[ryanmerket]

Man I love this, but this isn't a business. Facebook, Reddit, et al will almost certainly C&D you and eventually sue you for violating their policies.

"Facebook does not have a specific policy against Greasemonkey like extensions by name, but it has banned users for creating or using scripts that interfere with Facebook's functionality, which can include those made with Greasemonkey. Such actions are against Facebook's terms of service, which prohibit anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working or appearance of the site.

Interfering with site functionality: Scripts, including Greasemonkey scripts, that alter how Facebook's pages load or work can be seen as a violation of the terms of service, which can lead to account suspension or banning. Examples of banned scripts: A specific example is the ban of the creator of the FB Purity add-on, which was a Greasemonkey script used to customize Facebook, say The Next Web."

[zamadatix]

Do you have any actual examples of C&Ds or lawsuits in this regard, or did you just mean they might ban the users/your account? The latter is pretty expected and tame, but it'd be surprising/interesting to look at actual examples of the claimed.

[fn-mote]

Being banned from Facebook would be a VERY big deal for many users. If FB is willing to ban users of the extension (however they detect it), usage will drop to 0 fast.

Far outweighing the benefit of tweaking the UI.

[zamadatix]

No argument with any of that, but that's still a far cry from a C&D or lawsuit.

[busymom0]

While I don't think this would be a legal dispute, I do think websites might reach out to Apple and Google to get such apps off the store which interfere with their site.

Wasn't there a recent case where Apple removed some app which manipulated Amazon website behavior?

[beefnugs]

Yeah this is exactly what we need. But it has to be source only peer to peer distributed with no legal way to figure out what developer to stomp on.

[mettamage]

Yea, I had a similar idea like this years ago. I never gave it another thought because of potential legal issues.

[Hammershaft]

Grounds to ban someone from a service are not grounds for a legal dispute.

[colonwqbang]

"Ban" and "sue" are very different things...

[teaearlgraycold]

On the other hand, think of all of the SV startups that began by doing something blatantly illegal and are now successful.

[ryanmerket]

Sure, but once this starts to materially affect FB's revenue, they have the war chest and the lawyers to keep this startup in court until it is exhausted.

[duderific]

99% of users of FB would never hear of this extension, nor know what to do with an extension, nor care to even consider that they could improve their experience.