[facebook] the social network war

Facebook has banned Google's Friend Connect access to the Facebook API, saying:

We've found that it redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Oh, that's a good one. As Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch says:

Facebook is all about openness and data portability, as long as that doesn't involve openness or portability of data, it seems ...

Arrington adds, tongue in cheek:

This of course has nothing to do with the fact that Facebook launched their own nearly identically named product called Facebook Connect three days before Google's Friend Connect.

This is how it has been described:

Facebook announced its Facebook Connect, what it calls the "next iteration of Facebook Platform," which allowed third-party developers to develop social applications for the site. When it is rolled out ---also "in the coming weeks"-- participating sites will be able to share Facebook users' friends lists, their "real identities," photos, and videos.

There's a fine line between being supercautious and paranoid but this blog feels there are legitimate issues. Daviswiki gives a run down on some of the privacy issues ...

Facebook is commonly referred to as Stalkerbook, due to its many features that allows you to track people in your network, especially when you are friends with those people.

And Ian Parker said:

Just remember who funded the building of Facebook and why it is there.

It was funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and is there to collect information about you and build a profile on you.

Thats why they don't like pseudonyms.

In an article on the organization some time back, Ian Grey commented:

I've deactivated. I did [this] after reading your first post and a bit of surfing about the dodgy stuff. This is when I realised I couldn't actually unsubscribe! I'm Still in LinkedLn and MySpace though.

Longrider summed up my thoughts when he commented:

As mentioned on your other post, I have never signed up to this "service" - nor have I signed up to MySpace. Nor will I ever. It's easy enough, should one try, to find out my real identity, but I reserve the right to publish under a pseudonym. And, frankly, any organisation (remember Blogburst?) that claims rights to my material can take a walk.

Given this organization's antecedents, given that it is an information gathering and disbursing machine to "trusted third parties", given that there is no unsubscribe function and given the really intrusive nature of the questioning they do on you, in a jaunty style of language, e.g. "what's the story here', it seems most unwise to allow any but the most perfunctory details to go to them.

At best you're going to be spammed. At worst, you are on a giant database to be used at their discretion. At least it is to be hoped that they're not incompetent, like these people:

Even if we ignore/excuse the massive amounts of lost data already by this government as institutional failings of the system and processes of the Civil Service rather than government ministers, these last two cannot be explained away like that.

Thunderdragon then goes on to explain.