Scoble Banned from Facebook

Scoble was banned last night from Facebook and all his data was taken down. The company has accused him of using a script to scrape user data a violation of customer security. Over at Twitter, there is a firestorm of pissed off former customers.

In fact, ror reasons other than this, I'm likely to become a pissed off former customer. The problem is I'm addicted to Scrabulous.

Now, any of the million or so folk who regularly follow Scoble know that he is just about the last person who would scrape user data and use it for evil purposes. The situation is as he claims it is. He was playing with a geek tool to show what a bad guy could do.

Many of us have been talking, no shouting about the dangers of Facebook and how suspicious we have come with what is happening to our data. So, it actually comes as a pleasant surprise that Facebook responded at all to Robert's experiment.

I have a hunch, once the Facebook people are down with their long winter's sleep, they yawn, stretch, have their coffee and do the usual check on what is being said about Facebook, they will actually restore Robert, with apologies for a very bad misunderstanding.

That's what they should do. I for one, would prefer to see Facebook over react and make a fool of itself, then to see it have under reacted and confirmed that bad guys could use the service to make fools of us users.

Comments

[Douglas Karr]

I think they did him a favor.

[David Binkowski]

I would prefer that they suspend his account, investigate, and restore it *if* the TOS weren't violated; just because he's Scoble doesn't mean he can circumvent their policies, even if it was for experimentation purposes. Bottom line is that if you play with fire, sometimes you will get burned.

[Dennis Howlett]

They can't do that without violating their own term of service. It's a serious problem for them only in the sense that it is Robert who has done this dastardly thing. Play by the rules, die by the rules but please don't bend them BECAUSE he is who he is.

[Robert Dempsey]

I am curious about the script that Robert ran on Facebook. From my working with the Facebook API, once you have the ID of someone, you can spider your way through all of their relationships grabbing data along the way. While there are some limitations to what you can get (what people make public), I wonder how far someone can get before they are stopped. If Scoble's script did something like that (in order for him to get his social graph information) I wonder how long it took Facebook to notice. I hope that I am incorrect about the ability to spider through people's relationships and welcome a correction if I am. If not, it is a little scary. The usual lesson of don't make it public unless you want to lose all control over it applies here.

[Robert Dempsey]

He just told us: http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/what-i-was-using-to-hit-facebook/

[Tom Raftery]

Have to agree with Dennis - if they re-instate Robert's account they are saying it is ok to break the TOS - excellent, let's all do it. Not likely to happen!

If they don't re-instate his account, bad PR.

Now Red pill of Blue pill? Which path will they take?

[Mark Harrison]

Shel,

Was this a breach of Facebook's terms or wasn't it?

The data is NOT Roberts - but "ours". (Mine, I assume yours, and 4,998 other peoples'.)

I would rant if Facebook gave permission for my data to be shared with, say, Amazon or Coca-Cola without my permission.

I will equally rant if Facebook allows my data to be shared with Plaxo, a company I have chosen NOT to use!

As I understand things (and I may be wrong), I gave ROBERT permission to see my phone number and birthday for his personal use. I certainly didn't give him permission to upload it to ad hoc companies whose software he is "testing."

Now, from my own perspective, I'm really not fussed about what Robert's done - as far as I'm concerned, he can read my data on-line, load it into Plaxo, or chisel it into a house brick (along with the 4,999 other users') and build a piece of "installation art"...

... but I don't project MY view of MY data onto the other 4,999 "facebook friends."

[shel israel]

Mark,

I'm not certain I disagree with you. But Robert says he was using Plaxo to retrieve data from his own contacts, which he gave ti Facebook. My issue with Facebook is that they are not joining a conversation that is of major concern to users. I am very interested in what the company has to say.