
Facebook’s Restrictions on User Data Cast a Long Shadow - somerandomness
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-restrictions-on-user-data-cast-a-long-shadow-1442881332
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leoedin
On one hand, it is a shame to see potentially informative research (such as
the drug user study mentioned) stymied, on the other hand I can't help but be
pleased with this development. The amount of information Facebook holds on
every one of us makes me uncomfortable, and the idea that much of that was
available over APIs for anyone to consume is quite concerning.

The article includes:

> _hopes to salvage his project by asking Facebook for access to eight types
> of data, including photos in which a user is tagged. He hopes to reconstruct
> a person’s friend network by seeing who they socialize with through their
> photos. Dr. Crosier says he won’t be able to see the images themselves, just
> that a user was tagged and by whom._

I don't particularly want random researchers to know who I socialise with. If
this researcher (who may or may not be well intentioned) can reconstruct my
friendship network, so can anyone.

It's scary enough that Facebook has this information - it's even scarier that
anyone with some Python skills and a basic understanding of APIs can get it
too. I'm not often wont to praise Facebook, but I think in this case they are
(reluctantly and finally) doing the right thing by restricting data access.

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caseysoftware
You can derive a number of these things - hometown, education, religious &
political affiliation, and relationship status - with just a couple dozen
lines of code from someone's Likes, which is more innocuous anyway:

[http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-
evil](http://caseysoftware.com/blog/social-apis-for-social-evil)

But in all seriousness, this is the logical progression. As long as all of
those things are locked down, the likelihood of exporting your data to a rival
platform - if there was one - is basically nil. Their goal was to become the
center of gravity that pulls everyone in and now they're protecting that.

I believe the idea that users want to download their own copy of "their data"
is a fallacy. Sure, the people here think in those terms but average users
don't. Remember, these are the same people a generation ago would have though
AOL was the Internet. They don't think in terms of "my data" and don't see the
value of it.

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omarforgotpwd
I can grant an application permission to access my data on Facebook. I can't
let an application get info about my friends though, that's their information
and they control access through their own Facebook account. Otherwise, any
single one of your friends authorizing an application would result in that
application getting all your data. Obviously Facebook needs to err on the side
of caution here, but hopefully there will be some new more restricted APIs in
the future.

Oh, and as an added bonus they block all competition from accessing their
incredibly valuable social graph, securing their monopoly for the future.

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jrochkind1
One way to get around the paywall is to send a message to yourself on facebook
with the URL, then click on it.

~~~
btbuildem
or just google it

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wodenokoto
On the other hand, they were giving away too much of their users private data.

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eecks
Who do they give it to?

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scholia
App developers, for a start.... If you sign up for an app, the developer gets
a lot less info than they used to.

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Flimm
Paywall.

~~~
domas
Usual workaround with Google: [https://www.google.com/search?q=facebooks-
restrictions-on-us...](https://www.google.com/search?q=facebooks-restrictions-
on-user-data-cast-a-long-shadow)

