I recommend avoiding all browser extensions unless they come from well-known developers (eg 1Password) and they’re downloaded and installed through official channels.
Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home to the author’s server. That might be what the install instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the plug-in was working, except for study participants who apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in. Either way, I wouldn’t rush to install a plug-in that was caught sending any of my social media data to a 3rd-party server.
I certainly would not install a browser extension from an unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless the claimed origin of the code.
No extension is needed. (I never use extensions for anything.) Unfollowing all friends is not complicated and can be done in a couple of lines of shell script, or using whatever programming language or HTTP client one chooses. Obviously, curl would work. There are a hundreds of ways to send HTTP requests. It is a very simple protocol. No POST requests are even necessary, only GET.
1. Log in to Facebook
2. Open "Developer Tools" (F12), select the "Network" tab, locate "Request Headers", Alt-click on "Cookie:" and select "Copy value". Use this in each HTTP request. Do not log out yet.
I tried to remove myself from all of Facebook's Audience-Based Advertising lists - the ones where companies upload lists of people that they want to target with ads.
I'm on over 300 lists. Removing myself from each one took 6 clicks. I tried to automate it with Selenium, but their bot detector caught it and banned my device from opting out of any lists (!)
I’m reminded of the infamous Dropbox comment. Chrome, for example, shows cookies on a tab (Application) other than Network for a while now. I have 7 cookies set, which should I choose?
The Devil is in the detail, and writing that script is far more work than installing an extension, which is just a convenient form of a script anyway (and one with details taken care of).
You cant select and copy all five cookies at once in the Applications tab, but you can in the Network tab. Personally I dont rely on Developer Tools, I capture cookies from the wire or from local proxy logs. I monitor traffic to/from my computers and my network, as many HN readers do.
I always thought that Dropbox comment was related to people trying to predict successful startups. No one can do that, certainly not HN commenters. Most VC investments are losses.
Im an end user. I really dont care for discussion of startups or what makes software popular. Ive never used Dropbox, and I never will.
The Dropbox comment is a reference to how quickly devs will say "that's easy, just use X, Y, Z…"
I see you've already needed to post another comment to correct yourself, and now you've replied to me with more humps in the road. What next? Kubernetes set up on a Raspberry PI with a transparent proxy that uses a WebAssembly binary knocked up in Rust…
Perhaps it would be easier to install the extension and accept that sometimes it's easier to follow the well trodden path. YMMV.
The instructions I linked to have examining the javascript and removing all phone home stuff as step one. Considering this is hn I didn't feel like I had to point that out again.
One of the reasons I stopped using chrome was “extensions” I had 2-3 popular extensions like Adblock and something else. They were leaking information for every page I visited! I contacted the “source” where I saw my information leak but there was no reply and nothing. Either chrome itself leaks that info or one of the popular extensions.
As an extension developer, yes please do this. I get constant offers to "purchase" my extension from shady marketing companies, and it's obviously quite lucrative for them based on some of the offers they're making.
If extensions were shut down quickly for shady behavior there wouldn't be a market for it.
Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home to the author’s server. That might be what the install instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the plug-in was working, except for study participants who apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in. Either way, I wouldn’t rush to install a plug-in that was caught sending any of my social media data to a 3rd-party server.
I certainly would not install a browser extension from an unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless the claimed origin of the code.