Well known tech blogger Robert Scoble has had his Facebook account disabled after he ran an unnamed script over it, breaking the site’s terms of use. As he says on his blog, he is appealing, but he Twittered that he will be taking the normal customer service route rather than contacting Facebook’s PR people, as he could certainly do (not that it will take long for the PR guys to notice). Scoble says he was using the script from an unnamed company since he is working with them to “move my social graph to other places and that isn’t allowable under Facebook’s terms of service.” Here’s the email he received from Facebook, which he has published on his blog.
Hello,
Our systems indicate that you’ve been highly active on Facebook lately and viewing pages at a quick enough rate that we suspect you may be running an automated script. This kind of Activity would be a violation of our Terms of Use and potentially of federal and state laws.
As a result, your account has been disabled. Please reply to this email with a description of your recent activity on Facebook. In addition, please confirm with us that in the future you will not scrape or otherwise attempt to obtain in any manner information from our website except as permitted by our Terms of Use, and that you will immediately delete and not use in any manner any such information you may have previously obtained.
We reserve the right to take any appropriate action in connection with any activities that violate our Terms of Use and/or applicable laws, including termination of your account and pursuit of legal remedies.
Please reply to this email.
Thank you,
Facebook Customer Support
Update: He now says he plans to support Dataportability.org, the open standards stack for the ubiquitous sharing and remixing of data.
Update II: Ironically there is now a Facebook group supporting his re-instatement. And if you’d like to see what Scoble would look like as a revolutionary, check this out.
Scoble got kicked out of Facebook for using a new service that would let him export his contacts and connections out of Facebook? Like, to make his own data portable? And they kicked him out? That’s awesome. What a good fight to pick. Go Scoble.
I wonder how Valleywag will nail him for this one.
Regardless, way to go Scoble!
A small Israeli blog has already published this before.
I’m surprised you haven’t noticed it.
Here is a link to the article on the blog
http://www.isra...nsocial-network
facebook’s getting lamer by the second.
Who else but Robert could push their buttons and get this noticed! Good job Scoble. Stay tuned to PodTech for more on this
scoble should be on cnn…
Scoble blocked! For once peace and quiet on my FB feed!
~ Marcus
Scoble needs to broadcast himself 24/7 through this whole thing via his cell phone, live, on Qik.com. His view rates will be huge.
Scoble taking calls, Scoble having a morning scotch while figuring out how to take advantage of this, Scoble getting free pizzas delivered by fans cheering him on, Scoble in front of Facebook headquarters wearing a mascot disguise (something like the Philly Fanatic), or live tours, maybe start at the original Harvard dorm where Zuckerberg came up with Facebook. He could shout “I could use a friend, I just lost 4,999 …. “
Scoble would be much more bearable if he didn’t insist on using puke-inducing phrases like “move my social graph” all the time. You just want to export your contacts, stop using pretentious buzzwords!
Oh, and by the way, the only thing more obnoxious than using your perceived “importance” and contacting Facebook PR is to be patronizing enough openly state you’re “Just gonna try to be an everyday person about this.” (actual Twitter quote!). Oh mighty, important Scoble! How thankful we are that you are stepping down from your throne to rub shoulders with us, the unwashed masses…
There goes the valuation
http://www.cent...ned-on-facebook
Scoble did something that was against the TOS , what did he expect facebook to do ?
He deserves to be banned for life. He accepted the Facebook TOS when he signed up so should stick to them.
It annoys me that people sign up for things and then decide to fuck with things. If he doesnt like Facebook or their TOS then stop using Facebook , simple.
The guy sounds like a douchbag .
I am not aware about viewing pages at a quick enough rate will cause suspension. I will use dial-connection to access facebook, lol.
What can he explain anyway after he has broken the sites rule.Take a new account and make it from the beginning.Of course he can bring it to the top again.Can’t he…???
Krishna: I won’t start a new account on Facebook. By the way, that too is against the rules there.
Instead I’ll be spending more of my time on one of the other social networks that a) doesn’t have a stupid technical limitation that keeps me under 5,000 friends and b) lets me keep my own social graph (er, social network info) to use wherever I want.
Facebook is a pile of shit, and there TOS sounds like a fuck up aswel
go Scoble, you don’t need that FACECRAP rubbish
…no one cares.
Marshall,
I think this was a good move for Robert to do this. “Like, to make his own data portable”… a worthy cause.
By the way. All traces of him on facebook have disappeared…and there is now a group that sprouted up to reinstate his account.
Full details & screenshot here. Cheers!
http://facerevi...-robert-scoble/
Justice should be equal to all… no matters weather you are big blogger (online million earner) or even a common man.
Gr8 work FaceBook.
I salute your automated scripts.
Instead of scraping the information with a script – why not *ask* Facebook for the data, or request a feature to allow the data to be exported. (That’s what you’re supposed to do with roach-motel type sites).
With over 5000 ‘friends’ of course a script hitting every page one after the other without a break is going to be red flagged.
A properly written script would pause between page requests – at least a minute. How much time was the script pausing between requests?
From the facebook notification, its the volume of requests that’s the root of the problem, not a disagreement on whether the data should be portable or not.
I imagine this was automated and its interesting to know they are monitoring this stuff.
what I don’t understand is why didn’t they use a facebook app to query his friend list and export it that way.
As much as I despise facebook I think they have a point. If you are making that many requests you are placing a large load on their servers with the slight possibility of forcing some downtime. What would make a poorly written script any different from a DDOS attack?
We are considering a cross-promotion with the makers of Robert’s script. Hope to clear up any concerns regarding its “spiritual appropriateness” later today.
Are you sure that isn’t Phillip Seymour Hoffman?
A new year and the same Facebook crap?
I’d just put a few “sleep()” into that script.
pwned.
Seriously though, I understand why people support data portability but is it an issue that’s important to Facebook’s consumerist user base?
A couple thoughts…
1. Lots of “information wants to be free” posts. But there’s a difference between the information itself – which you know in your head – and the application holding it – Facebook. Facebook is not a PDA utility.
2. This publicity will probably spur Facebook to make a change in members’ ability to do exactly what Scoble tried. It could be done in a way that makes FB even stronger ultimately.
I understand that Scoble does not agree with the TOS, but I do not understand why he thinks Facebook is wrong in enforcing it. It seems to me that Scoble should try to convince them that they are wrong and that they should change it. If he just ignores it with the hope he will get away with breaking the rules to which he agreed, what right is there to complain when he gets caught?
Scoble is annoying and irritating. I think Facebook did the right thing. He is clearly abusing the TOS and disturbing the peace.
Steven, #30: how do you know I haven’t asked Facebook to change? In fact, I signed a Bill of Rights for Social Web users: http://opensocialweb.org/
Second, I was pretty sure I would get caught.
Third, I have hundreds of hours invested in Facebook. All gone.
So, I’ve paid a penalty of thousands of dollars of my time to try to make a point. Got it yet?
why would you spend hundreds of your hours on facebook ??
its pretty sad .
Just what I have been wishing for, a high profile Net personality to get jacked up by a proprietary social network. Need a few more like this for dataportability.org to get traction ( Oh and lets drag Microformats along with us! ).
Hypocrisy..
So it is ok for facebook to ask for my Gmail, Hotmail, etc. usernames and passwords so that they can reach into those accounts and import contacts, but its not ok for another service to do the same to them?
Being able to export contact information is totally ridiculous. Who needs that when Facebook has sheep-throwing?
If it would be President Bush on facebook running same script I would treat him queal to some other user. If he broke their law & policy, why would he be able to get his account back?
So does that mean facebook is not treating every1 equal?
Robert, #32: Thank you for such a quick response. I am impressed!
If the hope was to get away with something (even if the expectation was that you would not) then the action troubles me. If the idea is that this is like an act of civil disobedience, I can understand that.
I have no issue with you, personally. I do not question your contribution to Facebook. However, is your argument that you should be allowed to decide for yourself that you are exception? I find the theory more interesting than the specifics. The questions that I see are: who gets to make the rules? who gets to decide when they apply and when there are exceptions? who gets to enforce the rules? what alternatives are legitimate for those who want whatever is offered but object to the constraints?
Scoble you cheater!!!
Is that how you got your Wordpress blog so popular through automated scripts???
haha
My apologies for getting too wrapped up in this. I will drop it after this.
I found Thoreau’s discussion in Civil Disobedience (http://thoreau....org/civil2.html) interesting. He is, of course, referring to the government and forced actions, not to private businesses and optional actions.
[2] How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle — the perception and the performance of right — changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
[3] Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform?
And if you’d like to see what Scoble would look like as a revolutionary check out:
http://uk.techc...g-his-contacts/
LOL I love how it’s a “cause” or something now… so stupid. Tech nerds and their overinflated egos will never fail to amuse me.
Scoble,
You were spending hundreds of hours on facebook? Hope your New Year’s resolution is one of the following.
Getting a Life… or
Find a Real Friend… or even better
Stop Superficializing
Scoble is in volation of FB TOS so they booted him. I used to be a software developer in the 80s and if someone did this to Apple or Microsoft they would be banned for life as well. It’s not about little coding hacks here and there to save time. Instead Scoble went for the FB core jewels of their platform.
He should be banned for life. Facebook needs to set an example.
Oh yeah Scoble isn’t a developer. He’s a PR hound. This is like the guy who gets dared by his friends…”it’s ok Scobie go in there and ask the bank teller for all the money in the draw….and oh wave this gun around..it will help”…
Someone once said you claim stupidity as an excuse…”sorry officer I didn’t mean to rob the bank…my friends dared me ..duh…”
Scoble is an idiot – He knows how to get attention. Pulling down your pants certainly gets traffic. Nice work Robert Scoble. Bloggers everywhere should be embarrassed.
Steven: I was not expecting to get away with it.
I feel as though I should know scoble since i keep refering to him as scoble.
Firstly maybe its a good thing that you were banned , if you spend hundreds of hours on facebook. Get out and talk to your friends / call them , email them / IM them .
Aren’t nerds comical – one minute your nobody the next lots of kids sucking your knee caps. In a few years time when blogs and web2.0 personalities are out of the window then these nerdy celebs will go back in the shadows.
What ever happened to celebrating nerds who created something like apple , google , amazon etc rather than writers ?? what has a writer ever really contributed to society ??
Hey Robert, et al.
This is about the data, not TOS. There’s an anti-facebook undercurrent developing that is being openly expressed by the alpha-geeks on twitter. I’ve been saying the same thing for a while now. Twice in the past 24 hours, two people have told me that they have either stopped using facebook completely, or that they are “…burned out on facebook”.
Right or wrong, many, many people pay attention and take their cue from these bloggers. I agree that a lotta users may be reluctant to abandon the time they’ve spent on facebook, but in the end you gotta see some ROI – what has all this really provided to the average user in terms of measurable advantage in business? A big advantage is in access to (and thus analysis of) the data.
If there isn’t business value, then what? Status updates? One word: twitter.
If facebook’s utility to the alpha-tech can be so easily replaced by twitter (as has occurred to me and I suspect is occurring to Hugh McLeod [as one example] as well), then facebook better quickly figure out how to remain relevant to them.
Because when the alpha-geeks say ‘I don’t use facebook’, people will hear ‘Don’t use facebook’.
[this is a near-verbatim reposting of my reply to kara at boomtown]
What’s news here Mike? Oh – it’s Scoble. OK then. C’mon, this has been FBs policy for a LONG time. Nothing new there.
I would imagine that its just a PR stunt for Facebook. Any pr is good PR. Not that they need it.
Developers are moving to FB why? 60 million reasons. The problem is that without a coherent developer strategy FB is doomed. Scoble is a tool and facebook knows it. They don’t care about Scoble. They should care about the company that paid Scoble to do this.
@52 – old school: please see my post at #49.
If this continues, expect to see a lot of folks quit using facebook. As an analogy to the point I tried to make above, look no further than Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Obama. Millions (yes, *millions*) of Americans will consider (and possibly endorse) Obama simply because Oprah does.
No matter your opinion of Scoble, Arrington, McLeod, Tim Bray, (or even me), a whole lotta otherwise tech-savvy folks listen to them. This is an important set of voices for facebook.
60 million reasons? History has not been kind to companies with vast followers but whose grip on them was tenuous: AOL, Compuserve, and Netscape come to mind. Anyone remember Gateway Computer?