> To aid in their research, the group created a browser plug-in called Ad Observer, which collects data on the political ads users see and why they were targeted for the ad.
Understandable that any entity that bypasses their API/consent flows and collects a user's data would be a big no, regardless of what their intended use is.
You're also granting the extension access to your friends' data, given that it can see everything that you can. Your friends consented to show that data to you, but not to the extension developer. Your friends' consent is not transitive.
Still not FBs business. If I copy my friend private photos they would not care either. They are not representing my friend interest neither legally nor in any other way.
No, Fb is doing the correct thing in this case. If I upload data to Fb, I expect Fb not to allow others to scrape it. I gave pictures/info to Fb, not to you because you had a browser extension installed.
I'm not entirely sure I agree that Facebook is in the right here - analyzing the ads that are shown to you is different from downloading photos you uploaded.
However, your principle argument that there's a difference between Facebook serving pictures to friends and massive, automated serving of pictures to bots and scrapers. I understand that there's no good way to differentiate, and that the bits that are sent over the network are the same regardless of who is consuming them, and that my friends have the technical capability to upload the images elsewhere.
But just as you get different outcomes between one situation with an individual policeman watching traffic, pulling over reckless vehicles or tailing a suspect vehicle with a known license plate and another compared to a network of automated license-plate readers and speed cameras tracking the city-wide movement of lawful and criminal people alike, you get different outcomes when you differentiate between bots and live users.
You realize that is completely unworkable, and anyone can take a picture of the screen of the photos that you upload and share them. Don't post anything on facebook that you don't want the whole world to know.
There’s a large, large difference between your friend taking a screenshot and your friend authorizing a third party to any content they themselves can see. Scale and automation matters a lot.
I agree with the sentiment, but the line between read-and-record permission vs read-and-brun permission is really vague here. Scraping is exercising the right to read is the right to download in an automated manner on behalf of a user. Scraping bans (not limited to FB) are more of a commercial practice rather than caring about user consent/privacy imo.
Personally I don't think access should be given based on assumption of the query's intention (daily browsing vs scraping data for analysis authorized by someone), but like r/w/x and user group, i.e. if you can view, then you can view and record. Otherwise either no access granted, or burn after read.
How is this any different than your friend saving the photo you posted and then showing it to her co-workers (or whoever else)?
Are you are arguing that Facebook should disallow copying/downloading of any content on its network?
lol you can expect whatever form FB but they dont care. And if you gave access to the data to other people FB cant and wont do anything to prevent thous people from accessing the data and if access is possible scraping is too.
> However, as Protocol noted in March, the information collected from accounts that did not “consent to the collection” that Clark appears to be referring to was actually advertisers’ accounts, not private users.
I don't think we should expect Facebook to go digging into every scraping extension to see if the scraping is done to obtain user data vs. advertiser data (stuff Facebook is also trying to protect, mind you). Especially with the amount of obfuscation and extensions they likely need to deal with.
> Understandable that any entity that bypasses their API/consent flows and collects a user's data would be a big no, regardless of what their intended use is.
Generally I agree and understand FB's position. But isn't all of the data from Ad Observer publicly available?
According to the next paragraph, "Facebook provided about how the ad was targeted, and when the ad was shown to a user, among other things.".
Haven't used FB in ages but I assume it's like "why am I seeing this" hint in youtube recommendations (which usually says "because you watched video x").
Understandable that any entity that bypasses their API/consent flows and collects a user's data would be a big no, regardless of what their intended use is.