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I worked at FB during the same time, and while I admire Sandy's sentiment in principle, this article is conflating what 3rd party Developers were doing with user data.... not FB.

In fact, Zynga, and many other social gaming Developers, practically went out of business as FB started to enforce data usage policies.

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But Facebook was allowing 3rd party developers access to a lot of data. I've even seen my profile on a 3rd party site where the developer said "Facebook granted me access.".

It's like the NSA saying "We collect your information, but we have laws to prevent their abuse.". First you have to be caught, and then they'll punish you. There are no technical limitations. This is like someone like Equifax saying "Here's our database server credentials, but connecting to it or querying is illegal.".

Review the app perms before opt-in. "This app is requesting access to Full Name, Email, Friends, etc..."

FB trusted Developers to do the right thing with that data through T&Cs.

So Facebook allowed some of their developers to run roughshod with users’ data while practically driving others out of business for doing the same? What differentiated the survivors?

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