Did Facebook hijack a developer’s app for its own purposes? | Hacker News Reader

Did Facebook hijack a developer’s app for its own purposes?

gigaom.com

44 pointstilt34 comments

Hey guys, I work on anti-spam at FB (though not specifically platform) and just looked into this. It looks like their app was disabled for pre-filling content so that it looks like users typed it, which makes for a super spammy experience and is explicitly against our ToS. They were disabled within policy (and the reason was communicated to them - check out the OP at http://www.nimitkumar.in/?p=196).

The vanity URL "videocalling" wasn't reclaimed until June, and I'm pretty sure was completely unrelated to this app being disabled. If we wanted it for our own use, we would have been up-front about that, not done some roundabout make-up-an-excuse-and-kill-an-innocent-app tomfoolery that the poster is suggesting.

Besides, it'd be a gigantic waste of time to build marketing pages 3 months before a product launch given how fast things change even in the week or two prior to a launch.

All that being said, we're working pretty hard on improving the developer experience when an app is found to be in violation of policies. This isn't something I work on directly, so I don't wanna go shooting my mouth off, but check out https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/521/ for some background.

If things are as you say, then we may have jumped to conclusions and judged Facebook unfairly on this particular matter. However, I'd say jumping to conclusions is to be expected, given Facebook's track record. I long ago stopped giving FB the benefit of the doubt, considering the many questionable and thoughtless actions in its past. FB has a long way to go in recovering the goodwill it has lost (from me and surely from others).

(BY the way, I have not watched "The Social Network" or formed any opinions on FB based on that movie. My opinions are strictly based on news articles and my personal experience with the service.)

Sad to hear we've lost your faith :-/. Hopefully we can build it back, though I know it's often hard to change one's feelings about things.

I'm curious what you think we've done that's particularly questionable or thoughtless. I think a lot of memes ("facebook sells your data to advertisers!") are just plain wrong, and if you think about them for a while you realize they make no sense (we'd clearly stand to gain more by not giving anyone access to it and only allowing advertisers to target things with various criteria, then handling the assignment of ad to user internally, without leaking any data). A lot of other issues are just more nuanced, and it drives a lot more clicks to posit some sensationalist conspiracy theory than to discuss the complexities behind a situation.

I try not to discuss anything on here that I don't directly work on, so bear in mind that I may not be able to address any of your concerns.

I'll oblige your curiosity. Here's what comes to mind right now...

The sin that takes the cake was Facebook's attempted smear campaign against Google:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/12/facebook-bu...

I can't currently remember other acts on a similarly questionable level. Most don't sink that low, and are "only" irresponsible, such as allowing newly-created accounts to be used without first verifying the user's e-mail address:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/10/being-eric-schmidt-on-faceb...

(Was this security hole ever closed?)

Facebook is a pioneer in on-line human interaction, and a reckless one at that (not a good thing). Privacy is one area in particular where FB keeps pushing the boundaries and exposing its users to new dangers. Is the company clueless about its users' privacy needs? Are FB's goals at cross-purposes with its users' goals? It's hard to tell which of the two is a better-fitting explanation.

Other FB actions aren't evil or irresponsible, but are still careless. One type of carelessness is FB's willingness to throw away users' valuable information. For example, FB has been announcing its intention of wiping out membership information for old Groups as it archives them. Does FB really think this is in users' best interest? (I value the Groups I've joined through the years, and most of them will apparently have their membership lists purged. This is not the only case where information I value was/will be destroyed by Facebook.)

Another sign of careless is FB's apparent unresponsiveness to user feedback. I understand that it's hard to be responsive with a 1 : 250,000 employee-to-customer ratio. I understand that many aspects of customer service would need to be automated. However, because of this, FB needs to be very careful about how and what it automates, as exemplified by stories like this one:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/facebook-tak...

Incidentally, I really appreciate the fact that you are personally responding to FB-related complaints. Keep it up! (I hope you don't become too discouraged.) Make no mistake, I've greatly enjoyed using Facebook and derive great benefit from the service. However, actions like the ones I've mentioned chronically fuel my distrust of and annoyance at Facebook.

In the link you provided to the OP's website, right after quoting the FB email, he writes:

We obviously did not “pre fill” any fields without any user action.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2756661

> If we wanted it for our own use, we would have been up-front about that

With all due respect, are you really in a position to say that with any kind of authority?

The first post you linked to goes on to say "We obviously did not 'pre fill' any fields without any user action."

Is there any evidence you can provide our ridiculous INTERNET COURT that they did?

It looks like this app was both automatically classified and manually verified by a person as violating the terms, and I trust that there wouldn't be a double failure in that regard.

I'm hesitant to speculate at all since, as you hint, this could quickly devolve into an unproductive he-said / she-said squabble.

While working for a social-game maker, I've been wrist-slapped for a game that ostensibly pre-filled fields. After multiple internal reviews failed to find the offending form/screen, we finally reached out to our facebook contact (thankfully, the company I was working for was important enough to have one).

It turned out that we pre-filled the name of the user's town (this was a city-building game) with "Firstname's Town". Changing this to a blank field wrecked our funnel, but heh.

Point I'm trying to make is, it's often hard to tell what/if you're doing wrong, when you get a rejection like that.

When you're building on someone else's platform, you're subject to their whims, whether you like it or not. Facebook can delete your app for no reason, so can Apple and Google and Microsoft. If you're building a Netflix or Twitter app and they change their API (or terms of service) to disable your app, you don't really have any legal recourse. Yeah it sucks, but it's a pitfall of doing business on someone else's platform, and one that developers should be keenly aware of before they start.

True. But when you're developing a platform, you want it to be known as a place where developers are treated fairly. Just as with their trigger-happy deletion of apps a while ago, Facebook seems to be sending a message of "screw you, we'll do what we want". Presumably I'm not the only developers considering whether or not to invest resources in the Facebook platform who notices stuff like this.

A lot of that thing a few weeks ago was a mishap, not anyone trying to say "screw you, we'll do what we want." Sorry it felt that way :-/. Hopefully if you were incorrectly affected, things got resolved?

Check out https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/521/ for some info on how we're trying to improve the experience when we find apps to be too spammy / in violation of policy. I think the team working on that has already made quite a bit of progress (all while still keeping spam numbers down, which is pretty impressive).

Disclaimer: I work at FB, but not on the platform team.

Thanks for the response, mkjones. I certainly don't think anybody at Facebook is _trying_ to say "screw you, we'll do what we want", and I think the new approach is a very positive step. But the impression it leaves as an app developer is that you made a change that disabled a bunch of apps without thinking about the implications, and then rolled it back when people made enough noise. As somebody else says, Facebook's got a pattern of doing this; so you don't have a reservoir of goodwill.

In a sense, whatever we build is always built upon someone else's platform. The Internet itself is someone else's platform. The legal framework in our respective countries is someone else's platform. These two platforms are harder to control than an online service like Facebook, but they can likewise be controlled in ways that are stifling and unfair.

Given that every useful platform is owned by someone else, I despise arguments of the form "Such-and-such a platform is not yours, so don't complain if its owners behave like jerks". I agree that complaining is generally fruitless and we must be cautious about binding ourselves to platforms where we are essentially disenfranchised. However, I think we all have the right to call out thuggish actions wherever we see them and to insist that platform owners treat their users and dependents respectfully. I will cheer for people who stand up to jerks before I criticize them for having exposed themselves up to harm from a platform's owners.

I don't disagree with you. Complain if you want. Sometimes it helps. But don't make the mistake of thinking you're entitled to anything.

Two important differences:

- The Internet is not controlled by a single entity.

- The Internet is documented by standards.

Facebook is a social network monopoly and one of the main avenues of business on the web of which there is essentially no replacement (in terms of doing business on a popular general purpose social network.) The fact that they can ban an app unfairly on a whim is not just some minor side issue, and if they abuse their privilege like this its a serious issue for all. In this case what they did is clearly anti-competitive.

A little gratitude to developers from the Twitters and Facebooks of the world would not be amiss. Whether they are able to take such actions is not the question; it's whether it is respectable or even a good business decision to treat developers so poorly.

Many companies like this who were encouraging developers to use their public API two years ago have now decided we are only useful to the extent you can take advantage of us, while it's convenient. A few prominent VCs and CEOs have made it clear they think the time for any sort of idea of a partnership between open API service providers and developers is behind us.

I don't disagree with this, but it's still a shame. What if Microsoft updated their TOS and decided to delete Adobe products? You think Adobe would have a case against them? I think so...

Although someone from Facebook has rebutted these claims, if this story was 100% true, I would think the company that had their app deleted would have easy success in an anti-trust lawsuit.

"This is grossly undemocratic" hahaha

Websites are not democracies. Private property isn't a democracy. Companies aren't democracies.

Get it out of your head that they are and life will go a lot smoother.

And "freedom of speech" only applies to the government, and only governments in the US. Websites that delete your comments are not limiting your freedom of speech. </pet_peeve>

They are limiting your freedom of speech; however, they are not infringing on the rights granted by the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution.

Those things aren't constitutionally, legally or inherently democracies, but it's nevertheless possible for them to be administrated in a more, or less, democratic manner.

Not hard to believe Facebook would do such a thing. I see so many times big companies like Facebook do things like this assuming they will receive no flack, and as soon as flack comes their way they pop out with an apology and act like nothing ever happened.

I'm sorry, but this "do first, ask later" mentality annoys the piss out of me.

Developing on someone else's platform, you're just doing market research for them. See: Windows, Mac OS, iOS, Android.

I can't imagine Facebook's actions are actually illegal. And if they ARE illegal, it seems to me that it would most likely mean that the lawyers who wrote the developer's terms of use messed up somehow.

The article mentions 'manifest destiny' but 'eminent domain' would be the more apropriate analogy. Facebook is its own country, in many ways.

Answer: no. Read the TOS.

And that's why you make sure you always have platform independence.

Umm this app had practically no traffic. I feel like the developer is just using this to try and get attention for a failed product.

If developers could sue Zuck, he would be doing 7 times life now.

I don't think people get sent to prison for civil suits.

i believe i wasn't being literal.

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