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Facebook May Dislike the Social Fixer Extension, but Many Users Love It (Video)
If you have the Social Fixer extension installed on your Web browser, you can post Facebook comments with line breaks you control with your "Enter" key, and insert your comments with "Tab + Enter." If you want to, that is. If you want to change the color of the blue "Facebook bar" at the top of your screen to puce, go right ahead. Want to have your newsfeed show the most recent stories at the top, rather than "Trending Articles" and "Trending Videos," or hide the "ticker feed" of friends' activities? Go right ahead. Social Fixer gives you the power to do all this, and more. Best of all, everything happens in your own browser. Social Fixer makes no changes to Facebook's servers and is not dependent on Facebook's APIs. Still, Facebook doesn't like some Social Fixer features, and says creator Matt Kruze must remove them if he doesn't want to be banned from Facebook. They've already removed his Social Fixer page from Facebook, so they apparently mean business. The Social Fixer website says it's "a free browser extension that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality." We don't know why Facebook would be against a browser extension (available for most popular browsers other than Explorer) that improves their users' site experience. Maybe someone from Facebook will contact us and let us know. Meanwhile, enjoy our video interview with Matt Kruze (or the transcript if you would rather read than watch and listen). One last note in the interest of full disclosure: Both Timothy Lord (timothy) and Robin Miller (Roblimo) use and like Social Fixer and believe that If you try it, chances are that you'll like it, too.
I have a text editor window open at all times on my computer anyways... when I want to post a comment to Facebook, I compose it in my editor, lay it out how I want, and then copy and paste it into the edit box.
Doing this poses absolutely no problems with having line breaks in comments, but even more importantly, I don't have to worry about the edit box not sizing correctly if I end up going on and what I'm writing ends up going right off the bottom of box, which doesn't always scroll up as I type.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It is interesting watching FB's reaction to this. This doesn't seem to bode well for people who want to work outside the ecosystem FB has.
Short term, this can be understandable -- if it is not using the API, or things FB can control, it can't be monetized, so FB seems to take steps to stop it.
Long term, it may not be in FB's best interest. Right now, there is no competition on the horizon other than G+ [1] and possibly VK, but there is a tipping point somewhere that people might start moving to another provider and its relatively higher privacy controls en masse, forcing their friends to come along, and we will see something similar to the MySpace -> FB transition.
I don't see many people really loving FB. It tends to be more of something tolerated, with people sighing and grumbling every time there is a UI change. Too much pressure, and people eventually will start moving over to another service.
Who knows... maybe this might be another market for Apple. They already have the in-house expertise for it (iTunes Ping), and I'm sure that if they opened their doors for a social network, they would get people flooding in just on name recognition alone.
I'm a user of the extension myself, and it really seems like Facebook is going out of their way to attack the developer. The extension doesn't put any additional strain on their servers, doesn't utilize any API calls, and isn't destructive. What's next, going after users who have AdBlock installed? Or perhaps ones who aren't using a specific browser? Are they going to demand changes of Trillian or GNOME's social media integration? It should be up to the users to utilize the site in the way they prefer.
No, their designers make their designers look stupid.
"We don't know why Facebook would be against a browser extension that improves their users' site experience."
Easy. You seem to be operating under the very common -- but clearly mistaken -- belief that Facebook users are Facebook's customers. In fact, Facebook's advertisers are their customers, and Facebook users are the product. Once you look at it from this perspective, everything Facebook does makes sense.
Most likely it is, or will be, interfering with the feeding of ads. Nothing mysterious.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
so Facebook will ban me too?
The threat appears to have been carried out. Kruze's Facebook page is made 'unavailable'.
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
Hey Facebook, Google "Streisand Effect". Especially useful when you're attacking that which you have no control over.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Genius! I don't know how you come up with these ideas. Did you know we can eliminate the risk of being in an automobile crash by never leaving home? And we will never suffer from food poisoning if we just don't eat.
We get it. You don't use Facebook. You think that makes you special. I bet you don't have a TV either. Hell, you probably don't even remember what a TV looks like. We understand you here.
The fundamental bad assumption here is that FaceBook would be happy about the user experience being streamlined and more efficient. If they're showing something to you it's *because they want you to see it*, even if (or especially if) it slows you down and means you have to click more and see things you didn't want to see. You didn't want to see it, but *they* want you to see it. This extension takes away their total control.
You aren't the customer, you are the product. The cow doesn't get to choose how it gets milked.
Facebook doesn't seem to understand that, while the "users" are the product and the advertisers/leeches/dataminers are the customers, the "product" has legs that can and will be used when they make it bad enough to leave. SocialFixer, if it did nothing else, kept me on there a bit longer than I otherwise would have stayed. At this point, I pop in briefly to make sure I don't have messages from cousins. While using a fake name and hoping to get banned so I don't have to constantly debate how long before I finally leave.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Not every discussion about an app is an advertisement. This is a legitimate issue. I use it, and like it. And if FB is trying to screw me over, because of a browser extension, we have an issue.
What next, only approved browsers can be used?
And do we need to make sure only Operating Systems that are blessed can be used?
Agree - thanks to Streisand Effect coupled with the mere fact that FB is against it, I'm installing it!
Once again, I learned about and downloaded a great utility thanks to the Streisand Effect. Thanks, Facebook!
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often, but most of them are on Facebook at least once per day. If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly, I'd be more than interested. As it is, Facebook serves a purpose as a semi-public message board, announcement center, etc. Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Checkmate, creationists.
they don't like it because it makes their designers look stupid
Yes and no.
The answer to the article is "Go read the articles which Arstechnica already ran regarding Social Fixer".
But if you absolutely cannot be bothered, here's a brief rundown:
Facebook's TOS and developer EULA states (in layman's terms) that you can't make any changes to how the site is presented to the user.
This is exactly what Social Fixer does- it changes what and how the page renders. Now, we can get into an argument about whether or not they should have such an agreement, and argue about whether or not it affects Facebook's servers (since such plugins DO change how your browser will interact with the server), but that's all missing the point.
The point is that some time back FB shut down a bunch of different pages by other authors of other extensions which modified how the page was presented to the user. But Social Fixer got a free pass, probably because a) it was useful and well-written and b) the guy had been courting employment with FB and had inside connections.
When Ars ran the story about the other sites getting whacked but not Social Fixer, a bunch of people started bitching at Facebook about playing favorites.
So Facebook decided to apply the rules equally to everybody, and shut down the Social Fixer page.
At this point the author of Fixer started running around the internet pissing and crying about how he had no idea why he was shut down, even though his OWN BLOG flat out stated the reasons, and basically bitching that he was no longer getting a special exemption.
So, there you have it.
I'd love to see something like this. Clearly it wouldn't work for everyone, but it would be fun to have the ability to encrypt -- even if it was a basic substitution cipher -- postings and messages that would automagically be decrypted by anyone using the add-on (and having whatever the key was).
I'm not thinking of "hard" encryption, but scrambling that would totally defeat Facebook's analytics and the desire by Facebook to turn off privacy settings to enhance their search, etc.
For most websites, banning would be a limp threat. However, Facebook has an unusual amount of power - for some users, the site may be the primary way that they keep in touch with family and friends, and could even be important to a person's career. There is no ready replacement for this. Unlike email, a person can't just switch to another provider and have a similar experience.
Facebook is being a bully here and trying to make Matt Kruze fear what he will lose if he continues development of this free browser extension. His development hobby has nothing to do with his personal, social use of Facebook. It's an irresponsible, dickish use of the power that Facebook derives from their unique market position.
Facebook's TOS and developer EULA states (in layman's terms) that you can't make any changes to how the site is presented to the user.
But this is a browser extension, it wouldn't affect how somebody else views your page, just you. Or am I missing something?
So I guess Microsoft, Google, Firefox et. al. would be in violation of the TOS right off the bat, because without a browser it doesn't render at all, but with one of those, it renders differently than nothing at all, and, I am guessing, all slightly different from each other.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Some of my friends don't check their e-mail more than once every few weeks and don't sign in to any instant messenger often,
And they don't have phones? Wherein you text them, or even call them when you want to talk to them?
If something else had quite the communications potential for reaching a long list of friends quickly,
Anyone who prioritizes being able to send a long list of people a message that highly isn't likely to be sending messages I need to read.
And If you wanted to invite me to a party and we're such good friends yet it doesn't even merit a text message or a phone call...well I've got better things to do.
Its usefulness depends on your own circle of friends.
If you need facebook to be able to talk to your friends, then you need new friends.
Yes, yes, some guy now always pipes up about how facebook lets him keep in touch with some cousin half way around the world who doesn't apparently know how to use any technology except facebook, and further - he or she doesn't care enough about remaining in contact with YOU to lift a finger to make any sort of effort beyond passively catching your messages you leave them on facebook, and if you couldn't reach them on facebook you'd lose contact with them.
I'd let them go... if I'm that unimportant to the other person... why would I make staying in touch that important to me?
This is just a browser extension that isn't using any Facebook APIs though, so it is not bound by the Facebook TOS and dev EULA.
you can post Facebook comments with line breaks you control with your "Enter" key
What's wrong with SHIFT+ENTER...?
No sig today...
Facebook's TOS and developer EULA states (in layman's terms) that you can't make any changes to how the site is presented to the user.
since facebook has absolutely no say in what some user can or can't run on his own computer while using facebook, this part of the TOS is not only remarkably moronic but simply moot. you people really take this bs seriously?
thanks for the gossip, anyway. i still don't give a shit.
Because "Enter" is used everywhere else to create a line break in a text box.