Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Facebook Shuts Off Access To User Data For Hundreds of Thousands of Apps (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-the-line dept.

In a blog post, Facebook said that it's shutting off access to its application programming interface for hundreds of thousands of inactive apps. This interface is what lets app developers access user data. The Verge reports: The company had set an August 1st deadline back in May, during its F8 developer conference, for developers and businesses to re-submit apps to an internal review, a process that involves signing new contracts around user data collection and verifying one's authenticity. The goal is to ensure third-party software on Facebook was in line with the company's data privacy rules and new restrictions put in place in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a third-party developer siphoned user data and sold it to another firm in violation of Facebook's terms of service. Now, after it identified numerous apps that were either inactive or from developers who had not submitted the software for review, Facebook is cutting off those apps' access to its Platform API.

32 comments

  1. Where's the money? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 2

    Cambridge Analytics failed because they couldn't find a way to make money off of the user data it collected, so where's the value in making user data collection apps?

    Seems like FB is doing the right thing by requiring app-store like code review... and shutting off the apps that don't comply with new rules... a rare move on their part.

    1. Re: Where's the money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is this fixing a goddamn thing? It says right in the article they are shutting off inactive apps, then it goes into talking about Cambridge Analytica without stopping to think that it was an active app.

      dumbass millennial reporters canâ(TM)t even think for themselves

    2. Re: Where's the money? by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      ssshhhhh...who knew? Inactive apps collect less user data, film at the fifth of never.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    3. Re:Where's the money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its a kneejerk to the "value slip". Zuck trying to claw back virtual value as his shareholders run for cover. F*ck Zuck and his cohort.

    4. Re: Where's the money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dumbass millennial reporters canÃ(TM)t

      Say's the dumbass posting from an iOS device. I'm glad slashdot doesn't handle unicode correctly. Makes spotting the iTards(TM) easier.

  2. Facebook is your God.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...fuhrer, captain, czar, commadant, king, emperor, lord and master

  3. Data privacy by AHuxley · · Score: 0

    With a social media product that is free to use?
    How is "data privacy" going to allow an ad company to sell ads?
    Every ad company will be able to show "authenticity" as they are an ad company...
    How can an ad company sort its ads and provide the very best service to people paying for and placing ads?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:Data privacy by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "How is "data privacy" going to allow an ad company to sell ads? "

      "Data privacy" or not, ad companies will always be selling all the ads they want.

    2. Re:Data privacy by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Every ad company will go on sorting and collecting, selling and buying. The ad company has paying customers to support.
      Free "social media" has to place and find lots of new ads to pay its wages? Ads from where if the ad companies get held back with data privacy?

      Will social media do direct and only allow its own ads?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re:Data privacy by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "Ads from where if the ad companies get held back with data privacy?"

      Facebook will just have to charge less to place an ad.

    4. Re:Data privacy by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      But the social media company has wages to cover?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    5. Re:Data privacy by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      "But the social media company has wages to cover?"

      Considering their profit margin they could still easily do that.

    6. Re:Data privacy by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Go internal on all ads? Sell all ads direct? Sell all data sets direct?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    7. Re:Data privacy by mrclevesque · · Score: 1

      Not sure I'm following you. Facebook can still sell ad space in various ways even if some of them are less targeted.

  4. facebook's business is selling user data by sittingnut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    facebook's business is selling user data, gathered in site and off site, in both open and sneaky ways, to third parties.
    they may alter their contracts and engage in spin campaigns giving the impression they wont, but they will still sell the data.

    instead of vaguely pretending otherwise, facebook needs to admit it openly, and be open about the ways they gather and sell data, and about to whom they sell.
    they should also give users full access to data gathered about them. they should not gather data about people not registered with facebook.

    in that case, it would be clear, if you choose to use facebook, you are giving zuck power to sell your data.
    and as long as 3rd parties pay for data and are acting legally, there is nothing wrong with such data being used for political or commercial campaigns.

    1. Re: facebook's business is selling user data by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      Facebook makes a good large chunk of their revenue from selling mass surveillance data & services to (repressive) governments worldwide. Openly disclosing their business activities would likely be extremely illegal in multiple countries.

    2. Re:facebook's business is selling user data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... and as long as 3rd parties pay for data and are acting legally, there is nothing wrong with such data being used for political or commercial campaigns.

      No

      There is something VERY wrong with "...such data being used for political or commercial campaigns".

      When Facebook started there was no mention that the data would be sold. As it grew there was STILL no mention that the data was being sold. People will assume that it's no big deal even if you tell them the data is being sold because that's the F'd-up way human brains work.

      As an analogy, if the Coca-Cola company collected DNA samples off all those billions of glass bottles returned to their bottling companies over the years and never told anyone, there would be a problem, but after fifty or sixty year of the public not being bothered by DNA collection off the bottles, having Coca-Cola add a line at the bottom of the bottle saying, in legalese, that "your DNA may be collected and used for commercial and political purposes" probably wouldn't even dent sales.

    3. Re:facebook's business is selling user data by thomn8r · · Score: 1

      Facebook does not sell data, they rent it.

    4. Re:facebook's business is selling user data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in that case, it would be clear, if you choose to use facebook, you are giving zuck power to sell your data.

      The problem with what you said is that it omits the number of ways in which Facebook can and do track you, even if you didn't give your consent, and don't use Facebook because their shit is embedded in half the web pages you visit.

      So, as far as I'm concerned, Zuckerfuck has given me and anybody else who wants to permission to boot stomp his punk ass into the ground, doxx he and his family or employees, and widely insinuate he's a well known goat fucker.

      Because that's what the real level of consent to Fuckbutsbook is working with ... unless you block them with browser extensions, they view it as having given consent.

      In my opinion, if you work for an ad and analytics company, your dumb ass is fair game for all sorts of shit .. because they've clearly decided they have the right to track me and sell my data. So, reciprocally, I should have the ability to give myself the right to do whatever I want to them, right?

      Fucking useless parasites.

  5. SSDD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Day = Late
    Dollar = Short

    Way to go... it seems you never delete your recycle bin... Zuck!

  6. They should look into PUBG by supercell · · Score: 0

    I swear that game uses way to much GPU for the graphics it renders. Also sitting in the lobby, with no graphics rendering, it uses 100% GPU load. I think that game could easily be crypto mining.

  7. REMEMBER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    REMEMBER THE MURDER OF IAN MURDOCK, creator of Debian Linux and leading member of the Free Software community, killed Christmas 2015 by the notoriously corrupt San Francisco police department.

    1. Re:REMEMBER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why. debian sucks. they're the ones that allowed the GNU/linux stupidity. fuck 'em.

  8. This'll fix everything by hdyoung · · Score: 1

    Well, this is gonna totally deter me. I'm a state actor or a shady company and I want to scrape Facebook for data. Unfortunately, they're making me sign a new TOS that makes me promise that I won't. What a trump card. Guess I'll just hang it up and go feed the homeless.

  9. Too little... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...too late.

  10. Inactive APPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    These are only the *inactive* apps. You know, the apps students put together at various hack-a-thons Facebook hosted around the world when it was offering up user data, not the commercials ones that harvest and re sell user data.

    e.g. "World Hack Moscow", was an event hosted by Zuckerberg where he showed a group of keen Moscow hackers how they could access all of Facebooks loverly user data. They slapped together a bunch of apps for practise. These will be inactive apps, whose token is revoked.

    https://boingboing.net/2018/06/10/privacy-by-design-2.html

    "In a 2012 video, Facebook's Simon Cross shows the Moscow crowd how they can "get a ton of other information" on Facebook users and their friends. "We now have an access token, so now let's make the same request again and see what happens," Cross explains (YouTube). "We've got a little bit more data, but now we can start doing really interesting stuff. We can get my friends. We can get some more information about one of my friends. Here's Connor, who you'll meet later. Say 'hello,' Connor. He's waving. And we can also get a ton of other information as well." "

  11. Pretty much a logical move ... by jetkust · · Score: 1

    The headline is pretty click-bait just by reading the summary. This seems like a logical move by people who seem to be thinking logically. They are basically trying to enforce their new privacy rules put in place after the whole Cambridge Analytica fiasco. Apps that want to access data of their users need to be active and need to submit their app for review. Isn't this what everybody wanted???

  12. The TOS for CYA, not for enforcement (less money by raymorris · · Score: 1

    The wording added to the TOS isn't about Facebook doesn't want to keep getting money from companies who abuse users' data in all sorts of ways. They aren't removing any *active* apps, apps they get paid from. The clause in the TOS is about Facebook being able to point to that and say "we told them not do that" the next time one of the apps is in the news. Alternatively, in a class action suit, Facebook can again say "our TOS said that's not allowed". The TOS isn't for Facebook to enforce, it's their excuse.

  13. So now only active apps left that abuse your data? by ffkom · · Score: 1

    I wonder how it is relevant news that the most inactive software has been cut off the data wonderland "Facebook".

  14. But what if we pay for them in Rubles? by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    Well, will that change your mind?

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --