Digg is one of the most significant implementations of Facebook Connect to date but not everything is rosy as Digg has violated Facebook’s terms in the process of rolling out their service. One month ago a developer in the Facebook developer forum began complaining that Digg was actively storing user information. One month later Matt Trainer who handles developer relations at Facebook posted that they’ve “followed up with Digg to make sure that no profile information is stored against Facebook policy.”
The issue at hand was that Digg stored the information beyond the permitted 24 hours. Digg is apparently resolving the issue but it’s interesting that one of Facebook’s largest Connect implementations could be violating the terms for so long while going unnoticed. Is it a huge deal? I don’t really think so but that it took Digg over a month to resolve the issue means that thousands of users’ information was being stored on their servers.
Granted, Digg isn’t out to abuse the terms and steal user data but it shows how the terms can easily violated. It also illustrates how the developers are a self-policing group, aside from those that are profiting from violating the terms. Integrating Facebook Connect into your existing user system requires a bit of modifications to comply with Facebook’s terms. Ultimately Facebook got a big win out of having the Digg-Connect integration and this violation is more of a formality.
For those developers looking to implement Connect though, they want to know that other companies are also forced to jump through Facebook’s hoops to get set up. Digg now appears to be doing just that.
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The good thing now is that FB is slowly getting rid of the "special exceptions" they have had.
Comment by Facebook User — July 30, 2009 @ 8:20 am
It is really curious that almost every application doesn't comply with facebook policy. I think that they could make things easier with a less tighten policy.
Comment by Facebook User — July 30, 2009 @ 9:30 am
Over a month to resolve the issue?
a) how do you know when FB asked Digg to make a change?
b) what world do you live in where it takes less than a month for requests to go to legal, business, development, qa, and release management?
Comment by Cranky Consumer — July 30, 2009 @ 10:37 am
Interesting that this went unnoticed for so long. Besides the honor system and developer-policing, how will FB monitor this and other term violations as it expands?
Comment by Lisa Boldini — July 30, 2009 @ 11:17 am
I am curious why isn't FB connect considered as an "Opt-in" like email. If you connect you should be entitled to the data and thats where FB could finally make money – Pay for a FB Connect account -
Comment by TM — July 30, 2009 @ 1:48 pm
The fact of the matter is that its a huge pain in the * to comply with their policy because you have to write a bunch of extra code that doesn't really do very much except retrieve information you already had access to before. Who wants to write the extra code?
The fact of the matter is that unless someone notices, there's really no way to tell who's storing what information and apps that don't go back to get information they already were storing will ultimately be faster. I'd bet most intermediately skilled app programmers are probably violating the terms to begin with and not even realizing it. I'm honestly surprised their team didn't catch that. I would have thought their team has enough seasoned experts that they would have seen that a huge gaping obvious violation. Guess they're no different than any of the rest of us!
Comment by Jonathan Block — July 30, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
No konfirmasi
Comment by Juzt bush — July 30, 2009 @ 8:11 pm
Is there any information that FB connect allows you to have – how does this new shark week discovery thing work – do they get this informmation
http://www.frenziedwaters.com
Please someone help me…..What can i extract if anything – FB connect should be treated just as an opt in to email but u dont have to fill anything out – like OpenID — Web the Web!!!
Comment by TM — July 31, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
123
Comment by Paul Humber — October 10, 2011 @ 6:23 am