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Comment by portman | Hacker News Reader

Le sigh.

I think Google has lost sight of something very simple in this fracas:

With Google Contacts, the user directly manages his contacts' email addresses.

With Facebook, the user delegates management of email address to his contacts.

These are not the same thing. The Google contacts team seems to think that Facebook is an address book just like them. They are not. And to me, that failure to understand the differences is the root source of all this tomfoolery.

Edit after some very welcome discussion downstream:

On GMail, my contacts' email addresses are MY data.

On Facebook, my contacts' email addresses are NOT my data. The FACT that I am connected to my contacts is my data, but any information about those contacts does not belong to me.

This is why Facebook is not an address book, and pretending it as an address book where "your data gets stuck" is bound to lead to frustration for everyone.

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And juste because I delegated management of contacts to Facebook, are they excused for not letting me get my data out whenever I want to switch contact management services -- for example -- to diaspora?

Facebook allows you to do this now. Go to Account->Account Settings->Download your Information.

In Facebook, email adresses are not considered your information and thus are not exportable AFAIK.

That's not what I said.

With Facebook, you delegate authority to manage email address to YOUR CONTACTS (not Facebook).

In Google or any other address book, I can go into my friend Ted's contact and change his email address if I want to.

In Facebook, I can't change Ted's email address. Only Ted can change it.

To me, this is a MAJOR distinction.

I grant you the distinction. Now can you please explain why it's important and how Google failing to understand it is the cause of all this.

I just wrote a long-ish hypothetical further up the thread.

And you know what? Maybe you're right. Maybe Google DOES understand this just fine. But I think the strong language they're using, the bombastic language of "fairness" and "protectionism", implies that they are taking a subtle, nuanced issue of data ownership and pretending it's binary.

Again, this hinges on the meaning "my data".

From your statement, I am guessing you believe that the email addresses of your contacts is your data.

So here's the thought experiment:

Amy uses GMail and has been corresponding with Bill, who works at Acme. Bill's email address, bill@acme.com, is in Amy's GMail address book. "bill@acme.com" is now a piece of data that is, unquestionably, "owned" by Amy.

Amy joins Facebook, uses the GMail importer to detect if any of her GMail contacts are also on Facebook, and sees that Bill is on Facebook. She asks to be Bill's friend, and he accepts.

Several months later, Bill gets a new job. He now works for The Nonprofit Foundation, and his new email address is bill@nonprofit.org. Bill logs into his Facebook account and updates his email address.

Because Amy uses Facebook and is friends with Bill, she can see his new email address.

Is the piece of data "bill@nonprofit.org" now "owned" by Amy?

Personally, I think it's a complex question. I don't automatically ascribe ownership of "bill@nonprofit.org" to Amy, and it's hard for me to say that she has a right to export that email address out of Facebook. Others may disagree. But I would hope we ALL can agree that the above scenario is not black and white, and that we can have a reasoned discussion about data ownership.

If Bill puts his new e-mail address on Facebook - he has effectively chosen to give it away. It is now information that all of his friends own.

Choose your friends carefully, but choose the data you put on Facebook with even more discretion.

You can make email addresses private on Facebook, so that none of your friends can see them. However, people who already have your email address can use it to find you.

Facebook and Google are using those email addresses for very different purposes: Facebook uses them to identify the profiles of your contacts (the user id is the lasting identity) whereas for Google the email address itself is the relevant identity.

The point is FB can sell your data to other companies like Yahoo and Microsoft and this is not a privacy issue. When you attempt to download your own data, it becomes one...ROFL..right..FB really thinks this is a privacy issue. It's just a PR stunt so they can keep all their data within their ecosystem.

I don't automatically ascribe ownership of "bill@nonprofit.org" to Amy, and it's hard for me to say that she has a right to export that email address out of Facebook.

Define "export". Are you saying that she only has the "right" to use Bill's address within Facebook, so that sending Bill an email with Outlook or GMail is some sort of violation? Or is it only automated mass export that you object to?

Except that you can export the email addresses if you use Hotmail or Yahoo! Contacts, which have special agreements with Facebook.

I did this, and even though it's super crappy because it doesn't map to my existing address book entries very well, at least I finally have my FB friends' email addresses.

I don't think the difference is very important. I've almost never manually added a contact into Google and my contacts list has been built up by years of correspondence. In a sense, the people I've been emailing determine which address shows up in my contacts list.

In any case, even if there is a big difference, you haven't really said why the debate hinges on a failure to understand it.

No, you don't understand the distinction portman is making. It's not between "type in email myself" vs "harvest from email", i.e. a question of data entry. It's a question of management. With Google Contacts, I'm the one that updates an email address if someone else's address changes. With Facebook, all I manage is the list of contacts, while the contact manages their own email address. Which means that when someone changes their email address, I don't need to either know or care. And crucially, if someone I email infrequently changes their email, there's no danger that I "miss the window" and lose the contact entirely.

That's a pretty big difference.

It is a pretty big difference, but I still don't see how failing to understand it on google's part (and they probably do understand it) is the source of all this.

Language like this makes me think they don't understand:

"essentially locking up your contact data about your friends"

Note the first 'your' in that sentence: From Google's P.O.V., the email address of your friend is your data. From Facebook's P.O.V, the email address of your friend is not your data -- it's the friend's data.

But Facebook will allow me to export that friend's data to Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. Doesn't that seem to completely contradict Facebook's entire stance?

Does sending you a mail message gives you an implicit moral permission to upload my mail address to a third party web-site?

Does adding you as a friend on a social network site gives you an implicit moral permission to upload my "visible to friends" data to a third party web-site?

I guess what you are saying is that the answer to these two questions need not be the same.

[ The fact that Facebook will let you export my data to Yahoo (which will let you re-export it to anyone, just like GMail) kind of indicates that it is not the fine distinction above that governs Facebook's actions. ]

From the other direction, I use one email address for public facing stuff and one for actual emails. So for me the email address Facebook has is actually worthless to me and the email address other people have for me in their Gmail accounts is hugely valuable to me.

Honestly I could care less if the email address used for Facebook is publicly posted and I get spammed from every penis enlargement pill salesmen on the planet, I never read it.

When my actual Gmail address gets passed to Facebook by someone who joined and imported their contact list, and then they email me, I find it to be far more of an invasion of privacy.

On GMail, my contacts' email addresses are MY data.

I do not agree to it.

should I, as your physician, release all my contacts data to Facebook? Do you suppose everyone with HIV wants a huge number of people to know that an infectious disease specialist in HIV is one of her contacts?

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