
Facebook's legal team bans developer of F.B. Purity from Facebook - bane
http://www.fbpurity.com/news/important-news-facebooks-legal-team-have-told-me-i-am-banned-from-facebook-because-of-f-b-purity/
======
Rudism
Facebook really couldn't have been more generous to this guy. He's really
milking the free publicity, too, with all the talk of this being the end of
the road (which clearly it won't be, since there's nothing to stop him from
continuing work using an alternate account). I can't even imagine what
Facebook was thinking, they must have known that attempting to shut this down
would backfire.

If I were Facebook and I really didn't want this extension or others like it
to stay afloat, my approach would be simple... hire one guy whose only job is
to monitor new releases of these extensions, and then make minor structural
changes to the Facebook site that break them as soon as they're out. Become
the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. When the extension keeps breaking within
a day or two of each release, users would get fed up and stop using it, the
devs would get overwhelmed with bug reports and complaints, and they'd all die
slow, quiet deaths.

~~~
downandout
_"...there's nothing to stop him from continuing work using an alternate
account..."_

Actually, there is. He's been informed by Facebook that they have revoked his
right to use their site, which is their right. Any update that he issues to to
the plugin would be solid evidence that he had been back on Facebook. In a US
legal system that regularly bows to the will of large corporations, he could
not only be sued, but also charged with a crime under the CFAA (unauthorized
access) should he simply open another account.

~~~
itry
Im not sure about the law in the USA, but in Germany I would beg to differ.
Here, if you run a service, you do NOT have the right to arbitrarily reject
users. The bigger your userbase is, the less you have that right. So as long
as the developer acts within the law, he could demand access to Facebook.

~~~
mhurron
> in Germany ... if you run a service, you do NOT have the right to
> arbitrarily reject users

[citation needed]

No, seriously, I'm having a hard time believing this.

~~~
rickmb
What is so hard to believe about this?

Capitalism is not a force of nature. Countries have an enormous amount of
legislation in place to ensure companies can do business, and invest huge
amounts of money in services supporting the private sector (infrastructure,
education, etc).

These companies wield a tremendous amount of social power, especially services
like Facebook. There's nothing odd about holding these companies to certain
standards and laws that ensure they can not negatively influence the civil
society from which they profit so much. Being allowed to refuse service to the
very people that enable your business to exist is a privilege, not a right,
and it comes with restrictions.

This is quite normal in most countries outside the US.

~~~
Karunamon
>What is so hard to believe about this?

That someone who owns a company does not have authority in who they will and
will not do business with?

~~~
CamperBob2
See _Civil Rights Act of 1964_. Many of the act's opponents were dyed-in-the-
wool racists and bigots, and the rest of us can be glad that they lost. But
there were some others who opposed the act because they understood that a
slippery slope was being created.

~~~
mhurron
Those are the limits most people are familiar with. They're reasonable and
expected but even in the US businesses have 'the right to refuse service to
anyone.' They work in the same way that you can fire someone, but you can't
fire someone for being black, or a woman.

The OP claimed that that did not exist at all in Germany.

------
saurik
I really wish this person, in the course of an otherwise sane argument (one
that I feel for tremendously, as I have spent the last five years of my life
organizing a community of people who do nothing but modify other peoples'
software products, one that I always have felt has numerous analogies to what
people do with GreaseMonkey scripts and browser extensions), didn't feel the
need to play the "they don't own the letters FB" card... that is a ludicrous
way of looking at trademark law (which involves a large dose of context
sensitivity: if you are using FB for a coffee shop that is very different than
an app that changes how people use a product that is often abbreviated FB). To
then further claim that it stands for Fluff Busting and doesn't have anything
to do with Facebook is just trying to play the audience for a fool: it doesn't
matter what it "stands for", those letters would not have been chosen in this
context had the name of the website been different.

~~~
grabeh
I agree it is a weak argument but in any event I see the usage as legitimate
in any event - as he is using the term 'FB' in a descriptive manner to help to
describe the purpose of the product. There is nothing wrong with this in trade
mark law generally provided in good faith (see nominative usage[0]).

Facebook would argue that the usage is piggy-backing on the goodwill in the
name (as with the coffee shop example) but in this case, I think there is a
very good reason why 'FB' is being utilised.

Personally speaking, I would argue this is why they are using other means to
restrict the growth of the extension rather than using a more traditional
cease and desist letter more geared to trade mark rights (at least as far as
I'm aware).

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use>

~~~
creamyhorror
> _I see the usage as legitimate in any event - as he is using the term 'FB'
> in a descriptive manner to help to describe the purpose of the product.
> There is nothing wrong with this in trade mark law generally provided in
> good faith (see nominative usage[0])._

Agreed. Trademark law seems to be aimed at preventing companies from
pretending to be some other company. This clearly doesn't apply to generic
names, like "Sofa Vacuum" or "Photocopier Repair". But Facebook is something
that's become de facto ubiquitous, a service almost universally used in the US
- more ubiquitous than many generic things.

Surely, then, in the case of companies that provide services that relate to
Facebook, there's justification to make direct reference to FB in their names?
The major consideration is whether there's much likelihood of these companies
being mistaken for the original company - but a name like "Purity for
Facebook" (or even "FB Purity") seems like it wouldn't be confused as being
from Facebook itself.

Companies are obliged to defend their trademarks, but I hope sanity prevails
in the courts, and people get to call their applications "Windows
RegistryMaster" or "Mac Backpack" or anything else that isn't confusing or
misleading. I'm probably underestimating how messy it'll be to sort out
justified (descriptive) usages from the ones that are just piggybacking,
though.

------
bbrizzi
So, should the Internet Explorer team also be banned from facebook? They too
"interfere with the way Facebook is rendered to its users".

~~~
hamai
How long until DRM browsers where userscripts will be considered piracy?

~~~
lazugod
This is already the case with Chrome. See
[http://superuser.com/questions/450893/how-to-install-a-
priva...](http://superuser.com/questions/450893/how-to-install-a-private-user-
script-in-chrome-21) which details how unauthorized userscripts are made
difficult to install.

Even better, try pasting

    
    
       javascript:alert('hi');
    

into the address bar.

~~~
btrask
Those changes were made for security, to make social engineering attacks more
difficult. You can still type JS into the address bar, you just can't copy and
paste it.

~~~
Kerrick
Further, you _can_ copy and paste it into the console.

------
kfinley
_"...Facebook is blocking direct links to my site and libeling me by claiming
the site is “Spammy and Unsafe...”_. Does anyone else see a problem with this,
or is this justified? It feels like Facebook has crossed a line from guardian
to censor.

~~~
w1ntermute
> It feels like Facebook has crossed a line from guardian to censor.

I'm pretty sure Facebook crossed that line a _long_ time ago.

------
marcf
They shouldn't be allowed to ban a company from having an account on Facebook
for a web extension?

Will the developers of all the AdBlock variants need to worry about their
accounts being blocked as well (as they surely are against Facebook's terms of
service as well)?

~~~
haukilup
I'm not sure if your first sentence is questioning someone else's statement,
or if you meant "Shouldn't they not be allowed to ...".

If you meant to assert that they shouldn't be allowed to: why not? It's their
website, and their TOS that's being ignored. They have every right to.

~~~
kamjam
His point is that AdBlock to a certain extend does the same thing as this
plugin. You don't want to see ads, great we'll remove them. It just doesn't go
as far as this plug in does in removing inline adverts and re-organizing
content, but that's because it a generic ad blocker and not Facebook specific.

So why is it one rule for this guy and another rule for AdBlock (or any other
extension)?

I run AdBlock, and was shocked to see the amount of adverts on "normal"
computers, truly shocking. Does that mean you should ban my account? They have
a Facebook page: <https://www.facebook.com/adblockplus>

Maybe Google should stop offering AdBlock as a Chrome extension, given that
advertising is a huge chunk of their business?

You are able to achieve a similar Greasemonkey Firefox plugin. You just need
to find the correct scripts... <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/>

The guy should just open source it, let's see Facebook try and keep up with
that one.

------
n9com
Wow, anyone notice that you cannot post a link on Facebook to the fbpurity.com
domain (even if you shorten the URL). Facebook is blocking the posting of the
URL as it is in their words 'spammy or unsafe'.

~~~
grecy
I find it interesting and scary that one of the most used information sources
in the world can be arbitrarily censored so easily.

I wonder if an article about some scandalous escapades of Facebook high-ups
would be similarly censored.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Of course it would. Obligatory XKCD:

<http://xkcd.com/743/>

------
oulipo
Wait, I don't get something: how can there be any legal ground for forbidding
someone to create a plugin that changes Facebook appearance?

How is that different from creating your own browser that render sites however
you want? Is Facebook going to try & sue Google when there is a rendering bug
in Chrome? Will Facebook sue Userextensions.org?

Would Facebook sue someone whose viewing condition alters the way it appears
also?

~~~
notimetorelax
I don't think that they were claiming that it was illegal to do that. They
claim that extension breaks their ToS, which is a private contract.

~~~
chii
> their ToS, which is a private contract.

the ToS is between a facebook user and facebook, not the author of the
extension and facebook. In fact, the author has no obligation whatsoever with
facebook. If facebook does not like their site messsed with, they could detect
and block this extension like how some sites block users with adblock running.

~~~
eli
Facebook doesn't need to have a reason to ban you from their site. It's their
site.

~~~
nathan_long
Yes. They can ban anyone they want. My question is how they know that Facebook
user X and browser extension Y have any connection. If the extension's maker
was marketing on Facebook, he should have expected this.

Meanwhile, yes, the TOS is between the user and the site. If Facebook wants to
fight its users and say "if you don't send HTTP requests for our ad images,
we'll stop answering your HTTP requests for our HTML pages," that's up to
them.

I do think we need to push back whenever companies assert a right to control
how a user views their site. That is fundamentally not how the web works.
Every resource my browser requests, it requests by my implicit command to do
so. Nobody has the right to tell me what to request; they only have a right to
decide how they'll respond to my requests.

~~~
javajosh
They made the connection because he was using Facebook itself to market his
extension. I suspect that if he hadn't been doing that they would not have
banned his account.

It doesn't make it right, but it does point out that future FB-extension
developers should be cautious about connecting their FB account to their
extension.

------
davidjgraph
I like the comments on that page. Various users complaining how evil and vile
they find Facebook. I take it they are annoyed because they use Facebook and
want to do client-side parsing.

Why not, y'know, just not use Facebook? Are we complicating this issue just to
have a discussion? The solution is really simple, yet there seems to be tunnel
vision when it comes to thinking of it.

~~~
DanBC
In the past people would serve "stuff", and I'd have a client to receive that
stuff.

The whole point of the WWW is that you must not rely on your user having a
particular browser. Or operating system. Or display resolution. Or a display
at all. You serve valid stuff and allow the client to parse it how they like.
You can suggest nice font sizes and good contrast colours, but if they want to
view it at 72 pt in pink on yellow they can.

Lots of the WWW ignores the fact that people may be using different screens or
different whatever to view the content. Luckily we're moving away from fixed
font sizes and a little fixed width blob of content in the middle of an
otherwise white screen, but there are still weird lock ins around.

And Facebook are just following this trend - "this is our content, and it's
our service, and you'll view it how we want you to".

Your wider point is a good one though. If people are annoyed at ads they
should stop visiting the site serving those ads, with maybe a polite email
explaining why they're not going to visit again.

~~~
politician
> If people are annoyed at ads they should stop visiting the site serving
> those ads..

If people are annoyed at ads they should stop visiting _ad servers_. Hence,
AdBlock and Ghostery.

~~~
untog
If they object to paying for the service, they should stop using the service-
not just stop paying for it.

~~~
politician
In what sense does directing one's browser to issue HTTP requests towards a
foreign endpoint imply payment? Am I "paying" HN for POSTing this comment?

~~~
untog
Sigh. You know full-well what I am talking about. Discussing it in terms of
what is technically occurring does not achieve anything- Facebook is a
service. The service is provided to you for free in return for showing you
advertisements. If you block those advertisements then you are depriving
Facebook of the means by which they pay for your presence on their service.

No, it is not a direct payment. Yes, it is a transaction.

~~~
politician
Right, but it's worth pointing out that business models reliant on browser-
requested ads are based on a faulty assumption that site owners control
clients. Does Facebook's TOS include a statement to the effect of "the user
must make a best effort to download all resources linked from each page"?

~~~
sbarre
You realize that argument is like saying that you shouldn't have to pay for
the bus if you're able to sneak on via the back doors without being seen.

Yes, there are ways to get around Facebook's ad serving and use the service
"for free", in that sense.

Is it possible? Sure.. Is it legal? Probably.. Is it the right thing to do?
Probably not..

If you object to the ads being served to you on Facebook, you should probably
not use the service at all..

~~~
politician
No, it's not like that _at all_.

It's more like I want to go to the store, so I invite the store to send me a
driver who will use my car to drive me to the store. The store accepts my
invitation, but when the driver shows up he wants to invite a bunch of
hitchhikers into my car but I politely decline. Meanwhile, I'm driven to the
store.

Your bus analogy assumes that Facebook owns and operates my browser. That is
incorrect.

~~~
untog
These analogies are stupid, but in your example it's more like you invite the
store to send a driver and they say "sure, he's going to bring five people
with him", you say "OK, fine", then when he arrives you forcibly eject the
five people you agreed to ride with.

But like I said. Analogies get really dumb when you get too deeply into them.

------
thisthisthis
Facebook has no control over a user's browser. The most they can do is
randomly ban users, like this guy.

The truth is this is something no website can control. If I want to view FB
via a local proxy on my device that filters out commercial garbage, I can do
so. And I can show any of my friends how to do the same. A little tcpserver,
tcpclient and sed and we can clean things up quite nicely, with minimal fuss.

These attempts to control how someone views a website (e.g. see Twitter's
recent efforts) are futile. This is digital, not print. A social website is
mainly just text (html) and various resource files (e.g. images), it is all
malleable in digital form and there are myriad ways to process it and render
it, of which the Facebook developers' choice or a popular web browser
developers' choice are only a few.

You have to wonder if FB's legal team even understands what is technically
feasible and what isn't (like controlling how a page is viewed, on the client
side).

------
netcan
What exactly is the relevant law here.

Trademarks are (as I understand it) a way to stop other from trading _as_ you
in some way. You can't pretend to be facebook, affiliated with facebook or use
a name/symbol that makes it easy to get confused.

OTOH, if your product relates to another (Companion to "Fundamentals Of
Microbiology by James O'Leary" by Timothy Goldman), is that not allowed?
Companies can be called "Help with Windows" can't they?

What are the actual rules?

~~~
saurik
I am not certain there are, or even if there should be, steadfast rules: it
largely comes down to whether there is a legitimate case for confusion. If you
tried to prosecute this you would attempt to demonstrate cases where users
were confused while potentially attempting to motivate that the name was
chosen with at least some intention to confuse.

To look at your examples, however: the usage of prepositions changes things
drastically. Can you imagine Microsoft creating a new product, "Microsoft
Essentials"? If you saw that book, would you at least momentarily, wonder if
it was a first-party product (book, software, whatever) from Microsoft? I am
not certain about you, but that sounds like it could be them. However, if I
saw "Essentials of Microsoft", I am pretty certain I wouldn't jump there: I
would think that this is something describing Microsoft, not something built
by Microsoft.

(edit: I thought I made that example up, but I then did a search for it after
posting my comment, and it turns out that, in fact, that is so much the kind
of thing that Microsoft would do that they pretty much have, with "Windows
Live Essentials", "Windows Essentials", and "Microsoft Security Essentials",
all being terms they've used. Yet, even with all of those usages, "Essentials
of Microsoft" sounds more like a documentary or description than something
they would have made themselves.)

This gets exceptionally bad with little tags like Apple's "i"; the "i" is so
overwhelmingly "Apple's thing" that if I saw an app on someone's phone called
"iVideo" I can't imagine not thinking "wow, Apple made a video service?", and
when people choose a name like that, it is because they _know_ what the "i"
means to people, and they want to look "more official" and "more like Apple",
which even if the intention is not "I want them to think I _am_ Apple" is
still in the bad zone.

Regardless, the core issue here isn't even this trademark problem, and that
should probably have just been left at "we agreed this was fine, and now they
are changing their minds". The more serious issue here is whether Facebook
should be able to ban a user for building a product they don't like and
whether building it, using it, or both are legally grounded.

~~~
kbutler
You should get over the "i implies Apple" bias.

iGoogle (Wow, Apple made a Google service?) iRobot (iRobot Roomba, etc. -
1990) iBrowse (Amiga browser, 1996) iPlayer (BBC) iVideo
(<http://www.ivideoapp.com/>)

A little googling (heh) will find lots more.

Trademarks need to be chosen from non-generic words and symbols, or must be
qualified by a non-generic name (e.g., "Microsoft Windows" vs. "X/Windows").

Allowing one company to co-opt a letter of the alphabet pollutes the global
namespace far too much.

~~~
duaneb
I believe Apple has (had?) to license 'IPhone' from some telco.

~~~
wutbrodo
Both iOS and iPhone are licensed from Cisco.

------
oliveoil
I think Facebook is not after FB Purity. They are after anyone who could come
up with a plugin that scrapes the content and stores it to a db. People using
the plugin would get access to the db in exchange: companies could look up
prospective employees, ex-girlfriends spy on their defriended ex-boyfriends,
etc.

Hell, the idea is so tempting that someone is definitely doing this already.
And you'd only need a percentile of the users to get the information for every
other facebook user.

~~~
patrickod
Surely this can be said of any application that you give such permissions to
with OAauth? We've already seen cases of people selling the information they
gathered.

------
moepstar
I guess the EFF would offer help if they're asked for it?

Other than that, i don't think Facebook has much legal ground if the facts
presented in the blog post are everything to the story...

IANAL, of course

~~~
wrboyce
I went to the EFF for help on a similar case once (I am the author of the old
Chrome "Facebook Adblock" extension).

I went to the EFF for advice mostly, did I need to comply with the takedown?
Should I be concerned that I couldn't meet all of the ridiculous demands (they
wanted personally identifying information about everyone who had downloaded
the extension!). EFF's response? In summary "We're not sure on this one… But
can we blog about it? This may or may not cause you more problems."

I didn't hear from them again after I asked them to keep it quiet for the time
being.

------
imran
I think we should go for some other alternative besides facebook before its
too late.

~~~
bbrizzi
Something like Diaspora?

~~~
ceejayoz
It's a stretch to call Diaspora an "alternative" at this point.

------
mosselman
People have to stop acting like they have 'the right' to use facebook. It is a
product; they set out a couple of rules and act a certain way. Don't like it?
Just don't use Facebook.

~~~
sjmulder
I agree that people do not have “the right” to use Facebook, neither are
people obliged to.

That doesn’t meant that you can’t just not use Facebook. Social networks, in
particular Facebook, have become a central part of social interaction. You
can’t simply use another network, because they’re not interoperable. Your
friends aren’t there, and you’ll be missing out.

~~~
chii
Convince your friends that facebook as a platform is poor, and use another one
(or, _gasp_ meet face to face, or call each other up, or sms, or use good ol'
email and flickr).

~~~
aw3c2
Any soccermom-compatible tips as how to convince them?

~~~
randomchars
Or grandparent compatible ones?

------
motters
Probably the way to go with this is to open source it, such that anyone can
independently share and compile it. But just in case anyone becomes fatigued
of fighting the ridiculous control freakery of Mr Zuckerberg’s lawyers there
is always Friendica. Friendica is already open source. It’s themeable. There
is no spam or bribed posts, and you don’t have to be trapped in some AOL-style
walled garden.

------
danso
Interesting...I started using the "Missing e" plugin for Tumblr...but after
Tumblr kept giving me dire warnings about how I was compromising my security
and being an otherwise bad person, I disabled it, thinking that at some point
Tumblr might just hellban the plugin users. (Also, the plugin wasn't as useful
for my usecases as I had hoped.)

------
darrikmazey
Up-front disclaimer: I don't use facebook, but the precedent of this upsets
me.

It seems to me that a website can define the API by which you access their
site (some subset of HTTP), but can they really make a definitive claim to how
data is rendered on the client side once that data is fetched through
legitimate targets?

------
languagehacker
At first I thought Facebook was the bad guy, and then I went to this guy's
site. I'm legitimately surprised I didn't get a malware warning. This thing
looks like it's from the '90s. Also, the begging for donations is slightly
unbecoming when one of the primary purposes of your extension is to hide ads.

Furthermore, take a look at this obnoxious Facebook page that I'm surprised
hasn't been taken down yet: <https://www.facebook.com/fluffbustingpurity>

Isn't such heavy (and spammy, As-Seen-On-TV-Reminiscent) advertising about a
product that flouts Facebook's functionalities on Facebook just playing with
fire?

~~~
throwaway125
I don't understand where your malware remark comes from. I've visited his
website (albeit with noscript on) and it looks a lot more readable than your
average news site. Seems like a low blow to attack him over how the website
looks, especially when you mention you were surprised it didn't serve malware.

------
twapi
this also means that blocking contents using Adblock extension violates T&C.

------
thisthisthis
It would be interesting to know what FB (or Twitter, for that matter) tells
its advertisers about how they can purportedly control the appearance of
commercial content to the user. Are they upfront about the realities and the
risks? Are they leading the advertisers on? Are advertisers well-informed?
What would advertisers have to say about the existence client-side options
that can easily manipulate content to the user's preferences? It would be
interesting to know.

------
digitalengineer
Purity user here. Love your product but think perhaps it's time to let go.
Attacking you personally with lawyers will end badly for you. Their goal is
not to "win" but just to delay, frustrate and (if you keep it up) bankrupt you
because of all the costs. It's the standard strategy followed by lot's of big
companies with deep pockets. Purity rocked and so do you. I'd put those
talents to good use on other ideas.

~~~
itry
Not true. Big companies do not always win just because they are big. I wonder
in what kind of world you live. When somebody has more money then you, you bow
down no matter what he wants from you? Common. A bit more courage!

~~~
digitalengineer
Somebody or _FaceBook with it's infinite resources_? What's the best he can
hope for? Get his old account back and continue building a _free_ product, all
the while relying on the popularity of social network? If he becomes really
big they'll turn it into a cat-and-mouse game like Apple did with other music
players tapping in their iTunes. I was not thinking about courage, but rather
about focus and choosing your battles.

~~~
itry
> What's the best he can hope for?

He can simply continue his project in any way he likes. He doesnt need a
facebook account to do so.

If he likes, he could also sue facebook for access. But as I said in another
comment, I dont know US law enough to know if he would win.

As I understand it, he has a large userbase. So his project has a purpose.
Just because its free, it doesnt mean its no good.

~~~
digitalengineer
Ah but I didn't say it was "no good". Instead I said I was a user of Purity.
Suing FB? Winning? We live in different world my friend ;-)

------
joering2
Just in case there is still someone left out there who believes in Zuck's lie
about openess of the internet and giving users ability to connect and access
their information freely. This is your wakeup call. Facebook can shine on the
outside but it will take predatory steps against anyone fucking around with
them and affecting their ad sale stock display.

------
ricardobeat
Do they have any legal ground for this? A browser extension doesn't interact
with the service directly, and is explicitly enabled by the user, therefore it
should not be subject to the service's terms. What about extensions that
affect every website? God forbid we end up with a 'no-extend' tag that
disallows them.

------
casca
I'm a little suspicious of this. It might be true but something doesn't sit
quite right. Where's the full text? Or a scan of the letter. How do we know
that this is done by Facebook's legal team? Why only this product and not
others like SocialFixer?

Surely the legal team would present a legal response, like a cease and desist?

~~~
fbpdev
i dont think facebooks legal team like their missives being scrutinised as
they put the "all rights reserved" disclaimer on each one. if i were to post a
copy of their emails, im guessing they could use the DMCA law to get the posts
taken down... is an "all rights reserved" signature legally binding?

~~~
deong
Regular copyright law perhaps. Unless they protected those emails via some
technological mechanism that you had to circumvent to publish, the DMCA isn't
relevant.

That said, if nothing else there is a strong argument fair use argument for
posting excerpts from the communications along with your rebuttals. It's not
my money of course, so I understand the reluctance to do so.

------
mbusse
I develop a Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script that adds features to the
Facebook Comments Moderation Tool (<http://mattbusse.com/fcm-enhance/>).

I have not heard a peep from Facebook about it, although StatCounter tells me
that at least someone there has seen it.

------
readme
>What do you think I should do? Keep up the fight, or let the _expletives
deleted_ win?

You lose either way. Either, you fight to keep your app, and you're helping a
company that doesn't respect your contributions, or you give up, and you lose
with less effort.

Lose the easy way. Make an app for someone who cares.

------
JeremyMorgan
I find it rather interesting that I tried to post a link to this article on
Facebook and got this:

<http://i.imgur.com/REvQR.png>

The content you're trying to link to is spammy or unsafe. If so, FB Purity is
the best malware I've ever downloaded.

------
mullingitover
Somebody on facebook has never heard of the Streisand Effect. This is actually
a really great fix for facebook and it implements a lot of features I've
really wanted. For example, the ability to hide sponsored stories.

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tyang
Sorry to hear this. I used F.B. Purity for several weeks/months. But good job
in going public the way you did. You're now trending on HN.

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greedo
Somewhere, Barbara Streisand is shaking her head.

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eyeareque
I had never heard of f.b purity before today. Thanks to facebook for bringing
this to my attention through hassling a developer.

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drivebyacct2
So if I build a scraper to give me my information from Facebook and archive
it, am I violating the ToS?

I'm so sick of this era of "Let's all build a service and lock users in" and
it pains me every time YC picks another company whose future is "build a huge
social base and then we'll figure out how to monetize it".

