How does an strange geological dating site — with the ridiculous intention of destroying Facebook — launching with 250,000 member profiles on its first 24-hour interval ? Simple : It simulate data directly from Facebook .
At least , that ’s the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched LovelyFaces.com this week , with profiles – names , locations and exposure – scraped from in public accessible Facebook pages . The site categorize these unwitting Tennessean into personality types , using a facial recognition algorithm , so you could seek for someone in your general area who is “ wanton going , ” “ smug ” or “ sly . ”
Or you could just look for on people ’s real names .
The twain behind the site sayit ’s nontextual matter , not commerce .
In what seems to be free - arts - grad - schoolese , Paolo Cirio , a media creative person , and Alessandro Ludovic , medium critic and editor in head of Neural cartridge clip , excuse why they made the internet site .
“ Facebook , an endlessly cool place for so many multitude , becomes at the same sentence a goldmine for identity theft and dating – unfortunately , without the user ’s ascendency . But that ’s the very nature of Facebook and social media in ecumenical . If we start to dally with the concepts of identity thievery and dating , we should be able to unveil how fragile a practical identity given to a proprietary political platform can be . ”
And , the duo speculate , if people pull hard enough on that bothersome thread , Facebook ’s $ 50 billion rating will ravel .
Facebook , as you might expect , is not amuse .
“ Scraping citizenry ’s information violates our terminal figure , ” said Barry Schnitt , Facebook ’s conductor of insurance policy communications . “ We have taken , and will cover to take , belligerent legal legal action against organisation that go against these terms . We ’re investigating this site and will take appropriate action . ”
Facebook ’s terminal figure of service require those whowant to collect data from its pages to apply for permission , which Cirio and Ludovic did not do when they pulled down in public available visibility entropy on a million Facebook users . ( They are n’t the first toscrape a million Facebook profile . )
Cirio and Ludovic say they will take down a user ’s visibility , if a soul ask and the site does n’t have any meter reading they are in reality test to make any money . Instead , it ’s part of a serial of prank sites , the first two of which train at Google and Amazon , intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet monster .
Moreover , it ’s a turn suspicious hearing Facebook quetch about scraping of personal datum that is quasi - public .
Mark Zuckerberg , the company ’s founder , made his name at Harvard in 2003 by scraping the figure and photos of fellow classmates off school server to feed a system called FaceMash . With the photos , Zuckerberg created acontroversial systemthat pitted one co - ed against another , by allow others to vote on which one was better look .
So even if Facebook ’s anticipated legal nasty gram makes its way to the duo , who seem to be based somewhere in Europe , they ’ll have an splendid defensive measure .
“ I larn it by see you , Zuck . ”
Wired.com has been expanding the hive mind with technology , scientific discipline and geek culture news since 1995 .
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