<story><title>Facebook and Speech</title><url>https://continuations.com/post/188425562010/facebook-and-speech-its-all-about-power</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>malvosenior</author><text>Open API doesn&amp;#x27;t mean all data available to everyone all the time. You&amp;#x27;d still have ACLs and privacy options. It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have in Facebook&amp;#x27;s proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties.&lt;p&gt;Today you cannot see my FB page if we&amp;#x27;re not friends, an open API wouldn&amp;#x27;t allow you to access my data either. If we were friends, you could use your custom FB client to look at my page though, which would be very user friendly.</text></item><item><author>SpicyLemonZest</author><text>Forcing Facebook to have truly open API means forcing them to allow Cambridge Analytica to vacuum up everyone&amp;#x27;s data.</text></item><item><author>cameronbrown</author><text>Forcing Facebook and Twitter to have truly open APIs would be amazing. We&amp;#x27;d have everything from custom clients, custom News Feed algorithms and much more.. Heck, they can even require ads to be served, the point is we&amp;#x27;d be in a far better situation than we are now.</text></item><item><author>rubbingalcohol</author><text>&amp;gt; In the EU all bank accounts are now required to have an API. This has massively reduced the power of incumbent banks, allowing for rapid innovation in the banking and payments sector. The same would and could happen if platform such as Facebook and Twitter were required to have an API.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the author&amp;#x27;s assertion of a problem, but this is really confusing. Both Facebook and Twitter DO have APIs. Granted the APIs are proprietary and subject to significant restrictions on acceptable use and functionality. However, providing even a full-featured API doesn&amp;#x27;t change the effect of the platforms owning a person&amp;#x27;s user account and persona, or their ability to suck people in to waste countless hours watching their ad targeting feed algorithms.&lt;p&gt;Only true decentralization of social graph hosting will really address the core issue of centralized power.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>traek</author><text>&amp;gt; It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have in Facebook&amp;#x27;s proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties.&lt;p&gt;This was precisely the level of access which caused the Cambridge Analytica scandal.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook and Speech</title><url>https://continuations.com/post/188425562010/facebook-and-speech-its-all-about-power</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>malvosenior</author><text>Open API doesn&amp;#x27;t mean all data available to everyone all the time. You&amp;#x27;d still have ACLs and privacy options. It would just mean that the data and interactions you as a user already have in Facebook&amp;#x27;s proprietary walled garden, would be API callable from 3rd parties.&lt;p&gt;Today you cannot see my FB page if we&amp;#x27;re not friends, an open API wouldn&amp;#x27;t allow you to access my data either. If we were friends, you could use your custom FB client to look at my page though, which would be very user friendly.</text></item><item><author>SpicyLemonZest</author><text>Forcing Facebook to have truly open API means forcing them to allow Cambridge Analytica to vacuum up everyone&amp;#x27;s data.</text></item><item><author>cameronbrown</author><text>Forcing Facebook and Twitter to have truly open APIs would be amazing. We&amp;#x27;d have everything from custom clients, custom News Feed algorithms and much more.. Heck, they can even require ads to be served, the point is we&amp;#x27;d be in a far better situation than we are now.</text></item><item><author>rubbingalcohol</author><text>&amp;gt; In the EU all bank accounts are now required to have an API. This has massively reduced the power of incumbent banks, allowing for rapid innovation in the banking and payments sector. The same would and could happen if platform such as Facebook and Twitter were required to have an API.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the author&amp;#x27;s assertion of a problem, but this is really confusing. Both Facebook and Twitter DO have APIs. Granted the APIs are proprietary and subject to significant restrictions on acceptable use and functionality. However, providing even a full-featured API doesn&amp;#x27;t change the effect of the platforms owning a person&amp;#x27;s user account and persona, or their ability to suck people in to waste countless hours watching their ad targeting feed algorithms.&lt;p&gt;Only true decentralization of social graph hosting will really address the core issue of centralized power.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dehrmann</author><text>&amp;gt; You&amp;#x27;d still have ACLs and privacy options.&lt;p&gt;People saw an ACL grant screen before Cambridge Analytica took their data. Too many of these screens and people just click &amp;quot;OK.&amp;quot;</text></comment>