Hacker News Reader

Define "a fair bit of money", please.

It's telling that Facebook, a company that's not known for treating their users as anything other than a commodity to be packaged and sold, would never stoop to something like this.

In an era where a photo sharing site sells for over a billion dollars, Oracle must be raking in hundreds of millions on this deal for it to be worth the damage to their Java brand.

View on HN

facebook is probably able to get data through other means. Their like button javascript on half of the internet for example.

Do any of these "other means" involve installing shady software on people's computers?

They've had many opportunities to do stuff like that with their iOS and Android apps but have never dared.

My point is they wouldnt need to install shady software on your machine. They're able to track you with their like button.

I find it amazing that people seemingly don't know that Facebook tracks you across the web through those embedded Like buttons, and more amazing that many who do know don't seem to care.

There's a reason I have the equivalent of "127.0.0.1 facebook.com" in my /etc/hosts file.

Facebook doesn't do it because they don't need to do it, at least right now. Wait until they're on the ropes, fighting for their corporate life in one way or another, then see what they do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com