

Show HN: Does Facebook know your friends better than you do? - maxkiener
http://youmewe.it/

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city41
It's a really nice tech demo. I like the animations and it's well delivered.
If you were to try and make it more of a "product" (ie more useful for the
user and less about exploring the tech behind it), you might want to dig into
more interesting facts. The months my friends were born in isn't very
interesting. How many of them are married, what state/country they live in,
etc would be more fun.

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maxkiener
I did get a little carried away by experimenting with vectors in a browser and
js/jquery in general. Thanks for the feedback.

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rabc
Cool animations and simple idea.

(Just a friendly reminder for everyone else: remember to delete the app from
you Facebook. You can find it by the name you.me.we on Settings > App
Settings)

~~~
maxkiener
Danke!

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ddoolin
Is it possible for your app (or any) to offer to revoke it's own access after
it's finished?

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maxkiener
its a nice idea, i'd like that also but don't know of such fb-functionality.
in my case i have no use for the permissions. maybe permissions with an expiry
date would be great.

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chacham15

      Revoking Login
    
      You can also let people completely de-authorize an app, or revoke login, by making a call to this Graph API endpoint:
    
      DELETE /{user-id}/permissions
    
      This request must be made with a valid user access token or an app access token for the current app. If the request is successful, your app receives a response of true. If the call is successful, any user access token for the person will be invalidated and they will have to log in again. Because you're de-authorizing your app, they will also have to grant access to your app as if they were logging in for the first time.
    

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-
login/permissi...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-
login/permissions/v2.0)

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maxkiener
Thanks

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skwuent
FYI with firefox + adblock + ghostery I see only the static landing page with
broken "about" link.

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bnejad
Perhaps try disabling some addons? I'm guessing its ghostery.

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skwuent
I guess the point I was trying to make is: It might be good for a web artifact
like this to degrade gracefully when browsers (and their addons) interfere.

Like "you seem to be blocking Facebook with XYZ..." or a similar message.
Realize it's just a prototype -- can understand if you don't want to take the
trouble.

Cool idea in any case.

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ciupicri
> you.me.we. will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list
> and birthday and your friends' birthdays.

Why would I give someone else's info to this application? I'm not even sure
it's polite.

P.S. The issue here is not that I need to give some information about myself,
I can perhaps deal with that, the issue is that I'm giving _information about
my friends_. It make me feel a bit like a snitch :-)

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maxkiener
it is a questionaire about yourself and the app needs the data to create the
questions. it is plain javascript with no backend attached to it. the data
only gets sent back and forth between your browser and fb. none of your data
ever gets stored on "my" server. hope this helps.

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MasterScrat
> the data only gets sent back and forth between your browser and fb

That's... actually a very interesting way to put it.

There should be a way to make a Facebook application that could _guarantee_ it
can't leak information to any other server.

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CSDude
It can't be done. I could get the data from FB with javascript, and If I'm
using it, I can sent it to my server with another request, so there is no way
to block that.

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MasterScrat
I know, that's why I'm saying there _should_ be a way.

One solution would be for Facebook to host the app, and to run its content in
a sandbox (using something like Google's Caja?).

Another approach would be a system permission at the browser level, where a
page could explicitly request to restrict what it is allowed to do.

Then you could have an approach where the app asks Facebook for this and that
permissions, but accepts to be sandboxed to only have access to Facebook's
domains. The request goes to FB as it does now. FB calls the return URL, _but_
it opens it in tab with specially sandboxed permissions.

Everyone wins: the app makes it clear there's no information leak possible and
the user is feeling safer.

I'm not saying any of this is trivial to implement. But it would make sense
from a user perspective.

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matthaeus
1/5 Apparently I don't know anything about my friends.

Cool info graphic in the end though!

[http://youmewe.it/result.html?M0=10&O1=10&M2=6&M3=9&M4=16&M5...](http://youmewe.it/result.html?M0=10&O1=10&M2=6&M3=9&M4=16&M5=9&M6=7&M7=10&M8=12&M9=10&M10=12&M11=4&MM0=6&OO1=4&MM2=4&MM3=7&MM4=8&MM5=4&MM6=6&MM7=7&MM8=8&MM9=5&MM10=6&MM11=0&MF0=4&OF1=6&MF2=1&MF3=1&MF4=7&MF5=4&MF6=1&MF7=3&MF8=4&MF9=5&MF10=6&MF11=3&age=31&friendage=33.1&male=52&female=48&maxFpM=16&fN=Matthaeus)

~~~
maxkiener
Venushügel:

[https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyo...](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fyoumewe.it%2Fresult.html%3FM0%3D13%26O1%3D13%26M2%3D13%26M3%3D31%26M4%3D17%26M5%3D13%26M6%3D19%26M7%3D20%26M8%3D14%26M9%3D6%26M10%3D11%26M11%3D13%26MM0%3D5%26OO1%3D5%26MM2%3D8%26MM3%3D15%26MM4%3D5%26MM5%3D8%26MM6%3D12%26MM7%3D12%26MM8%3D8%26MM9%3D4%26MM10%3D8%26MM11%3D5%26MF0%3D8%26OF1%3D7%26MF2%3D5%26MF3%3D16%26MF4%3D10%26MF5%3D5%26MF6%3D7%26MF7%3D8%26MF8%3D6%26MF9%3D2%26MF10%3D3%26MF11%3D8%26age%3D28%26friendage%3D31.31%26male%3D53%26female%3D47%26maxFpM%3D31%26fN%3DMaximilian)

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Sharlin
Hmm... I answered "younger" to the "Do you think your friends are on average
older or younger?" question and it claimed the answer is wrong, giving the
average of 29.24 years. I turned 30 in June.

~~~
Sharlin
Incidentally, I think the question would be better framed in terms of the
median age - ie. "Do you think the majority of your friends are older or
younger than you?"

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maxkiener
yeah, i was on the verge about median age or average age... about the age
error, i dont know why that happens. i calculate your age by year but that
should still return 30 and validate to "right".

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soneca
mine was wrong to. I am 34, my friends average 32.XX. I put younger and was
told wrong.

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maxkiener
sorry for asking, but just to rule one thing out, you did tell facebook your
actual age, right?

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kevinwang
Holy shit, you're definitely going to have to explain that graphic at the end.
I looked at it for over a minute and I've absolutely no idea what it's
supposed to represent or even what kind of chart it is or what the axes are.

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mikegillman
Yes, I'm sure a lot of work went into that graph, but it makes absolutely no
sense to me whatsoever.

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maxkiener
i did prioritize the looks of it over readability. i was hoping it would make
a nice background to a phone or desktop, but i will keep working on
alternatives. im sure it can be done better.

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mouhtasi
Nice message in the dev console :)

3/5\. Fun idea and I liked the age data

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maxkiener
Thanks. I'm blushing, it's my first HN post (and first .js app)

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maxkiener
@cel1ne, you were a little too quick, i guess it hadn't fetched your data from
fb. should work if you reload and give it a few seconds...let me know

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fakename
I learned that no one tells facebook their real age. My "youngest" friend was
a senior when I was a freshman.

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diasp
Wrong. NaN% of your friends are male... NEXT

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gangstaplot2
R?

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maxkiener
I'm new here. what does R mean?

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gangstaplot2
A statistical programming language that makes heavy use of NaNs.

It's a lonely world, and whenever I see hints, I secretly hope the person is
an R user.

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asarazan
I failed pretty hard. 1/5

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jx2zhou
I don't have enough friends to even fail. 2/5 and then it alerted me I'd have
to get more friends.

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gdd001
SUPERcool!

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maxkiener
Thank YOU!

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Navarr
More appropriate title: "Does Facebook know your friends better than you do?"

The answer: "Of course."

All of these are random facts about my friends I wouldn't bother to commit to
memory. It doesn't say anything about _me_

~~~
maxkiener
My intent was that the results, albeit admittedly abstract, make you think
about yourself. i believe who your friends are does say something about
yourself (or at least provoke thoughts like: is it a coincidence that most of
my friends are gemini?)

