Comments on: Scoble breaks Facebook TOS in Robin Hood data portability effort

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:38:11 +0000

Facebook’s marketability rests on them being able to assure parents and web-unsavvy kids that their information is protected and for the most part private. That’s why they didn’t even open up the site to non-college folk until last year or so, and that’s why they have such a stringent TOS. They’re allowed to run the site however they want. If the market demands portability, eventually facebook will either evolve to allow that or fall behind their competitors. They don’t need someone like this guy behaving like a child in order to stay with the times.

Great point about how he’s “giving the cops the middle finger” while doing 55 by the way. Some personalities, like his, just enjoy flagrantly transgressing rules and getting a rise out of people from it.

By: Bohol

Bohol — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:23:54 +0000

I am not so keen on social networking. If you don’t want to be disabled and you can do whatever you want, build your own website, create your own network of friends.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:47:51 +0000

I don’t know how Scoble comes out looking not trustworthy with a move like this. Jaseone just pointed out on Twitter that this program used OCR to get the email address as that isn’t a text field. Shameful.

By: Dave Huston

Dave Huston — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:47:30 +0000

I’m in total agreement with you hear. Scoble’s tactics leave a lot to be desired. It reminds me of all the people who pirated mp3’s for years then start getting all upset when the RIAA starts cracking down on it. Don’t get me wrong, the RIAA is going about it the wrong way most of the time, but stealing was always wrong.

By: darkmoon

darkmoon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:36:08 +0000

I thought it was kind of retarded but I didn’t say anything. But now that it’s out that it’s a screen-scrape? Terribly unethical. It’s like if someone was burglarizing your home, and instead of just self protection with a gun, you used an iron maiden. On all sorts of levels, this was wrong. But especially the legal perspective.

Poor judgment on Scoble’s part. Good post, TD. He did violate TOS. Facebook was in the right to disable the account. If it happened to anyone else, you’d never hear about it.