The Scoble Vs Facebook event

Robert Scoble - Jan 4, 2008

Why is it OK for Facebook to import your contacts from Gmail but it isn’t OK for it to export back out to Gmail?

Because when you get details from a friend you’re asking them directly, whereas with Facebook they gave the information the site, not specifically to you. From a legal point of view collecting that information without permission from the user would go against people’s ethical standards. It fuels the debate about giving your real name and details even further. We’ve already discussed it on Seesmic last year (a week ago in real time).

I don’t see it that way, when you become someone’s friend / follower / contact on any social site then you are explicitly giving them access to the data you have let them see on that site. In any case I learned decades ago that anything published on the Internet is public. Facebook et al don’t use SSL - all the stuff is sent in plain text over the public network.

Cancel your Plaxo account if you care about privacy… I wrote a blog post earlier today about Facebook disabling Robert Scoble’s account for attempting to extract his contacts’ information using a script. Since writing my post and conversing with what felt like the universe on Twitter about the ma…