I'm quite torn: I simply can't decide what portion of this post I'm most captivated by. Is it the fact that John knows the exact date from over four years ago that he was booted from facebook? Maybe it's the feat of name dropping a whopping nine different people (I think.. I got dizzy counting) while more or less telling a story about saving a flat file with commas in it. It could be the fact that I just found out that Scoble was a pioneer in the fight for the open web while almost every time I've crossed paths with him in the last several years he's been dry humping a brand new buzzworthy social media platform to death. In the end, though, I'm pretty sure I've settled on the idea that yesterday on what I assume is a professional style radiopodcast thing a number of grown men spent a measurable amount of time arguing about how potentially fair or totally unfair it was that one of them got banned by facebook and also whether heather in 7th period likes one of them.
The only downside of the whole thing is the part where he goes on a broken spirited nihilistic rant about how hopeless everything is while suggesting I may be a social pariah for not having a facebook account.
He and I clearly have a somewhat different perspective on the world, but I am sympathetic to several of the issues he raises. It seems most of his despair revolves around the sense of having "lost" and being overtaken by events. He responds by saying screw it I just don't give a shit about my principles because they aren't working out for me. But the world ebs and flows, and more importantly it needs some people to take a few principled stands about what they believe in and remind people about issues even when not personally advantageous.
Consider what became of the 90's cypherpunk visions as they were soundly crushed by a new millennium bent on ubiquitous private tracking, massive government wiretaps and swiss cheese security. Who would have guessed such an ice age of uncoolness would thaw out in a world where wikileaks was the story of the year, people split dinner with me using money a russian teenager created using a cluster of high performance crypto gear and people organized revolutions online.
There's certainly an irony to the idea that such inexorable privatization of "the web" has occurred within the last 4 years that there's no point in even trying to effect any future change in a positive direction. My only real take away from this article is that if you are a Scoble-magnitude tech pundit then you are pretty much forced to use proprietary tools to maximize your audience. It's a bit like reality TV stars who have to join a trashy television program to get the attention they crave—it's a shortcut to a certain end, but it's not the way work that matters is done.
IIRC, Scoble was cajoled by Plaxo to run this script against his account under the premise that he could then import all that data into Plaxo. Scoble got caught running this automated script, a violation of the terms and service that he'd previously agreed to. This became a PR issue - I guess this is what Plaxo was hoping for, except Facebook merely reinstated Scoble's account on condition he didn't run that script again (couched in terms of not breaching the T&C again).
Plaxo is nowhere to be seen these days, so I guess the PR backlash against Facebook didn't give Plaxo the boost they needed.
Later on in the Gilmor Gang Scoble defended his actions by suggesting Facebook was just a Rolodex of contacts, and thus he has the right to export all the data of his contacts for his own purposes; pointing out that how is a crawler bot different from him copying over his 5000 contacts into Outlook one at a time (IIRC, Facebook displayed email address as an image on profile pages, so there'd be no paste).
Only today the story has changed that this was really Scoble fighting for the survival of the common web. That's an interesting position to take 4 years later. I don't recall him bringing this justification up before. Perhaps he has in closed networks like Facebook.
If that indeed was the true reason Scoble ran a scraper script against Facebook, then I'm surprised he went through so much trouble to get his Facebook account re-enabled, and then do nothing to safeguard his data against other Facebook reactions to future violations.
Now he's on Google+, and yet this Facebook data still isn't exportable, and I've not seen any complaint from Scoble about not being able to move all his contacts data from Facebook to Google+. I don't recall Scoble using "the common Web" as justification for uprooting from Facebook to Google+, or from moving away from his blog to Google+.
Not sure I approve of this revisionism. If an common Web is important, surely not being dependent on a closed platform is an obvious strategy?
The timing seems strange if you are not following Dave Winer and John Battelle blogs. They both recently talked about Data Lock In and Scoble seems to see it as too little too late. He uses the story to back his position.
My guess is someone pressured him to take a stand and he doesn't want to. Would he have really taken a stand 4 years ago? Probably not, Scoble needs his audience.
>> Now he's on Google+, and yet this Facebook data still isn't exportable, and I've not seen any complaint from Scoble about not being able to move all his contacts data from Facebook to Google+.
Yes, but Scoble explains why he doesn't complain anymore - because the time when it was worth complaining is over, and other tech influencers at that time didn't join Scoble in his fight. Now, I agree with Scoble, that it is just too late - Facebook will simply not allow you to export your social graph, and that's it. You can just waste your time complaining, or delete your account, but that's all you can do.
It's not really revisionism. He says himself he didn't really know what the implications of the whole "walled garden" thing is, when really, everyone did.
I'd believe that his actual motive was to port his contacts to some other network (kind of like how Facebook used to ask for your gmail password so they could spider your mailbox), but there was always a bit of outrage against walled gardens.
In the last 4 years, he probably would have gotten further if he just, I dunno, typed the information he wants to keep into spreadsheet or something.
Sometimes policy fails us inspite of us having capable technology, but tippy-typing with our own little fingers on the keyboard can often work miracles.
You're both wrong :) It depends on your age, where you live, and your social circle. For a lot of people, myself included, deleting your Facebook account would be ridiculous to even consider. For example, myself and several of my friends are spending time working and studying abroad. Facebook is the best way to keep in touch.
I would actually agree that his Facebook scraping should get him kicked off, but not due to some terms of service crap. But think about it. Whose data was he scraping? Maybe Facebook's, maybe the user who entered it should own it. But I don't think it's fair for anyone else to grab all that data and use it for other purposes.
I'm glad that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them.
If you’re on FB and you friend me and you allow me to see your name and phone number, I can copy and paste it manually. What exactly are FB protecting you from? The people you’ve already trusted with your name and phone number?
FB are protecting you from your friends migrating away from FB. Right now that phone book and those pictures and those birthdays all act as a barrier to leaving FB. If it was easy for someone—who you have already trusted, remember—to download your name and phone number and birthday, they might leave and just call you on your birthday. Or send you an email.
FB has protected themselves. Which is their right, but given that the people you’ve trusted with your phone number can already copy and paste it, FB’s road blocks aren’t about your privacy, they’re about creating friction.
But I don't think it's fair for anyone else to grab all that data and use it for other purposes.
Why not? Wouldn't the exact purpose be a determining criteria in that judgment? What if, for example, I use a smartphone that doesn't have an official Facebook app for it, and I want convenient access to my friends' phone numbers and emails from my phone, so I can call and email them. Assuming they actually are my friends in the first place, calling and emailing them is a perfectly normal thing to do. But why should I be limited by Facebook's constraints in terms of how I can access their contact info?
Use your imagination, and I'm sure you can come up with plenty of our perfectly valid reasons why somebody would want to use info about their Facebook friends, outside of Facebook's insidious walled garden.
"... I'm glad that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them. ..."
I would have thought on HN people, would intuitively recognise "The illusion of anonymity" ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4186206797/ on Facebook and social software in general. Any data you supply, can be bit toggled from private to public at the server.
This seems a bit weird to me. If I could choose exactly how Facebook shares my data with other people, I would probably not choose "Disclose to my creepy ex that I still have his or her number in my phone (even if I have my profile completely locked down and am not friends with my creepy ex on Facebook), but make it difficult for people I trust with my phone number to take my phone number and put it wherever they like."
As someone who has never joined Facebook and is not even tempted, I have to wonder - I mean the web is not like a TV set with just channels 2-13, or even channels 2-100
The web has hundreds of thousands channels. Facebook doesn't own them any more than Google owns search - they are just better at it for now so more people tune in - build an alternative and they will come - slowly at first, but they will come.
Especially when you consider how Google+ got millions of users quickly and how Formspring.me was once described as "addictive". The only thing left is figure out how to be more entertaining than the competition and not get boring. Formspring.me loses its novelty value after a while.
However, I believe you are a minority. Few people think about creating something popular with the mass market. Most seem to want to build a "niche" product so they can buy their McMansion in the suburbs. Most people want to be engineers or entertainers, but not both.
Right! I've never joined Facebook either, and to me this blog post seems like a crack addict complaining about a monopoly in the crack business. For the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out what it is that Facebook gives people other then one more pathetic way to spend their superfluous free time.
But I'm sure that for social-net addicts this is all very serious indeed and I, or anyone else, shouldn't be taking this grave matter lightly.
What about Facebook is not open? Facebook.com can be reached from any computer with an Internet connection. The content is standards-compliant HTML, CSS, and Javascript, delivered via standards-compliant TCP/IP. Anyone can create an account. Anyone can interact with anyone else, provided they mutually agree to do so.
The content is not indexable by search engines--true. But, while that is obviously a problem for search engine companies, that doesn't mean it's not "open."
In terms of getting data out, I had every piece of data I entered into Facebook before I entered it. I have my personal info. My photos and videos were on my cameras, phones, or computers before I uploaded them. The links I posted were in my browser history first. My comments were in my head before I typed them out.
Sure I don't have an easy way to export my friends' data, but that is not my data--it's theirs. Anyway if they are really my friends I can just ask them for their email address or phone number or whatever.
What am I missing? Facebook is a website that requires authentication to use certain features. So is scobleizer.com.
One problem is that, yes, "Anyone can interact with anyone else, provided they mutually agree to do so," but they can only interact in the ways that Facebook defines and allows. You can't, for example, easily write your own app to run on whatever platform you happen to use (hell, maybe you want a "green screen" AS/400 app, who knows?) that lets you post to your friends' wall, or read their posts. And you can't easily load the data about your friends into a database that lets you query it... I mean, quick, how do you find "all my friends with birthdays in March" on Facebook? OK, that was a contrived, off-the-cuff example, but it gets to the point of the thing.
Sure I don't have an easy way to export my friends' data, but that is not my data--it's theirs.
That's arguable, IMO. If I have a list of my friends phone numbers and birthdays in a pen and paper address book, would you argue that I don't have the right to copy that book, or remix / reorganize / reuse the data in it, as I want (so long as I'm not violating my friends' rights somehow in the process, like spamming them)?
What we need is for Facebook / G+ etc. to adopt the work being done by the Semantic Web community and the Federated Social Web XG and open the "walled gardens." OR we need new platform(s) to emerge that do so, and for those platforms to supplant Facebook and the other centralized, dictatorial platforms.
Nice argument, but don't you think that Facebook used your actions to associate your friends, your time spent on its site, your many interactions with your friends, your uploads etc. Gained your trust. And should in return give you access to a little convenience?
After all if Facebook is good to gain so much trust for all this, then it surely would be good to retain your continuing clientage(?)/usage?
What its doing by not allowing its users to move off its own cool-aid, is insulating itself from future backlashes from its users for various issues that may cause them from moving. It could be seen as FB protecting its own interest, but it looks more like a severe case of FB protecting its own future lapses. This majorly sucks in matters of trust. A trustworthy approach would be having courage to take responsibility for any future lapses if they may occur. And to be prepared to face the music. And making data accessible to users convenience is a sign of this promise.
You go get wasted on FB if you like, but I know whom (http://www.google.com/+) to trust and why.
I actually wrote about this a couple of days ago. Winer even responded to me on twitter. I think we need to change the premise of the conversation. That might help inspire a new generation of young startups.
Hey responded because you insulted him. Of course, you were right. Enough people hate dave winer that RSS does need a new face, but you, like a lot of writers, backed down when confronted with him. You should have stuck to your guns, because you were right.
Well, I am for an open web, especially in the linked data/semantic web sense. That said, Facebook, Google, and Twitter make it really easy to export your data. Just to be sure about Facebook, I just went to my account settings and requested a data dump, which is happening right now. Similarly, I like to periodically dump my GMail, Google documents, and Blogger blog posts. It seems stupid not backing up your own data. I don't back up G+ data but I use G+ mostly just to link to my long Blogger blog posts. For a public presence, people should really own their own domains. Blogger makes it really easy to assign your blog to a subdomain that you own.
I take a few steps to maintain a modicum of privacy: I log off Facebook after looking at family and friend's posts, and I often run Chrome in Incognito mode because I think that it makes general web browsing a little safer.
Whatever this data dump from FB consists of, is it in some usable form? My understanding is that it's a pdf without any ability to import it into any other software. For example, can you import birthdays directly into iCal (or w/e) or import email/ phone #s into your desktop or mobile addressbook?
I think a lot of the problem is that there's no easy, good set of protocols for social networking.
Want to plan a party? There's no protocol for that. We have email and calendars, but we don't have party planning. You can't fire up your calendar client and organize a party with. The best you can do is set a reminder for yourself and then invite others to share that reminder. No comments, RSVPs, etc etc.
Want to share a link with people and have moderateable comments? There's no protocol. Plenty of sites will do it, but none are interoperable.
You can lament the loss of the open web all you want, but if you aren't helping make these protocols a reality, you aren't part of the solution.
Phone numbers aren't exposed via the Facebook API under any circumstance. For a long time it was the same with emails, including when Scoble wrote that script, but now you can get a user's email by specifically asking for that information via the permissions API.
if it really become a problem I dont think Fb/Zuck can stop hackers/programmers from building tools to export user profile, all photos, data, etc.
its quite simple VB stand-alone (so they dont block one IP) application with IE window in it. you log in, and VB is scrapping all the data creating excel file with contacts, saving images organized in folders for other web import, etc). not that big of a deal, right?
Some of yo may remember an alternative to web called gopher..
It eventually died due to web being free and it not being free.
The form that is more'free'than fb as far as barriers, etc will out-compete fb.. DW, etc have very little to worry about as this changes rapidly and does not stay the same.
[+] [-] trotsky|14 years ago|reply
The only downside of the whole thing is the part where he goes on a broken spirited nihilistic rant about how hopeless everything is while suggesting I may be a social pariah for not having a facebook account.
He and I clearly have a somewhat different perspective on the world, but I am sympathetic to several of the issues he raises. It seems most of his despair revolves around the sense of having "lost" and being overtaken by events. He responds by saying screw it I just don't give a shit about my principles because they aren't working out for me. But the world ebs and flows, and more importantly it needs some people to take a few principled stands about what they believe in and remind people about issues even when not personally advantageous.
Consider what became of the 90's cypherpunk visions as they were soundly crushed by a new millennium bent on ubiquitous private tracking, massive government wiretaps and swiss cheese security. Who would have guessed such an ice age of uncoolness would thaw out in a world where wikileaks was the story of the year, people split dinner with me using money a russian teenager created using a cluster of high performance crypto gear and people organized revolutions online.
Giving up is boring.
[+] [-] dasil003|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lrobb|14 years ago|reply
I wonder what the survival rate is after being dry-humped by Scoble?
[+] [-] ashot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_a_r_o_n|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isofarro|14 years ago|reply
Plaxo is nowhere to be seen these days, so I guess the PR backlash against Facebook didn't give Plaxo the boost they needed.
Later on in the Gilmor Gang Scoble defended his actions by suggesting Facebook was just a Rolodex of contacts, and thus he has the right to export all the data of his contacts for his own purposes; pointing out that how is a crawler bot different from him copying over his 5000 contacts into Outlook one at a time (IIRC, Facebook displayed email address as an image on profile pages, so there'd be no paste).
Only today the story has changed that this was really Scoble fighting for the survival of the common web. That's an interesting position to take 4 years later. I don't recall him bringing this justification up before. Perhaps he has in closed networks like Facebook.
If that indeed was the true reason Scoble ran a scraper script against Facebook, then I'm surprised he went through so much trouble to get his Facebook account re-enabled, and then do nothing to safeguard his data against other Facebook reactions to future violations.
Now he's on Google+, and yet this Facebook data still isn't exportable, and I've not seen any complaint from Scoble about not being able to move all his contacts data from Facebook to Google+. I don't recall Scoble using "the common Web" as justification for uprooting from Facebook to Google+, or from moving away from his blog to Google+.
Not sure I approve of this revisionism. If an common Web is important, surely not being dependent on a closed platform is an obvious strategy?
[+] [-] jfno67|14 years ago|reply
My guess is someone pressured him to take a stand and he doesn't want to. Would he have really taken a stand 4 years ago? Probably not, Scoble needs his audience.
[+] [-] greyman|14 years ago|reply
Yes, but Scoble explains why he doesn't complain anymore - because the time when it was worth complaining is over, and other tech influencers at that time didn't join Scoble in his fight. Now, I agree with Scoble, that it is just too late - Facebook will simply not allow you to export your social graph, and that's it. You can just waste your time complaining, or delete your account, but that's all you can do.
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
I'd believe that his actual motive was to port his contacts to some other network (kind of like how Facebook used to ask for your gmail password so they could spider your mailbox), but there was always a bit of outrage against walled gardens.
[+] [-] bane|14 years ago|reply
Sometimes policy fails us inspite of us having capable technology, but tippy-typing with our own little fingers on the keyboard can often work miracles.
It's painful, it sucks, but it gets things done.
[+] [-] fjarlq|14 years ago|reply
I disagree. It's really not a big deal to be without a Facebook account.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xuzz|14 years ago|reply
I'm glad that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them.
[+] [-] raganwald|14 years ago|reply
FB are protecting you from your friends migrating away from FB. Right now that phone book and those pictures and those birthdays all act as a barrier to leaving FB. If it was easy for someone—who you have already trusted, remember—to download your name and phone number and birthday, they might leave and just call you on your birthday. Or send you an email.
FB has protected themselves. Which is their right, but given that the people you’ve trusted with your phone number can already copy and paste it, FB’s road blocks aren’t about your privacy, they’re about creating friction.
[+] [-] mindcrime|14 years ago|reply
Why not? Wouldn't the exact purpose be a determining criteria in that judgment? What if, for example, I use a smartphone that doesn't have an official Facebook app for it, and I want convenient access to my friends' phone numbers and emails from my phone, so I can call and email them. Assuming they actually are my friends in the first place, calling and emailing them is a perfectly normal thing to do. But why should I be limited by Facebook's constraints in terms of how I can access their contact info?
Use your imagination, and I'm sure you can come up with plenty of our perfectly valid reasons why somebody would want to use info about their Facebook friends, outside of Facebook's insidious walled garden.
[+] [-] bootload|14 years ago|reply
I would have thought on HN people, would intuitively recognise "The illusion of anonymity" ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4186206797/ on Facebook and social software in general. Any data you supply, can be bit toggled from private to public at the server.
[+] [-] anonymoushn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ck2|14 years ago|reply
The web has hundreds of thousands channels. Facebook doesn't own them any more than Google owns search - they are just better at it for now so more people tune in - build an alternative and they will come - slowly at first, but they will come.
[+] [-] da02|14 years ago|reply
Steve Case used to tell AOL employees, "What can you do for AOL that will get people to ignore Seinfeld after dinner and head straight for AOL?" https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+case+%22would+always+s...
However, I believe you are a minority. Few people think about creating something popular with the mass market. Most seem to want to build a "niche" product so they can buy their McMansion in the suburbs. Most people want to be engineers or entertainers, but not both.
[+] [-] pron|14 years ago|reply
But I'm sure that for social-net addicts this is all very serious indeed and I, or anyone else, shouldn't be taking this grave matter lightly.
[+] [-] sounds|14 years ago|reply
See http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
[+] [-] snowwrestler|14 years ago|reply
The content is not indexable by search engines--true. But, while that is obviously a problem for search engine companies, that doesn't mean it's not "open."
In terms of getting data out, I had every piece of data I entered into Facebook before I entered it. I have my personal info. My photos and videos were on my cameras, phones, or computers before I uploaded them. The links I posted were in my browser history first. My comments were in my head before I typed them out.
Sure I don't have an easy way to export my friends' data, but that is not my data--it's theirs. Anyway if they are really my friends I can just ask them for their email address or phone number or whatever.
What am I missing? Facebook is a website that requires authentication to use certain features. So is scobleizer.com.
[+] [-] mindcrime|14 years ago|reply
Sure I don't have an easy way to export my friends' data, but that is not my data--it's theirs.
That's arguable, IMO. If I have a list of my friends phone numbers and birthdays in a pen and paper address book, would you argue that I don't have the right to copy that book, or remix / reorganize / reuse the data in it, as I want (so long as I'm not violating my friends' rights somehow in the process, like spamming them)?
What we need is for Facebook / G+ etc. to adopt the work being done by the Semantic Web community and the Federated Social Web XG and open the "walled gardens." OR we need new platform(s) to emerge that do so, and for those platforms to supplant Facebook and the other centralized, dictatorial platforms.
[+] [-] yeggeyeggeyegge|14 years ago|reply
After all if Facebook is good to gain so much trust for all this, then it surely would be good to retain your continuing clientage(?)/usage?
What its doing by not allowing its users to move off its own cool-aid, is insulating itself from future backlashes from its users for various issues that may cause them from moving. It could be seen as FB protecting its own interest, but it looks more like a severe case of FB protecting its own future lapses. This majorly sucks in matters of trust. A trustworthy approach would be having courage to take responsibility for any future lapses if they may occur. And to be prepared to face the music. And making data accessible to users convenience is a sign of this promise.
You go get wasted on FB if you like, but I know whom (http://www.google.com/+) to trust and why.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
They kicked you off for running a data scraper in violation of the terms of service you agreed to when signing up an account.
[+] [-] voidfiles|14 years ago|reply
http://www.rumproarious.com/2012/01/31/rss-needs-a-new-pr-te...
[+] [-] damptrousers|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|14 years ago|reply
I take a few steps to maintain a modicum of privacy: I log off Facebook after looking at family and friend's posts, and I often run Chrome in Incognito mode because I think that it makes general web browsing a little safer.
[+] [-] 18pfsmt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lhnz|14 years ago|reply
In a search for privacy we are locking ourselves in other's walled gardens.
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
Want to plan a party? There's no protocol for that. We have email and calendars, but we don't have party planning. You can't fire up your calendar client and organize a party with. The best you can do is set a reminder for yourself and then invite others to share that reminder. No comments, RSVPs, etc etc.
Want to share a link with people and have moderateable comments? There's no protocol. Plenty of sites will do it, but none are interoperable.
You can lament the loss of the open web all you want, but if you aren't helping make these protocols a reality, you aren't part of the solution.
[+] [-] siasia|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfarmer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] albertzeyer|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirclueless|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jroseattle|14 years ago|reply
With these posts, Scoble simply reinforces my personal impression of him as the Court Jester of the Internet.
[+] [-] joering1|14 years ago|reply
its quite simple VB stand-alone (so they dont block one IP) application with IE window in it. you log in, and VB is scrapping all the data creating excel file with contacts, saving images organized in folders for other web import, etc). not that big of a deal, right?
[+] [-] Raphael|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shareme|14 years ago|reply
Some of yo may remember an alternative to web called gopher..
It eventually died due to web being free and it not being free.
The form that is more'free'than fb as far as barriers, etc will out-compete fb.. DW, etc have very little to worry about as this changes rapidly and does not stay the same.
[+] [-] mcantelon|14 years ago|reply
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1436
It just sucked compared to HTTP.
[+] [-] guest|14 years ago|reply