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Social Fixer Falls Victim To Facebook Legal Threats

Posted by timothy on from the which-battles-to-fight dept.

rueger writes "The author of the very excellent Social Fixer browser plug-in is bowing to legal threats from Facebook and removing the core functionality that made his tool so great. I like Social Fixer a lot. It makes Facebook at least three or four times more usable. The author, Matt Kruse, says 'Any threat of legal action is a big deal. I am a one-man operation. If I were sued for whatever reason, I would find it very difficult to defend myself, even if it was without merit. I would be risking my personal life to maintain a tabbed news feed for users. As much as I'd like to be your Robin Hood, I just can't do that to my family.' Bizarrely, when he asked Facebook why they don't also threaten Ad-Block, the Facebook rep claimed to have never heard of it." Kruse has some surprisingly nice things to say about his interaction with Facebook, too. Reader Daniel Dvorkin points out this commentary at BuzzFeed which points out Twitter's similar policies.

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Open Source the Tab Code by Jonah+Hex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It started as a GreaseMonkey script, why can't that particular functionality be open sourced? The few times a month I'm forced to go on Facebook I make sure my Social Fixer is up to date, especially since I want to be signed out of chat automatically. Having all the games and apps on a separate tab is nice too. - HEX

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    Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
    1. Re:Open Source the Tab Code by bmo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Sure, open source fixes everything. Except, you know, legal threats.

      Legal threats only work where there is some way to get them enforced. If someone picks this up in a country where legal threats from Facebook means bupkis, then yes, Open Source does fix this.

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      BMO

  2. THE Matt Kruse!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Whoa, that name was oddly familiar, and then it hit me - he ran the first ray-tracing competition, back in the great POV-Ray era.

    http://www.mattkruse.com/raytracing/?bwf0d=12778