Facebook Bots Disable Robert Scoble
Published by Rodney Rumford January 3rd, 2008 in Facebook.
Facebook Bots Disable Robert Scoble’s Facebook Account. Apparently Robert broke facebooks terms of service. He was being totally cool about how it happened. I am sworn to secrecy by Robert about exactly what he was doing. Let’s just say Robert is the kind of guy that likes to push the envelope and break down walls and move stuff around.
I will publish exactly what he was doing when he tells me it is cool to do so.
His account is technically “disabled”. He no longer shows in my friends list. Poof! As if he never existed on Facebook. I suspect that his account will be reinstated in the next day or so. He also is an admin on another facebook group we did together. Poof. He Is Gone. He is no longer a top friend. I can’t find any wall posts from Scoble either. It is like “It’s a Wonderful Life” it is as if he never existed. Wow! Hopefully he will find ZuZu’s Petals soon and come back to life on facebook.
The fact that his account was disabled is actually somewhat reassuring in a way. Facebook looks at scripts/bots that are trying to harvest data and behaving in a non human way. 
UPDATE: There is now a group on facebook to get scobles account reopened… lol
2nd UPDATE: The NDA is lifted. Robert comes clean. He was using a version of Plaxo Pulse to try to migrate his contacts over into outlook.
Technorati Tags: facebook, scoble, technology
15 Responses to “Facebook Bots Disable Robert Scoble”
- 1 Trackback on Jan 4th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Scoble violated the TOS he deserves to be disabled. End of argument, he broke the rules.
It might be reassuring to some people, but I predict this start a way between social networks and users. Lots of over time for the lawyers in the upcoming months.
Pwned!
Scoble knowingly violated the TOS. Mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Well, any action that lessens the number of Scoble posts or items cannot be all bad. We’re not exactly dealing with a shortage, ya know.
I support the campaign to get him his facebook account back however I have to wonder why he chose his live account to use to test out some new software?
perhaps a test account set up purely for that purpose or if they wanted to stress test it with larger numbers of members i’m certain that via his many friends etc he could have created a new profile just for that purpose
He also reviewed the T&C’s before and noted that scripts weren’t allowed yet chose to carry on. He was playing with fire to start with.
Get him his account back but be more careful next time
In instances like this a “sorry” probably wouldn’t go amiss in appeasing the facebook owners. nothing wrong with being humble especially as he did run a script which is not allowed
testing on a live account and with live data…..
Robert Scoble should apologize. Did he read the terms of use before he signed up with Facebook?
“My FB Contacts is a free and easy way to export and backup the contact details of your friends on Facebook. Once exported you can then import your contacts in to your Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook account.”
http://myfbcontacts.blogspot.com/
Eric,
Thanks for the comment. But I must warn people to use the myfbcontacts script at their own peril. It looks interesting for sure. I know I would be afraid to run it. I don’t want to suffer the same fate as robert.
But it sure would be nice to export all that data and get it into my iphone.
At least on your site you run disclaimers. “Please be aware that it is a violation of facebook.com terms of use to use an automated program like this to download your friend’s profiles.”
He broke the rules? Bah. People backing the Facebook TOS is pretty pathetic, considering Facebook’s Beacon venture (”we can collect all the data we want from you and your friends, but how dare you try to export your info and shared contact information for your own personal use!”). In the future, just make sure to rate limit your scripts so as to fly under Facebook’s radar. They’re a passing fad, and the next Web 2.0 site that one-ups them will come along shortly.
When oh when will all the script kiddies learn that the internet is not a big sandbox for them to play in?
Here we see facebook’s respect to it’s users,without users there will be no facebook,
it seems facebook’s eyes don’t see anything rather then green dollars
now we see facebook is all about callect persons information and seel it
we saw this in project beacon before
I have created a website for people who have been Facebook Disabled who are frustrated with the lack of customer support. This site is created as a community site for people who post their current issues with facebook.com
http://www.facebookdisable.com/
http://www.facebookdisable.com/forum/
plz i have display on face book 3 times i dont no y just if u can bring it back thx