Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Blocks KDE Photo App, Deletes Users' Pics
Znarl writes with a report from Joe Brockmeier, who writes that: "KDE users have gotten a rather unpleasant surprise from Facebook: Not only is the site blocking KDE apps like Gwenview from uploading, the social media giant has also taken down photos uploaded with the KDE plugins. Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage."
I am sure the Faceborg have the best interests of the public in mind. Those nasty open source free applications can spread like wildfire, and then we are all communists.
> the social media giant has also taken down photos uploaded with the KDE plugins
So that's what it takes to have your photos successfully deleted from Facebook.
If it does, I guess we've solved the mystery of how to make sure a photo is actually removed from Facebook instead of just removed from your profile and stored away in some archive forever...
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I've never used Facebook for any pro photos or photos that demand a level of detail to appreciate them. Facebook blows for displaying photos anyway because of the sheer fact that your photos are scaled down to a disgusting quality that's not even good enough to use for print. I can understand why the do this (!!!) but it's such a shame because facebook is a wonderful delivery mechanism of information and media.
Use Picasa, it's not made by a wannabe evil, world dominating organisation.
I'm Facebook. How do I know that the API key floating in the wild - in KDE sources - is not being used to send spam?
What's Facebook?
Maybe George Hotz is a Gnome fanboi. Seems like a timely response to the announcement that he has begun employment with Facebook - just sayin' ;)
Sure enough, all of my vacation photos uploaded that way are gone gone gone.
Lots of apps were suddenly banned due to "negative user experience". Appeals are being rejected with canned replies. Facebook developers (see link, scroll down) are basically saying "you deserved it, our only fault is not telling you earlier why".
I can see blocking new uploads if, for instance, an unfamiliar app has been picked up by spammers who are using it to flood the service with bimbots or whatever.
But the next step shouldn't be to just delete everything ever uploaded by that app. The next step is to take a look at the uploaded data, say, "Oh, hey, there's a whole bunch of older uploads that look legitimate," and then take steps to block the spammers rather than the tool.
What next, deleting all accounts created by users running Chromium?
I am disappointed.
I would like some reaction from FB administration as to /why/ they banned the kipi plugin. Has anyone followed up on this?
On another note, I use Chrome and TFA's website is a mess.
--
BMO
Facebook's photo feature was never a good way to store photos. There is Picasa and a number of much better apps for that, which allow you to store the photos full size, download the originals later, etc.
For that matter, Facebook isn't a particularly good place to store anything very important.
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?pid=355340#p355340
Facebook gets to decide how and when you use their site. The best solution is to use something else if you want to access and store your files on your terms. I use Facebook, but I treat it as a secondary system for whatever feature they have. Do not rely on anything related to Facebook as your primary method to do something like store photos, IM, E-mail, etc. The files were deleted to send a message, that you have to use their implementation of a feature if you want to use it at all.
Probably the worst example of Facebook's policy abuses is the censorship. Try making a status update linking to a site critical of Facebook's policies, or about blocking ads on Facebook, link to Firefox and Ad Block Plus. See how long it takes for your status to disappear. Or if it doesn't, ask your friends if they can see it, you might find that it has been made invisible to everyone but you.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Dear Mark Suckerberg,
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. Thank you for deleting my photos that I've uploaded via KDE.
- Facebook User
Second last paragraph, last sentence. ... time spent on Facebook are the product."
"your
Which means that any app that allows you to participate on Facebook without spending time on Facebook is a threat to Facebook's business model.
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.
Slashdot politics aside - why would anyone depend on Facebook to store their photos? Sharing them, yes - but as your repository? That's not even close to its defined purpose.
#DeleteChrome
they should have not removed the old content but quarantined it, so users who request their photos back can have it.
I barely read TFS but if KDE used the same API key so that the user doesn't need to get its own, they have made a rather banal mistake.
Anyway, the problem is Facebook, Google, et al. are not at your service, they build stuff upon you. You agree to that for short term convenience? It makes sense, just don't expect anything more durable. We are shifting from closed source software to open software on closed networks, and we'll end up with the same problems.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
"NOTE: The ban-bot appears to be out of control. Apps are being banned with no warning and no email. The forum moderators are trying to get someone from Facebook to investigate."
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=93361
Why should facebook, or any other site, care what application is used to upload pictures? As long as the image is a supported format and within any size limits the site may impose, what difference does it make what application the user is using?
Did I get it right? Is that meme too old now?
Facebook did not block KDE SC or Gwenview.
It blocked kipi-plugins what is compilation of plugins maintained by digiKam project and Gwenview and few other applications use its plugins as well.
when facebook is myspace
they don't care about you, only your data
...the site that catalogs cumming on your mom's face.
Yes, because the terribly, slowly decreasing quality of the images wasn't enough of a deterrent by itself...
Hmmm, hadn't Mark Zuckerberg used KDE in The Social Network?
KDE users use Facebook for photo storage? I knew there was a reason Gnome was better!
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.
Whenever I upload a photo to Facebook I am amazed at just how far they compresses and scale down the image. I get that they need to do it because it saves a monstrous amount of storage and bandwidth, and people browsing my photos don't really care about seeing the photos in high resolution, but I'd never, ever use Facebook as a photo storage -- to lose that fidelity is just not an option.
So I guess I don't get these stories where people throw their hands up and start crying that you can't trust Facebook to store your photos. It's like going back in time and saying I don't trust a bulletin board to store reprints of my 35mm photos. Of course you don't -- that's not the storage mechanism. My photo album is. In the Facebook case, your computer (or Picassa, or MobileMe, or whatever) is your album. Facebook is just a bulletin board.
Or did I just miss a checkbox somewhere that tells Facebook to store high quality/full sized copies of my photos?
He writes: "While I use Facebook and other sites, I always keep local copies of photos or anything else that I share."
OK, human stupidity is boundless, so I'm sure there's someone out there who uploads all their photos to Facebook and then deletes the local copies... but seriously, anyone that stupid is not going to make it three-quarters of the way through that article to read Mr Brockmeier's sage advice.
I'm frankly astounded anyone would consider Facebook or any similar sites for primary storage. Hello, I wouldn't even trust Flickr. If you have important data, look after it yourself. Sure, use online as part of the solution but not the primary store.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.
"depending"?
Seriously, if you depend on Facebook for your photo storage, you deserve what you get.
I'll accept that for Joe Average online storage is the most convenient option. And granted, you always deserve what you get when relying on a third party. Nevertheless, I have slightly more faith a dedicated party like Picasa or Flickr.
And if Joe Average-that-wants-photos-stored-online cannot pick a decent service, well, then Joe Average-with-long-name doesn't get decent service.
What's Facebook?
Fecesbook with lipstick and no perfume (it stinks).
A walled swamp for 'tards.
MOD PARENT +1,PROPHETIC
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.
There are actually people using Facebook for storage? That's scary...
It should've started "In soviet Russia..."
"KDE users have gotten a rather unpleasant surprise from Facebook: Not only is the site blocking KDE apps like Gwenview from uploading, the social media giant has also taken down photos uploaded with the KDE plugins. Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on KDE for uploading photos."
Corrected summary
Personally I wouldn't depend on any third-party service to store any of my data. The potential for connectivity issues (at my end, theirs, or in-between), bankruptcy, disgruntled/malicious employees, security breaches, etc, all make me very wary indeed of entrusting my data to someone else's hard drive, and I really don't understand why anyone would do so. (I understand the arguments, I just personally believe that it's not worth the potential risks, especially for files that are essentially irreplaceable like photos.)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
...mask the application as a browser so they cannot detect it at all.
This also happened to all of my photos uploaded with Fireuploader, a firefox extension
You upload copies for sharing with your friends, not storing. But the act of uploading allows people to (buzzword alert!) socially interact with them. All of those "social interactions" were also deleted when the photos --- entire albums --- were deleted.
So most people still have their original photos (barring disaster), but they don't have the new annotated commentary. tagging, liking, etc. All the stuff that makes facebook facebook. If your social content is deleted, what is the point of interaction on that network?
Also, you can see the bug report filed here:
http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=18701
This is only just the beginning, the more users facebook has the more political it will become. If more and more users continue to join an opinion consensus of some sort will eventually form. With the kind of computation power new supercomputers like the K1 have it will eventually become self aware and delete the internetz.
YOU HAVE BEEN WANRED.
(P.S. would the AI's not sharing the AI code be a GPL violation?)
Each application on facebook get's a private API. In FOSS, this key is present in the source code. That is not permissible according to facebook terms of service. In effect, they are blocking FOSS software. An alternative is to use a different key for each user.
More info: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276609
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
quit. Facebook. Now.
First, as with any company or site you should (must) read the terms:
2 .Sharing Your Content and Information
1 You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
[hmm, royalty-free license granted to facebook ...] ... ...
9. Special Provisions Applicable to Developers/Operators of Applications and Websites
14 We do not guarantee that Platform will always be free.
[==> this may also explain why Facebook blocks KDE photo app.]
Cheers
The best reason not to upload any photos to facebook is that you lose your copyright on them once you do so. They become facebook's property. Look it up! It's in the EULA.
...if someone were to dig out the API keys from all closed-source clients, they would get banned too? I seriously doubt that any of them use any sort of obfuscation.
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage.
I'm not sure why someone would want to be completely dependent on an online company to store their photos. Sure, it's nice to be able to show them off over the web, but I still think it would be wise for people to keep their own copies somewhere, just in case.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
the customers are the advertisers.
the users are simply bait to bring the advertisers. their purpose is to bring eyeballs to see adverts.
whenever you use a free service online, ask yourself this: who is paying for this service, and what obligation do they have to me to continue to provide this service until *I* don't want or need it any more, rather than being able to close the service on a whim.
I'm now curious if that is negative feedback from their users, or the users' friends - essentially blocking the app-generated updates because they don't care for them.
When you read around the various "Banned" threads and the canned reply, it seems that this is the apparent reason.
Up until now, the ban decision was based on number of users, votes and likes of users, etc.
Lots of applications were considered super-successful.
Suddenly they seem to have changed the criteria : If some user blocks a publication seen on the news-feed that counts as a negative feed-back.
Now look at the forums : most of the "formerly successful applications getting now banned" are either games or photo uploading applications.
These are application that are mega popular (some of them are 300k users with 4.9 out of 5 reviews). But not all friends are interested into them.
There are a lot of people who simply remove games for the news feed like my self, because I'm not interested into flash games and I'm on facebook only to share news and pictures with friends and acquittance. I don't personally care that someone among them won 300 golden pigs on her virtual farm. It's not that I wish that all games go burn in hell and disappear from facebook, It's just that I don't personally care about them and I find that they are polluting my news-feed for the usage I need it for. I perfectly understand that there are people who are here *for* the games and thus are definitely interested in latest flash-gaming fads, etc.
If there are enough non-players like me on facebook, small games are going to suffer a lot because every such "hide it for me, thanks" is going to count as a negative vote. If you're not Zynga with a gazillon of players on your virtual Farm to counter-balance the non-gamers, you're screwed.
And there are people who are on facebook either to play games or only to share news with the family. They are probably not necessarily interested into seeing photos of their friends naked or passed out or mushy pictuers of friends' babies. (Specially some players who have big friends lists to get bigger virtual farms, and thus a lot more distant acquittance they don't necessarily care about, as close friends).
And here the situation is even worse. If you block photos of non-friends and this indeed counts as negative feed-back, by doing so, you're massively voting against lots and lots of photo different applications. Also these applications aren't even responsible for appearing on friends' news feeds : they only upload photos. It the standard "publish album on my profile" feature of face-book itself which makes them visible.
Thus even photo uploading applications with 300k users are getting banned.
---
I think the whole "based on users blocking it from news feed" stuff is asinine.
Sorry, but given the sheer size of facebook's userbase, whatever app you take into account is *never* going to please all the users.
There's always going to be a range of users who are not interested into it and are going to block it (for no reason other that they don't see any use of having it in the news-feed).
So either they need to relax the banning criteria. Or we're going to see a massive ban of applications just because some part of the users-base does not share the same interests as another part. Taken to its extreme conclusion, this will lead to a facebook were there's nothing.
Except maybe Farmville (as it has a big enough share among facebook to compensate the blocking).
And applications uploading kittens (because everyone likes kittens).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The way OAuth2 is handled by your platform allows in principle anyone to impersonate our application, as all that's needed is getting to know our application ID, which can be easily obtained from the URL of the application page. If you feel our application has been used to send spam to other users, it has certainly not been done by our code.
So, either a spammer did indeed impersonate the application, or Facebook noticed that the applicationID sits there in the open, and anticipated this might happen eventually.
A hard problem to solve for an open-source app... (and for a closed-source app too, given enough reverse engineering time by a spammer...)
Maybe there should be a way to have "restricted" app-ids which only work in conjunction with a user login? That way, even if an app-id is pilfered, there would still be the need to have a user login in addition, who could then be blamed. It's a photo uploader, for chrissakes, so you need to log in to facebook anyways if you want to use it in a meaningful way...
Courtesy Jay Freeman:
The linked but talks about the application key being public (which appears to be the case in URLs and suchlike), but makes no mention of the fact that the secret key to the application was also made public in the source code. This would allow anyone with access to the application (ie, most script kiddies) to write other programs (anything that can make an outbound HTTP connection) to use the permissions granted to that application (such as writing to the logged-in user's wall, notifying friends (think image tags), et cetera).
I'm not actually sure how this problem could be "solved." Could you ever, really, distribute the source for a remote-permissions-based program like this in such a way that it couldn't be impersonated, if people grant permissions based on their identity (secure) and the identity of the program (100% completely unsecure)?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
SPAM wasn't the criteria.
Popularity is the reason behind the recent massive ban of apps.
Until recently it was probably based on number of users, votes/likes, user complains, etc.
Recently they seem to have changed the criteria. Apparently, if some users decide to hide content from the news-feeds of the main page (like hiding reports from games or hiding pictures) it counts as negative vote for said apps (games and photo uploaders).
Lots of users aren't on facebook for games and are not interested to know the some friends needs more smurfberries in some random flash game, or conversly are here for the games and aren't interested in seeing pictures of people they added only to have a bigger farm.
Given that, suddenly a lot of games and photo uploading apps started to get banned en masses.
If this trends continues, there will be nothing left on facebook, save for applications showing kittens (everybody likes kittens).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
who the fork relies on FB to STORE their photos?
Some of my friends don't keep regular backups.
And they got their laptops stolen/broken/on fire/lost at see/fallen into a deep snow crevasse/whatever.
For them, the copy uploaded on Facebook was the last remaining copy.
If these pictures where uploaded with KDE or one of the many other banned photo-uploading plugins (some thread even mentions plugins banned with more than 300k users - so potentially the whole débâcle could affect half a million users, not only the +2'500 users of KIPI), they are lost forever to said users.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
they should have not removed the old content but quarantined it, so users who request their photos back can have it.
They did so, according to one administrator.
Except that, the end-users are in no position to get their own pictures back.
Only the application writer (in KIPI's case Dirk Tilger) can request an appeal on the ban to have both the application and the uploaded content restored.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Facebook, MySpace and the other "Social Sites" and their "Apps." are Social Engineering to the Max! If you don't know, please look up Social Engineering in a dictionary, you might be surprised!
Surely, you mean Friendface...
The applications also needs an IP key.
That's the thing which got banned.
A massive number of applications (mostly games and photo-uploading apps) got banned because suddenly, Facebook started to take into account when users hide content from their friends on the main page's news feed.
When too many "hide" happen, the application is flagged as "unpopular", its API key is revoked, and all generated/uploaded content is quarantined, until the developer has successfully appealed.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There was a lot of artistic license.
For a start they didn't portray his evil goatee.
Nor his small demonic horns.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If the user is careless enough to use an app that spams without their permission
How do you recommend that users become more careful in determining whether or not a particular app will spam before using it?
What if I use konqueror as my webrowser?
In other news: People are using Facebook to store their photos.
No sig today...
Another reason to rethink photo storage on Facebook? As if the small image size and low quality weren't enough reasons already?
I'm guessing the people who view Facebook as a photo storage tool are the same people who think cell phone cameras are actually pretty good.
(IANAPP)
Of course, if your relatively-unpopular game doesn't auto-spam by posting hundreds of updates on every player's wall, you won't have this problem in the first place...
Well for "User's Farm in Farmville is on fire ! She needs your help !! Help her save her virtual pigs !!!"-type of posts I might understand (and in fact, the most über-popular application aren't banned because they have enough facebook users who aren't blocking them).
But for KIPI ? This plug-ins only upload photo into albums. That's it. No tagging, no publishing, etc.
If photo appear on the news feed, that's because facebooks displays them there automatically. KIPI isn't responsible for that, it's automatic and beyond their control.
Every single photo uploaded with absolutely any other application, even KIPI, even other banned applications (Photos Effects, etc.), even the non banned applications (obviously : iPhone's photo uploader), even facebook's own crappy badly-functionning flash application - every single photo gets mentioned in the news feed eventually.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If they are doing this, it is a wonderfully malicious reason to join FB and do nothing at all except accumulate a large number of friends and block all their apps... Kinda like joining a political party to vote for their worst candidate.
Like Apple and Microsoft.
Best Slashdot Co
It isn't hard.
Here's the page to delete your account. (Yes, delete, not disable.) I'm assuming it still works.
One part of the article should read like this:
"But this is an object lesson in why users should never depend on the cloud or assume that their data stored on any site will be there five minutes from now."
This is why I don't understand the rush to "cloud computing".
Incidentally, I noticed that NetworkWorld does not allow copying of their content, forcing me to go to view source to get the bit I wanted. Remove the plank from your eye first, NetworkWorld, then you can better see the mote in Facebook's eye.
Proverbs 21:19
"Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on Facebook for photo storage."
The Facebook users didn't even think ONCE, or they wouldn't be using Facebook.
according to the automatic message from the ban-bot, and to some message on some threads about this problem, FB implemented a new metric to detect "negatif feed back" : now when a user decide to hide content from the news-feed on the main page, this counts as a "negative vote" against the app that generated the content.
Thus a lot of game are massively getting banned (cause people hide the publication announcing scores, etc.)
And a lot of picture uploading applications too (probably people who don't want to see other user's drunken-passed-out photos).
KIPI is among the affected picture uploading apps.
Now that's my speculation based on what I've managed to find.
---
The maintainer of KIPI, in the bug report he has filed to FaceBook, has speculated that it might also have something do to with the fact that KIPI is open-source (GPLed) and thus the private part of the application key is also visible in the code.
Seem another possible reason too, although, then I think the ban wouldn't have been effected by a bot. Also lots of other picture updating picture apps are affected too, and not all of them are GPLed with the key visible there...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Incidentally, I noticed that NetworkWorld does not allow copying of their content, forcing me to go to view source to get the bit I wanted. Remove the plank from your eye first, NetworkWorld, then you can better see the mote in Facebook's eye.
They probably block the context menu (right click -> copy).
- On Firefox, the Edit menu still works as it should
- On Linux, the mouse-copy still works as it should (selecting with the left copies-automatically into mouse-buffer)
- With "Noscript", nothing can get disallowed.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It looks like the photos I imported to Facebook from KDE were restored round 16:00 GMT, Haven't tried uploading yet ...
I don't know which is more embarrassing to admit...that you use KDE or Facebook.
It's easy to forget that MySpace, and before that AOL, was all the rage at one point in time. Now they still loom about like monolithic shells of their previous glory. Facebook will probably suffer the same fate.
I use DigiKam and after reading this I cheched and all my photo's where deleted. However several hours after posting about this issue asking for my photo's back on both the Known Issues page and in the help section, I recieved all my photo's back.
Hope every one else has also got their's back too.
Facebook is a social networking website that should be used for communication. It should not be used as a storage device. It is probably deleting it for the users' best interest. http://www.bbcleaningservice.com/