[makomk]

"Six4Three lodged its original case in 2015 shortly after Facebook removed developers’ access to friends’ data. The company said it had invested $250,000 in developing an app called Pikinis that filtered users’ friends photos to find any of them in swimwear. Its launch was met with controversy."

So basically this company tried to do something creepy and invasive with users' data, were stopped by Facebook, and now they're taking advantage of the fact that the press is pissed off at Facebook and will uncritically regurgitate any negative claim about them in headlines as leverage in their court case against them, likely in the expectation that it'll be cheaper for Facebook to settle than deal with the PR fallout.

[forapurpose]

I don't care about Six4Three or their motives; I care about Facebook and privacy. It might be unfair to Facebook but from the little I know about their business practices, they hardly have clean hands or deserve much sympathy.

> $250,000

That doesn't sound like much for a years-long lawsuit against a major company with deep pockets; unless they are suing for far more, there won't be much, if any, net profit even if they win. I wonder what else is going on here. Was the Pikini app a test of Facebook's privacy policy and/or ML image recognition, to see how they would respond? To make a point? The description of it sounds tailor-made for controversy. Or did activists later pick up on the case and support or fund it?

[ihsw2]

Honestly it sounds like a developer (or group of developers) through together an app that appeals to creepers and they felt arbitrarily singled out for creating a blatantly creepy app whereas the ones that quietly monetize the same data (via data brokers or something to that effect) get a free pass.

Ordinarily, a developer would bugger off but they (presumably) have alt-right activist leanings and they're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Check 4chan on any day and there will be "FB/IG creep" threads where users anonymously upload photos of their female Facebook and Instagram friends in skimpy/swimwear clothing.

[tzahola]

The hacker known as 4chan strikes again??? I thought they've banned him from Facebook...

[whataretensors]

What is alt-right? I thought it was people who don't like immigration. Seems to have nothing to do with this.

Edit: Just read up on the term. It's meaningless.

[forapurpose]

Can we skip this ritualistic pantomime? For the record, the other side of the issue is that the term has serious meaning and that the alt-right likes to undermine any allegations against it (of course), even by arguing that the term itself is meaningless and that they don't even exist; it's all a fantasy. A great way of disrupting any discussion or criticism. You can read the alt-right's position in the parent and other comment. With everything said, let's stop here!

[SlowRobotAhead]

Exactly. Not to start a whole thing, but almost anytime you read alt-right, in context it means “person I don’t like the internet said exists”.

[tzahola]

250k?????

I bet their engineer to manager ratio was quite low.

[gowld]

2 manager and 4 devs for 1 month to make an app.

[lallysingh]

That's < 1 yrs worth of an SV engineer's rate (after overhead). Roughly half.

[aje403]

Stop, you're making a comment that is not unequivocally anti-Facebook, therefore it is incorrect

[dang]

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our requests to stop.