

SocialCam's shady secret - lleims
http://mgalligan.com/post/23113579600/socialcams-shady-secret

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aculver
While we're here, let me just say what I've been thinking for weeks: I _hate_
all these apps and sites whose _default_ behavior is to post which
videos/articles a user has viewed without some sort of explicit, per-video or
per-article intent to share on the users part. _That_ , in and of itself, is
shady. I will remember negatively every brand who has chosen to do this. It
doesn't matter that the user installed an app that _technically_ gives the
them permission to do it. I'd venture to bet that _every single time_ I've
seen this sort of stuff in my timeline, it was totally unintentional.

The best paradigm is for people to specifically share when they want something
shared. No one cares what someone is watching generally. Just because they
watched it doesn't mean it's worth sharing. It's different when someone
watches something and then "likes" it or chooses to share it with their
friends.

Because of underhanded news sites and services like SocialCam, it's become my
advice to everyone I talk to: "If you don't understand how the technology
you're using works, don't do or read anything on the Internet you wouldn't
mind everyone on Facebook knowing about." That's a sad place to be.

~~~
evoxed
The concerned geek in me agrees with you on all counts, but I'm afraid this
should never be taken as universally true. BUT, I do remember a time when that
was not an issue I cared about. I loved the fact that e product knew exactly
what it wanted to do– if I liked it, I didn't have to do anything and it would
integrate. That was awesome. It's only years later with the realization that
all of this data exists somewhere and can be used in nefarious (or really,
just annoying) ways– that I began to care. Most of my non-tech friends think
the same way. They assume that _it's an app on facebook, why wouldn't it tell
people what I'm doing?_. They're still sensitive to more 'traditional'
privacy– i.e. talk to your ex in MESSAGES, not on your wall– but everything
else is a feature that is genuinely desired. The devil's advocate says that
those who care should either know to turn it off, or be more discriminating
with the toys they play with.

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subway
I can't stand Social[Cam|Reader] style apps. I've always found it to be rather
annoying to click on an article or video shared on Facebook, only to be told I
need to grant permissions to an app. It just motivates me to hide all posts
from those apps.

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notphilatall
I was pretty excited about SocialCam when they first launched, and sad when I
saw "OMG SEE THIS" type videos spreading via their app on FB.

Why can't we have an instagram of video? It sucks to see my friends tricked
into clicking on racy videos on FB and sharing them accidentally, a group of
folks as awesome as the SocialCam team shouldn't have to resort to this type
of trickery.

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hsshah
SocialCam posted a comment on the blog: "Matt - please recheck this - we have
pushed a fix to correct this problem. If you turn off Social Mode in the app
it should remain off the next time you open the app."

I have to say I am a bit skeptical if this was truly a "fix" or a "rollback"
of a feature.

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cluda01
I've seen these show up on my facebook feed as well. I'm curious, did they cut
some sort of biz-dev deal with facebook to keep the proliferation of spam
going? It seems like app spam has all but dropped off of facebook recently,
I'm curious how socialcam is able to make it through the filter.

Edit: This is anecdotal of course.

~~~
idoh
As far as I know they don't have any special deals. They use the open graph
"watch" action, and when you install the app you give it permission to post
this action (it is the publish_actions permission). What you are seeing on the
feed are aggregations of that action. They also show up in the ticker.

As an aside, I do know that Pinterest is allowed to do somethings that other
apps are not. I've heard that there are some feature whitelists, and it looks
like Pinterest was whitelisted for at least one of them (the ability to send a
message to more than one recipient).

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badclient
Beyond SocialCam, this feature of facebook is absolutely pathetic. I spent
many hours trying to figure out why some mildly explicit story I read on
HuffPo was showing up on my activity feed when my sister viewed my profile.
The same activity did _not_ appear when I viewed my profile.

What really upset me is that if I used the "View Profile As..." feature and
picked my sister, the same item would _not_ show up. As I tried to figure out
to remove the item, I had to call my sister each time to see if it still
appeared. Ultimately, I _could not_ remove it even though I removed almost
every possible app. More importantly, I lost faith in the "View Profile As..."
feature. If it is not going to be accurate, it's better to just not have that
feature.

I really hope facebook takes this privacy stuff _way_ more serious than all
other features. I can imagine a nightmare scenerio where an app with
permission sells itself to a porn site which starts auto publishing shitty
stories.

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zemaj
Whenever you authenticate an app in Facebook that can post to your feed, there
is a drop down that lets you choose who can see your activity with the app. I
always choose "just me" because of actions of apps like this. It's become the
norm not the exception to auto share.

Facebook should add a clause to their ToS saying apps must actively ask for
permission before posting. Twitter has done this and while there are a few bad
smaller players, on the whole you don't see most apps using these spammy
techniques.

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lopatin
A SocialCam employee stated on this post that this has been fixed, not much
info besides that. I wonder when this fix happened though.

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jwwest
Halon's Razor is appropriate here. Before everyone gets up in arms, this is
probably a bug.

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ericson578
after I saw that it was posting to my facebook stream, I immediately deleted
the posts and removed socialcam's permission to do so.

unfortunately most people who use it don't know how to do either. I should
post a how-to for my fb friends :)

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nextstep
This seems like it could have easily been a bug. I don't think that SocialCam
is intentionally deceiving their users.

