[CharlesW]

The Facebook API used by the app was never open. Additionally, "Facebook required app developers to sign agreements promising to abide by privacy restrictions attached to user data they received through Facebook APIs"¹. The problem is that Facebook never did an adequate job of auditing or enforcing that.

Also, even if you somehow believe that users knowingly consented to share the amount of data that they did, they definitely did not consent to data traitor Aleksandr Kogan selling their personal knowledge graphs to Cambridge Analytica.

¹ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/facebooks-cambri...

[baeaz]

That's false. The api was called friends permission and was public. There are references to it everywhere in the web. For example here you have a rando asking about it in SO: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6392338/what-is-the-diff...

[CharlesW]

You said "open", not "public".

[nickff]

Not the OP, but “open” is vague, and might plausibly be meant as “public”. HN guidelines say you should respond to the strongest possible interpretation of a comment, not nit-pick:

>” Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”

That said, OP’s response seems a bit harsh, as what you said wasn’t “false”, it just wasn’t their intended meaning.