
The Truly Scary Part About Facebook Open Graph - BurgherJon2
http://jonathancavell.com/wordpress/social-media/2010/04/the-truly-scary-part-about-facebook-open-graph
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coderdude
This is where the world is headed, though. We may not be used to it yet and we
may not like it, but all the privacy we've been afforded in the past is due to
the inability to amass this kind of data about people. Over time I think we'll
get more used to the idea of someone knowing what songs we like, or where we
like to eat (for the purposes of selling us those things). I seriously doubt
our lives will become _more private_ as we continue hand out our personal
information left and right.

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jessep
Yeah, good point. That is a kind of terrifying idea. They are, to a degree,
accountable to their users, but other than that ... And it's quickly getting
to the point where they have monopoly style lockin. I guess it feels to me,
honestly, like they're already there. At that point they're barely even
accountable to their users.

Like you said, they're not bad people, and they make a fantastic product, but
it's still scary.

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jmm
Accountable to users is a HUGE point. What happens to a site when users feel
alienated or violated or whatever? Those users begin to walk away towards an
emergent alternative.

The facebook "lock in" isn't a lock in at all. It's more like a disincentive
to walk away from the user base, media storage, and slickness of the service.
But that can be reproduced if need be, I think.

I think there are better things to be worried about than the hypothetical
situation where Zuck goes nuts.

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Groxx
Non-exportable data is pretty much the _definition_ of a lock-in. There's
essentially _nothing_ that's impossible to walk away from, so the only thing
worth considering is getting out what you put in.

In terms of a social application, it's legitimately harder to make a not-
locked-in service. Who owns what, and how much of it is valid when you
transfer data to another host? But it's _still_ a lock-in, because there's no
way to leave and retain things.

Imagine if your phone would only export contacts to a new phone if you stayed
with your provider. Sure, you can still leave, but a data-lock-in is still a
lock-in technique.

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jmm
Soft lock in? I don't know... I guess I'm being a bit literal with the term
"lock." It's not binary (literally handcuffed or not), but more of a continuum
taking into account the cost of moving away. So sure, I guess I missed that.

And though I realize others may feel differently, I'm of the mindset that the
costs are relatively low in walking away from facebook without my data. I have
all my pictures anyway. Other peoples' pictures of me? Na... I don't own them.
Statuses, messages, connections, likes, events? Sayonara without qualms.

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Groxx
I think a lot of people define a lock-in as a _monetary_ lock-in. You can't
leave without spending X dollars to terminate early.

But given the time to re-do a large portion of your data on FB (assuming
you've used it a fair amount, as many people on it do), at minimum wage, it's
probably nearly as "expensive" to leave FB as to switch cell phone providers.

I know it's not a 1-to-1 comparison at all, and I've deleted my account and
felt no loss. But my use of FB was incredibly minimal compared to most of my
friends who are on it, and I hear "I hate Facebook, but everyone is on it"
echoed from nearly everyone I encounter.

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cubes
Either you trust an entity with your data or you don't. Whether that entity is
an individual, a corporation with a bunch of grey-beards on the board, or a
corporation run by someone who, presently, happens to be 25 isn't particularly
relevant to the issue.

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mark_l_watson
"Ownership" of this data is not clear to me. If FB does not allow large scale
spidering/collecting of this meta data, then FB has the best use of it. On the
other hand, if many other web sites use these meta data tags to be consistent
with what is an ad-hoc standard, then anyone can spider 3rd party sites
subject to their robots.txt file. Hopefully, by using the FB public APIs then
developers can get sub-graphs of FB hosted data to work with.

I like standards, and I would like it if many people started supplying RDF for
their sites. I am not sure yet if this advantage out weighs FB's lock on the
best use of this data.

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jay_kyburz
Somebody should start a company making fake, but credible Facebook identities
to sell.

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Estragon
That's the part which confuses me about all this. It's the easiest thing in
the world to set up a cut-out Facebook account.

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louislouis
ok great, so they know what movies and music we like and are gona target us
with better ads, but isn't that a good thing? I mean I may actually pay
attention to ads if they try to sell me things I want.

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dpnewman
i just don't want to see and think about facebook's brand everywhere i go on
the web. it's one thing to actively choose to post something to facebook, even
if from another site...or retweet or digg etc. but that "like" thing ...
there's no action there, or sharing of the thought of the user clicking. it's
so banal, and so vague, that to see it spread to every site - keeping up with
the joneses - just bums me out like seeing a gap show up on valencia street
...or somesuch.

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kareemm
i'll be interesting to see how regulators come down on FB b/c of their
willingness to put user needs behind their own.

it's already starting to happen (not soon enough):

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042702969.html)

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lyime
He keeps saying "no open", yet doesnt explain why he thinks its not open. Most
of the data is actually available through API's.

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naner
So only browse Facebook in an Incognito tab. Got it.

