

Give Us Our Data, Facebook - andre3k1
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/give-us-our-data-facebook/

======
miratrix
The problem is that Facebook's claiming that email is just another piece of
metadata about a user. However, from Google's point of (and rest of the non-
Facebook web), email is not a metadata, but the key identifier around which
all of the services know which "John Smith" the given user is.

If I'm building anything interesting and want to play outside the Facebook
walled garden, the Facebook ID doesn't really get me anything - it's like
someone giving me a currency from a random country that I never intend to
visit.

Unfortunately, even Facebook itself treats the email address as an identifier
data (what do you need to use to log in to Facebook? Email address and
password). It's a little disingenuous for them to turn that around and say
that it's a metadata that's part of the user's profile, as opposed to the only
unique, persistent, and widely used identifier that we currently have on the
web.

~~~
chrischen
Actually the facebook uid is very useful. Why else would facebook
competitor.com need a friends email addresses but to spam them to sign up? If
two people sign up with facebook data dumps you can still link them up via
data dumps.

Another useful feature is email hashed (dunno if it's still supported. But if
you have someone's email you can connect compare email hashed so emails are
never revealed.

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patrickaljord
There is also the fact that Facebook does allow yahoo mail and hotmail to
export their friends emails, proof: [http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-
have-no-right-to-ex...](http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-
right-to-export-email-addresses-55247)

So why not gmail?

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dmvaldman
I'm glad facebook doesn't give out the email addresses of friends to third
parties without permission, and I am for their distinction between owning the
friend list, but not their friends' data.

The public seems to not have a consistent sense of privacy. They slam Facebook
for being too open by not having a privacy setting enforced as the default,
and then slam Facebook again when Facebook isn't advertising emails.

Personally not a fan of all this hot air.

~~~
patrickaljord
> I'm glad facebook doesn't give out the email addresses of friends to third
> parties without permission

The problem is that they actually do with yahoo mail and hotmail
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1889234>

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Derferman
Facebook can't claim that "every person owns and controls his/her information"
when the Graph API allows access (via friends permissions) to your friends'
status, likes, notes, location, photos, relationships, checkins, website,
groups, events, activities and birthdays[1].

In fact, the only information about your friends not available via friends
permissions are email addresses and full streams.

[1]:
[http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissio...](http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions)

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bretthellman
They should have used the title "Facebook is lying"

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danielnicollet
This soo wrong. Arrington keeps using the word "friends" as if emails from
your FB contacts were those of your actual friends. Imagine Arrington being
able to turn 4000 "friends" on Facebook into a mass email list!!! No way! That
just so wrong and I don't want that to happen. The premise under wich we
befriend someone on Facebook just never included them being able to email you
directly.

In my case, it would be the last thing to happen before I quit FB entirely and
stuff my account with bogus info or close it altogether.

~~~
stoney
As I understand it, taking a list of FB contacts and turning them into a mass
email list would be a violation of the CAN-SPAM rules - people need to
explicitly agree to be added to a mail list.

~~~
skinnymuch
this is correct. At the same time, the law doesn't really care about a 4,000
person mailing list, or even a 400,000 person mailing list.

------
gojomo
At both Gmail and Facebook, the most common way someone new winds up in your
'contacts' is they send you a message, and you somehow 'ack' that you want to
maintain a link to them. (Or vice-versa.) From that point on, your view
includes the email address they freely volunteered to you. That's the info
anyone should be able to export.

Facebook wanting to pretend that somehow, contact info shared between friends
in _their_ system can't go any further than Facebook is just a self-serving
rationalization.

Now, you _don't_ have to show your email addresses to any or all friends on
Facebook -- it's part of the privacy controls. So naturally if I don't show it
to certain people, those people shouldn't be able to export it. And it's a
nice feature of Facebook that me changing my privacy settings, or de-friending
someone, essentially recalls my email from their contacts, unless they took
special steps to copy it elsewhere earlier.

But in the meantime, if I can see it, and copy & paste it, and use it to send
messages, it's mine at that moment, even though Facebook may be holding it for
me.

------
chrischen
I'm siding with Facebook on this.

You can already get Facebook UIDs, which can be used to reconstruct the graph
edges. You don't want to store Facebook UIDs? Build your own social graph.

And Facebook is right. I own MY info on Facebook. I can prove it. I'll just
delete my account with my email address. If you were my friend let's see if
you still have acces to that info. If they start letting my friends export my
email to third parties then I'm getting off Facebook.

EDIT: Think about it. Most sites these days require an email. It's not exactly
optional info to use Facebook. Are we seriously considering that it's
acceptable that we let friends EXPORT people's email addresses for third
parties just because they "friended" on Facebook? Maybe if there was a new
"Share my email" feature this would be acceptable but "friending" != "here you
can give my email to third parties and here's an easy API for you to do that"

~~~
lukeschlather
I already built my own social graph. It's fine that Facebook claims co-
ownership, as they did facilitate its construction, but it's equally mine.

If you don't want me to have your email address I'm not your friend.

~~~
chrischen
Actually Facebook doesn't need to co-own it. If the user uploads a Facebook
dump with UIDs then that relationship info is only useful if someone with a
corresponding UID provides more data. But once it leaves Facebook it's free
and owned by the user. What I meant is that if you don't like Facebook's UID
system then you should build your own social network from scratch, otherwise
these pre-built relationship data is still really valuable.

Also the UID is the relationship data. You do get that. No need to go out and
dump emails which you didn't build. If you do get that info facebook would
have to GIVE that to you.

> If you don't want me to have your email address I'm not your friend.

That actually depends on how Facebook designs the application to work. I could
very well design an application that lets people store their social security
numbers and share that in certain ways. There's no universal law that says an
arbitrary indication of relation such as "friend" means that I must have
access to your social security number now. Clearly Facebook has not chosen to
make that the default and let users easy export emails just by friending. If
they did, then yes, I would unfriend people that I don't to give this power
to.

------
kingnothing
That looks like some extra long rant about nothing.

What data does this guy want? You can pull out nearly everything about a user
via Facebook's numerous APIs, if they grant sufficient permissions.

~~~
davidu
Not email/phone/etc.

And despite this, you can get email via hotmail or yahoo mail contacts
integration.

It's fairly a hypocritical position for Facebook to take.

