U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut down ad research

Re:U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut dow... by Sebb767 on Thursday August 05, 2021 @11:21PM (#28082971)

They can't throw you in jail over it, but it's within their rights to stop sending you these bytes or kick you off their platform altogether.

If they'd try to prevent you from scraping third-party sites it would be making laws; setting up ground rules with their ToS and enforcing them is absolutely fine.

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Re:U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut dow... by dathinab on Friday August 06, 2021 @07:08AM (#28085538)

> but it's within their rights to stop sending you these bytes or kick you off their platform altogether.

Actually no.

If a platform provides a generally available service they are (in many countries, idk. about the US) not allowed to arbitrary exclude some people they don't like without a legal valid reason.

And braking legally not valid/binding terms in a ToS is not a legal valid reason. Just because you write something in your ToS doesn't mean it has any legal relevant meaning, there are limits to what you can put in ToS. And limiting (properly done, privacy respecting) research is often not valid. (Through depends a lot on the country.)

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Re:U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut dow... by throwwebmaster on Sunday August 08, 2021 @02:28PM (#28108889)

The FTC is a US government entity.

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Re:U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut dow... by ClumsyPilot on Friday August 06, 2021 @08:59AM (#28086524)

Imagine I am scraping Twitter - maybe I never accepted their TOS and don't even have an account.

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Re:U.S. FTC says Facebook misused privacy decree to shut dow... by throwwebmaster on Sunday August 08, 2021 @02:29PM (#28108904)

Interesting that you mentioned Twitter. Twitter requires a user account to access content. Try accessing Twitter while logged out.

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