

Should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook? - mqt
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/01/should-gmail-yahoo-and-hotmail-block.html

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barns
My view is: if it's something I'm allowed to do manually, then I should be
allowed to use a tool to help me do it faster.

I don't agree with FB blocking Scoble, nor do I agree that Gmail should block
FB.

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jsnx
Technically speaking, the TOS allows Google to kick any _user_ who gets their
stuff from Facebook This would be bad for Facebook, but it would be bad for
Google and Yahoo, too: they would anger their users by frustrating a
reasonable use of their service. Those users might just take their email and
leave.

Is the same true for Facebook? If you get kicked from Facebook, where else
will you go? You might say "I'll just take my friends and start my own
Facebook!", but you won't be able to unless you somehow got around their
monitoring. (Not a difficult problem in principal, but tough for the non-
savvy.)

Would a service that exports Facebook contacts be illegal? What about a piece
of software that does so?

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reitzensteinm
My opinion: I'm a live by the sword, die by the sword kind of guy. I don't
really find anything wrong with an option to mine other sources for data, and
I'm sure I could find some way to justify (to myself) locking out mining from
a site of my own, but there's no way I'd do both.

I'm not even sure it makes business sense (most unethical practices don't in
the long run). While a massive shift away from Facebook could happen (ala
Friendster), Facebook would do far better trying to raise their value to users
and solidify their status as a platform to prevent that from happening.

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Xichekolas
They could raise their value to users by making the user's own data available
to him in handy formats. It'd be really nice to import all my contact's
birthdays into my Google Calendar for instance...

But then again, they might construe that to mean I'd visit less often. (The
reality is that I'd just notice more birthdays.)

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sethjohn
All this talk about the Terms Of Service agreements misses the fundamental
point that it's what people CAN DO (technologically) and what they WILL DO
(including breaking rules) that determines how this will unfold...not whatever
is written in small print in the Facebook TOS.

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anamax
I'm confused. Is FB stopping Scoble from exporting data that he put into FB or
is it stopping him from exporting data that FB collected itself?

Yes, it's likely to be a mix. However, if I gave FB some data, I'd be annoyed
if FB let Scoble export it without my permission.

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ojbyrne
The "get your contacts from external sites" script may be a violation of the
other TOSs, but more importantly it's a violation of your contacts' privacy.
They didn't say you could give their info to facebook.

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davidw
One difference might be: FB snarfing data from Google involves a few hits on
the Google site. Spidering a site rapidly involves a lot more traffic. Not
that FB can't handle it, but it's a little different.

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tlrobinson
The obvious reasoning behind this policy is to prevent spam.

But of course you only have access to your friends' email addresses.

