The problem is that Facebook's claiming that email is just another piece of metadata about a user. However, from Google's point of (and rest of the non-Facebook web), email is not a metadata, but the key identifier around which all of the services know which "John Smith" the given user is.<p>If I'm building anything interesting and want to play outside the Facebook walled garden, the Facebook ID doesn't really get me anything - it's like someone giving me a currency from a random country that I never intend to visit.<p>Unfortunately, even Facebook itself treats the email address as an identifier data (what do you need to use to log in to Facebook? Email address and password). It's a little disingenuous for them to turn that around and say that it's a metadata that's part of the user's profile, as opposed to the only unique, persistent, and widely used identifier that we currently have on the web.
There is also the fact that Facebook does allow yahoo mail and hotmail to export their friends emails, proof: <a href="http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-export-email-addresses-55247" rel="nofollow">http://searchengineland.com/facebook-you-have-no-right-to-ex...</a><p>So why not gmail?
I'm glad facebook doesn't give out the email addresses of friends to third parties without permission, and I am for their distinction between owning the friend list, but not their friends' data.<p>The public seems to not have a consistent sense of privacy. They slam Facebook for being too open by not having a privacy setting enforced as the default, and then slam Facebook again when Facebook isn't advertising emails.<p>Personally not a fan of all this hot air.
Facebook can't claim that "every person owns and controls his/her information" when the Graph API allows access (via friends permissions) to your friends' status, likes, notes, location, photos, relationships, checkins, website, groups, events, activities and birthdays[1].<p>In fact, the only information about your friends not available via friends permissions are email addresses and full streams.<p>[1]: <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions" rel="nofollow">http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissio...</a>
This soo wrong. Arrington keeps using the word "friends" as if emails from your FB contacts were those of your actual friends. Imagine Arrington being able to turn 4000 "friends" on Facebook into a mass email list!!! No way! That just so wrong and I don't want that to happen.
The premise under wich we befriend someone on Facebook just never included them being able to email you directly.<p>In my case, it would be the last thing to happen before I quit FB entirely and stuff my account with bogus info or close it altogether.
At both Gmail and Facebook, the most common way someone new winds up in your 'contacts' is they send you a message, and you somehow 'ack' that you want to maintain a link to them. (Or vice-versa.) From that point on, your view includes the email address they freely volunteered to you. That's the info anyone should be able to export.<p>Facebook wanting to pretend that somehow, contact info shared between friends in <i>their</i> system can't go any further than Facebook is just a self-serving rationalization.<p>Now, you <i>don't</i> have to show your email addresses to any or all friends on Facebook -- it's part of the privacy controls. So naturally if I don't show it to certain people, those people shouldn't be able to export it. And it's a nice feature of Facebook that me changing my privacy settings, or de-friending someone, essentially recalls my email from their contacts, unless they took special steps to copy it elsewhere earlier.<p>But in the meantime, if I can see it, and copy & paste it, and use it to send messages, it's mine at that moment, even though Facebook may be holding it for me.
I'm siding with Facebook on this.<p>You can already get Facebook UIDs, which can be used to reconstruct the graph edges. You don't want to store Facebook UIDs? Build your own social graph.<p>And Facebook is right. I own MY info on Facebook. I can prove it. I'll just delete my account with my email address. If you were my friend let's see if you still have acces to that info. If they start letting my friends export my email to third parties then I'm getting off Facebook.<p>EDIT: Think about it. Most sites these days require an email. It's not exactly optional info to use Facebook. Are we seriously considering that it's acceptable that we let friends EXPORT people's email addresses for third parties just because they "friended" on Facebook? Maybe if there was a new "Share my email" feature this would be acceptable but "friending" != "here you can give my email to third parties and here's an easy API for you to do that"
That looks like some extra long rant about nothing.<p>What data does this guy want? You can pull out nearly everything about a user via Facebook's numerous APIs, if they grant sufficient permissions.