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Facebook Cuts Off Competitor Prisma's API Access (nymag.com)
Photo-filter app Prisma, the popular program which makes pictures and video look like painterly art, had its access to Facebook's Live Video API revoked this month. From a report on NYMag:According to Prisma, Facebook justified choking off Prisma's access by stating, "Your app streams video from a mobile device camera, which can already be done through the Facebook app. The Live Video API is meant to let people publish live video content from other sources such as professional cameras, multi-camera setups, games or screencasts." This is the implied aim of Facebook's video API, the technical entry point for producers to pump video into Facebook's network: The API is meant for broadcasting setups that are not phone-based. The problem is that none of this is explained in Facebook's documentation for developers. In fact, it states the opposite. Here is the very first question from the company's Live API FAQ: "The Live API is a data feed and the "glue" needed to create higher-quality live videos on Facebook. It allows you to send live content directly to Facebook from any camera."
We'll change the rules, or reinterpret them, any time we damn well please, and there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm just about done with them. I'm on a "no Facebook" diet until after the holidays. We'll see if that works.
If your company uses an API to another party's service to make your product you should seek employment somewhere else. Urgently.
Facebook dev here. You are partially correct.
Remember Instagram, all it did was add shitty Polaroid-like effects.
The FAQ does not imply the opposite, it pretty much explicitly says its for other HQ cameras.
This is why all large companies want to own one or more layers of the infrastructure and/or ecosystem. Then this shit cannot happen to you. And they all know it will happen, because they will all do it to someone else without giving it a second thought.
Facebook can do whatever it wants. It built and maintains the walled garden. They have spent millions in tech and marketing, and I don't begrudge them flexing their muscles and blocking whomever they feel threatens them. I wish industry had moved in a different direction (more and more companies aren't even building websites anymore, they are relying solely on social presences), but so it goes. There will one day come a reckoning and a backlash, but I don't think it'll be anytime soon. You've got a full generation of Marketing Chuckleheads who learned FB and Twitter as "The Way" at university, and it'll take a while for them to be convinced enough to unlearn everything their parents paid north of $100K for them to study.
It's better described as "denied partnership" ^^ (the /. submitters are not very good with words :P)
This should be a lesson for anybody that develops an application based on a platform that they don't control; it's as if nobody learned nothing from "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run" Microsoft era experiences.
If you don't control the platform, the platform owner can cut off your air supply at any moment. When working with a giant, they have the resources to replicate whatever you're doing immediately. So FB, Google, all other platforms are using all the startups on their platform as brute-force approach to success - everybody tries something, if something succeed, first they replicate it, and then cut the air to the original app. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish 2.0 Social Edition.
I'm on an "I graduated and lost my .edu email address before there even was a Facebook" diet. Does that make me suspicious?
Facebook enjoys a monopoly position. They literally cant do what they just did. Prisma is a Russian company too. The Russkie anti-monopoly agency will do very nasty things to Facebook over this. They've been looking for an excuse to kick them out of the country as is.
Prisma connects to the Facebook through a special API key. The Prisma app supports videos from the cell phone, so Facebook has revoked the Prisma API key. This blocks all videos from Prisma.
Your question is pointless. It doesn't matter if the video is altered or not, it matters who is doing the upload. No uploads from Prisma are allowed (probably because Facebook is about to release a similar feature).
~Batman.
Facebook's arrogance is past that of Microsoft at the height of their evilness. They have a choice as to whether or not to be a bag of dicks or have a model based on growing through inclusiveness with a long-term but flexible plan. They chose bag of dicks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
It is high time that a lot of these internet giants get some hard scrutiny from the justice department on anti-monopoly grounds, similar to what Microsoft got after they destroyed Netscape by bundling IE. FB is a defacto monopoly on social media, as evidenced by the failure of Google plus, my space etc. Since they are a defacto monopoly, cutting off another company's access to their API is an illegal anti-competitive move and they should get slammed hard for it.
I would love to see some federal legislation as well defining that your personal posts, pictures and other content you create on social media is inseparably yours and cannot be owned or given away to FB or anyone else. Also, a requirement to make all the information downloadable in a consistent, standard format for offline archive or transfer to another service would be helpful. The legislation this week protecting negative reviews from corporate interference was a good step. The sad fact is that the liberal internet giants like Google and FB have been humping Obama's leg for the last 8 years, where Democrats used to be watching out for individual rights, now they are just as bought and paid for by big business as Republicans, just different businesses.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I was wondering how FB's actions are not anti-competitive, but it's because they don't pretty much own the market like MS did at that time. Due to the ultra-conservatives having disposed of the old FTC and replaced them with people who's only qualification was to support the, then, current administration, it makes it less likely that they would even know what to do if they wanted to.
That's true, however all the masses of rubes out there love these platforms and refuse to give them up no matter how abusive they get, so developers target them anyway, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of these platforms, much like pets will eagerly await crumbs falling off their masters' tables.
WTF makes you think the Justice Department gives a rat's ass about this? If the DOJ doesn't feel like pursuing an anti-trust case against Microsoft (even at the height of their abusive monopoly with IE6 back in 1999), what makes you think a conservative Trump DOJ is going to care about Facebook? (Or, if Hillary somehow wins the Electoral College election, that her DOJ would care?)
Face it: we're on our own with these abusive companies. If we want to keep them in line, we have to be willing to vote with our feet. We have proven, over and over and over, that we are simply not willing to do that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I consider twitter and reddit and *cough* usenet *cough* and *cough* the entire rest of the internet *cough* to be more significant competitors to facebook than the competitors to microsquish were back in the netscape navigator days.
Back in the day, without microsquish, ordinary folk couldn't reasonably *use a computer*. Apples and Oranges. Thank God for the relative - if not total world dominating - success FOSS has enjoyed since then.
I guess maybe you were still in diapers back then, but MS was investigated by the DOJ and subsequently sued by the DOJ:
"The company barely escaped being split up after it was ruled an unlawful monopolist in 2000 for using its stranglehold on the PC market with its Windows operating system to cripple competitors, such as Netscape’s Navigator Web browser.
A court settlement approved in 2002 and a consent decree curbing some of its practices saved Microsoft."
http://www.seattletimes.com/bu...
FB, Apple, etc. are pulling the same bullshit and so far Obama, a Democrat, has done zero about it because they are all run by big liberals.
Also, just be aware that Trump is not a conservative, he is a populist, which is significantly different in that he is specifically looking for what is best for the people rather than what is best for big business (being against TPP is one example of him being a populist). So you may very well be surprised by what he does, but because he has been such a loose cannon on the campaign trail we will literally have to wait and see what he actually does in office.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Prisma connects to the Facebook through a special API key.
I'm aware how the API key system works.
The Prisma app supports videos from the cell phone,
Predominately adulterated video. Because otherwise, you'd use the Facebook App, because you wouldn't be using any of the Prisma features to make it "hip", "kool", "rad", and "gnarly".
so Facebook has revoked the Prisma API key. This blocks all videos from Prisma.
Yes, I'm also aware of how key revocation was used to block Prisma.
Your question is pointless. It doesn't matter if the video is altered or not, it matters who is doing the upload. No uploads from Prisma are allowed (probably because Facebook is about to release a similar feature).
The question is not pointless. Prisma's primary users are people who are adding "effects" to the video. Otherwise they'd be using the Facebook App. The entire purpose of Prisma in the 99% use case is to adulterate the videos, making them useless as news content.
Facebook has been getting shat upon, because apparently every Democrat in California was stupid enough to buy all the "fake news" content as if it was real, and then they went out and cast their votes for Trump. The only reason Clinton got any votes in California at all is apparently because she paid off Diebold.
Or in less inflammatory rhetoric: the Democrats are butthurt because Clinton loss, and they're blaming Facebook and anyone else they can, other than themselves, for running an unlikeable corporate tool.
It's entirely doubtful that Facebook wants a similar tool, since it would also mean that they could not sell crowdsourced footage of things like the Ferguson events to the likes of MSNBC.
Check the terms and conditions on your video uploads: the license allows you to sell them, because it's non-exclusive, but it *also* allows Facebook to sell them, too. As in: to news agencies. Prisma destroys their value as news content.
... in that he is specifically looking for what is best for the people
You are correct that he's no conservative, but this is just bullshit. Trump is a Trumpist. He doesn't give a shit about what anyone else thinks or wants. He, like any politician, will tell you what you want to hear to get your vote, but he doesn't give a shit about saying the opposite to the guy standing next to you. He has no shame at all, and only cares about himself.
Presidential elections have been a popularity contest since at least the advent of television. Trump, for all his intellectual failings, instinctively understands this, and he capitalized on it. Clinton, for all her skill and experience in politics, has none as an entertainer.
Facebook is VASTLY easier to avoid than the Microsoft monopoly ever was. A windows tax was added to nearly every computer, even ones that shipped without any os at all. They used their monopoly to make using almost any other product that competes with their painful. They leveraged the OS to push their browser and it worked until VERY recently.
Facebook is fairly easy to avoid and pretty much no pressure related to it.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Your statement as well as mine is speculation. Yours is based on bullshit hysteria put out by the Democratic party, mine is based on what Trump has said and done since winning. The jury is still out on the long term, but it does appear that he genuinely wants to help people (see what he just did for Carrier employees who were going to get outsourced to Mexico). He is not even the president yet and he has already saved 1000 jobs at a cost of $700/employee per year in incentives to the employer. The state will easily make that back in taxes from those employees and revenue from having the Carrier plant stay in the state.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like