I'm quite torn: I simply can't decide what portion of this post I'm most captivated by. Is it the fact that John knows the exact date from over four years ago that he was booted from facebook? Maybe it's the feat of name dropping a whopping nine different people (I think.. I got dizzy counting) while more or less telling a story about saving a flat file with commas in it. It could be the fact that I just found out that Scoble was a pioneer in the fight for the open web while almost every time I've crossed paths with him in the last several years he's been dry humping a brand new buzzworthy social media platform to death. In the end, though, I'm pretty sure I've settled on the idea that yesterday on what I assume is a professional style radiopodcast thing a number of grown men spent a measurable amount of time arguing about how potentially fair or totally unfair it was that one of them got banned by facebook and also whether heather in 7th period likes one of them.<p>The only downside of the whole thing is the part where he goes on a broken spirited nihilistic rant about how hopeless everything is while suggesting I may be a social pariah for not having a facebook account.<p>He and I clearly have a somewhat different perspective on the world, but I am sympathetic to several of the issues he raises. It seems most of his despair revolves around the sense of having "lost" and being overtaken by events. He responds by saying screw it I just don't give a shit about my principles because they aren't working out for me. But the world ebs and flows, and more importantly it needs some people to take a few principled stands about what they believe in and remind people about issues even when not personally advantageous.<p>Consider what became of the 90's cypherpunk visions as they were soundly crushed by a new millennium bent on ubiquitous private tracking, massive government wiretaps and swiss cheese security. Who would have guessed such an ice age of uncoolness would thaw out in a world where wikileaks was the story of the year, people split dinner with me using money a russian teenager created using a cluster of high performance crypto gear and people organized revolutions online.<p>Giving up is boring.
IIRC, Scoble was cajoled by Plaxo to run this script against his account under the premise that he could then import all that data into Plaxo. Scoble got caught running this automated script, a violation of the terms and service that he'd previously agreed to. This became a PR issue - I guess this is what Plaxo was hoping for, except Facebook merely reinstated Scoble's account on condition he didn't run that script again (couched in terms of not breaching the T&C again).<p>Plaxo is nowhere to be seen these days, so I guess the PR backlash against Facebook didn't give Plaxo the boost they needed.<p>Later on in the Gilmor Gang Scoble defended his actions by suggesting Facebook was just a Rolodex of contacts, and thus he has the right to export all the data of his contacts for his own purposes; pointing out that how is a crawler bot different from him copying over his 5000 contacts into Outlook one at a time (IIRC, Facebook displayed email address as an image on profile pages, so there'd be no paste).<p>Only today the story has changed that this was really Scoble fighting for the survival of the common web. That's an interesting position to take 4 years later. I don't recall him bringing this justification up before. Perhaps he has in closed networks like Facebook.<p>If that indeed was the true reason Scoble ran a scraper script against Facebook, then I'm surprised he went through so much trouble to get his Facebook account re-enabled, and then do nothing to safeguard his data against other Facebook reactions to future violations.<p>Now he's on Google+, and yet this Facebook data still isn't exportable, and I've not seen any complaint from Scoble about not being able to move all his contacts data from Facebook to Google+. I don't recall Scoble using "the common Web" as justification for uprooting from Facebook to Google+, or from moving away from his blog to Google+.<p>Not sure I approve of this revisionism. If an common Web is important, surely not being dependent on a closed platform is an obvious strategy?
<i>Deleting your [Facebook] account just makes you look like a weirdo in today’s world.</i><p>I disagree. It's really not a big deal to be without a Facebook account.
I would actually agree that his Facebook scraping should get him kicked off, but not due to some terms of service crap. But think about it. Whose data was he scraping? Maybe Facebook's, maybe the user who entered it should own it. But I don't think it's fair for anyone else to grab all that data and use it for other purposes.<p>I'm <i>glad</i> that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them.
As someone who has never joined Facebook and is not even tempted, I have to wonder - I mean the web is not like a TV set with just channels 2-13, or even channels 2-100<p>The web has hundreds of thousands channels. Facebook doesn't own them any more than Google owns search - they are just better at it for now so more people tune in - build an alternative and they will come - slowly at first, but they will come.
Specifically, to save the URL as the least common denominator of the web.<p>See <a href="http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html" rel="nofollow">http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html</a>
What about Facebook is not open? Facebook.com can be reached from any computer with an Internet connection. The content is standards-compliant HTML, CSS, and Javascript, delivered via standards-compliant TCP/IP. Anyone can create an account. Anyone can interact with anyone else, provided they mutually agree to do so.<p>The content is not indexable by search engines--true. But, while that is obviously a problem for search engine companies, that doesn't mean it's not "open."<p>In terms of getting data out, I had every piece of data I entered into Facebook before I entered it. I have my personal info. My photos and videos were on my cameras, phones, or computers before I uploaded them. The links I posted were in my browser history first. My comments were in my head before I typed them out.<p>Sure I don't have an easy way to export my friends' data, but that is not my data--it's theirs. Anyway if they are really my friends I can just ask them for their email address or phone number or whatever.<p>What am I missing? Facebook is a website that requires authentication to use certain features. So is scobleizer.com.
You were not kicked off of Facebook because of "running a script to try to save the common web".<p>They kicked you off for running a data scraper in violation of the terms of service you agreed to when signing up an account.
I actually wrote about this a couple of days ago. Winer even responded to me on twitter. I think we need to change the premise of the conversation. That might help inspire a new generation of young startups.<p><a href="http://www.rumproarious.com/2012/01/31/rss-needs-a-new-pr-team/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rumproarious.com/2012/01/31/rss-needs-a-new-pr-te...</a>
Well, I am for an open web, especially in the linked data/semantic web sense. That said, Facebook, Google, and Twitter make it really easy to export your data. Just to be sure about Facebook, I just went to my account settings and requested a data dump, which is happening right now. Similarly, I like to periodically dump my GMail, Google documents, and Blogger blog posts. It seems stupid not backing up your own data. I don't back up G+ data but I use G+ mostly just to link to my long Blogger blog posts. For a public presence, people should really own their own domains. Blogger makes it really easy to assign your blog to a subdomain that you own.<p>I take a few steps to maintain a modicum of privacy: I log off Facebook after looking at family and friend's posts, and I often run Chrome in Incognito mode because I think that it makes general web browsing a little safer.
This is a very boring techpolitics piece but it does give one interesting thought:<p>In a search for privacy we are locking ourselves in other's walled gardens.
I think a lot of the problem is that there's no easy, good set of protocols for social networking.<p>Want to plan a party? There's no protocol for that. We have email and calendars, but we don't have party planning. You can't fire up your calendar client and organize a party with. The best you can do is set a reminder for yourself and then invite others to share that reminder. No comments, RSVPs, etc etc.<p>Want to share a link with people and have moderateable comments? There's no protocol. Plenty of sites will do it, but none are interoperable.<p>You can lament the loss of the open web all you want, but if you aren't helping make these protocols a reality, you aren't part of the solution.
Or you could get your Facebook data via this way: <a href="http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data_.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_...</a>
So, exportable contacts = the common web? Please, Scoble, just stop it already.<p>With these posts, Scoble simply reinforces my personal impression of him as the Court Jester of the Internet.
if it really become a problem I dont think Fb/Zuck can stop hackers/programmers from building tools to export user profile, all photos, data, etc.<p>its quite simple VB stand-alone (so they dont block one IP) application with IE window in it. you log in, and VB is scrapping all the data creating excel file with contacts, saving images organized in folders for other web import, etc). not that big of a deal, right?
its the gopher argument..<p>Some of yo may remember an alternative to web called gopher..<p>It eventually died due to web being free and it not being free.<p>The form that is more'free'than fb as far as barriers, etc will out-compete fb.. DW, etc have very little to worry about as this changes rapidly and does not stay the same.