Faces. Welcome to the only dating site that lists real people, sincerely posting their real data and picture.

I'm A Tapeworm

[Anonymous Coward]

My profile picture is an electron microscope photograph of a tapeworm's "face". I like warm wet places and I like to cuddle. I sure hope I'm one of the 250,000, 'cause baby I am sooo ready to endorse.

oh great. people will think i'm a furry

[Nyder]

I have my cat's pick on my facebook pic, now i'm going to get a ton of furry peeps wanting dates.

Guess I better get Second Life up and running.

Lovely-Faces [dot] com is a marketing case study

[Stedee Steve]

The scraping of public profiles is not only done in the way the article describes. There are software programs available that will do all the scraping of Facebook automatically and search according to any number of profile details. The last product I saw that fits that description had a price tag of 2K. It's designed for marketers who'd like to target a specific audience before sending out a fitting ad or freebie of some sort.

Even the DB tables are Facebook-ish

[Anonymous Coward]

Errore: 1146: Table 'facefacebknew.searched_keys' doesn't exist

site down

[RanchNachos]

As of this comment.. it appears to be slashdotted

So...

[bythescruff]

I'm on Facebook. How do I find out if Lovely Faces has "profiled" me?

Where are English (UK) and USian (UnitedStatsian)

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that the site allows searching for 'that special someone' using fields one of which is
"nationality".

More interesting is the omission of UK and United States choices.

Could our 'highly-developed' legal systems have influenced these omissions?

One wonders ....

Re:Google

[TaoPhoenix]

Yes, this is also another corrolary of my post. We are creaking at the seams trying to grind out the implications of modern digital law. In some sense, Google could have been in big trouble. However all that needs to happen is someone carves out an exception to the rule and then it's just dandy.

Just plain smart

[hesaigo999ca]

Offer an easy way out, but make it so interesting that the person will see this as a free dating site like eHarmony and think they have free access, and not want to remove their profile...leaving yuo with an instant 250k new users...smart, very smart.