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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.
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' ;)
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?
Yeah, because facebook totally cares about spam
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
I'm Facebook. How do I know that the API key floating in the wild - in KDE sources - is not being used to send not-sufficiently-paid-for spam?
FTFY
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
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.
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
My guess is that they are using oAuth. Unfortunately, oAuth appears to be completely retarded in this respect (or at least the way it's being implemented) needing a secret key embedded in an application. Open source or closed source, that key can be recovered; the best you can do is obfuscate it but that will only last so long if a spammer wants the key from a legitimate application.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Because they can. Now go back to tending crop in Farmvile, Peon.
There's nothing in oAuth that requires that the key be secret, indeed, I think the oAuth spec specifically discourages depending on the oAuth key as a reliable indicator of the application, precisely because there's no real way to keep it secret. It's companies like Twitter, who insist on uses the obviously not secret oAuth key as if it were secret, that are doing it wrong.
when facebook is myspace
They care about unpaid spam.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
I must admit that I have never uploaded photos to facebook, but doesn't the user have to be logged in to upload photos? In which case take action against users who spam rather than banning the tool the user uses to upload to the site.
Hmmm, hadn't Mark Zuckerberg used KDE in The Social Network?
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
Do we really have to re-learn the same lessons every 5-10 years? Trust users, not programs; don't trust the client; security through obscurity is no security at all: these are fundamental concepts, but we keep forgetting them.
What exactly is the point of the API key? Anything an application can do, a user with access to that application can do. Spammers can extract a key from application and pretend to be that application. You stop spam at the user level.
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.
Yet another reason that users might think twice before depending on KDE for uploading photos.
Why would that be so? kipi-plugins worked as advertised.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
How do you distinguish between a user and an application he's running? How do you do it over a network?
Any piece of information an application (here, a client-side program) can access, a user can access too. If we can't distinguish between users and applications, we're forced to rely on the user as the unit of trust.
The situation is different for a "web application" that can store information inaccessible to users. But for local applications, a secret key is pointless.
I guess we're talking about different types of trust. I won't argue against the statement that a locally-stored secret key is pointless (just look at how well it's worked for just about every DRM scheme ever attempted), but if you're going over a network...
You said yourself: "Don't trust the client." And if you can't, as you said, distinguish between the client and the user, security principles should extend that to "Don't Trust the User" rather than "Trust the client."
Always assume the user/client is lying until verified by the server, always assume the user/client is stupid/broken/malicious and will attempt to put a 30-page lorem ipsum into a field marked "email address," etc...
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.
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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).
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