The Frienditto saga
Mar. 5th, 2005 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI made the mistake of posting a couple of sentences about the Frienditto site in the middle of a post about something else. I assumed it was sufficient to say, yeah, obvious scam, let's move on. However, the issue has been blown way out of proportion and there's all kinds of rumours flying around.
I'm aware that I'm possibly fanning the flames by making another post on the subject, but I want to spell things out clearly. The thing is, the Frienditto site has no legitimate purpose. Let me say that again: it is facilitating nothing that any decent, honest person would want to do.
To break it down: how does this self-described "archive" site work? You provide the URL of a LiveJournal post, and the site copies all the HTML of the post and comments and displays it on the Frienditto site. Now, why would anyone want to do this? If you see a cool post that you like, you might want to draw attention to it. The sensible way to do that would be to post a link in your own journal, or post it to del.icio.us.
If it's a really cool post, you might want to archive it for posterity. Now, why on earth would any sensible person choose to archive a post from LJ, with its established infrastructure and serious, large-scale commercial presence, to some random fly-by-night website? You may doubt the security and durability of LJ, but it's pretty obvious that Frienditto is going to do worse on any of these parameters. It makes no sense for archives to be vastly less secure than the originals. The sensible thing to do would be to copy the post to your computer, if you were really concerned about archiving it.
More likely than LJ disappearing is the possibility that the post's author might decide to delete their post. Why would someone delete their post? The most likely reason is that they regret publishing it for some reason, perhaps because it's generated a really negative response, attracted trolls, caused drama, whatever. In this situation, the only purpose that is served by having a publicly available "archive" copy is to make it possible to continue trolling or harassing or creating drama related to the original post.
So Frienditto makes it possible to use someone's words against them after they've chosen to delete them. But there's a more serious problem. Frienditto also "lets" you archive Friends Only posts. The way it does this is by asking for your username and password so that the site can see posts that you have access to. This makes it possible for the site to archive, or in other words, make a publicly viewable copy of a post that was meant to be private.
Now, clearly there are ways to do this without needing to use Frienditto. If I am an untrustworthy person with access to your Friends Only entries, I can if I wish copy the entry and republish it somewhere online. It's a little trickier to do so anonymously than Frienditto makes it, but it's possible. But just look at that hypothetical scenario again: the whole point is that only if I were an untrustworthy person would I want to do such a thing.
Then there's the whole issue of giving your password to random strangers. It's possible that Frienditto could use your password to post unwanted material in your name, or to read other Friends Only entries apart from the one you decided (for some reason) to "archive", or to lock you out of your account and delete your entries and generally cause problems. I have no reason to believe Frienditto plan to do any of these things with the passwords they harvest; there are plenty of silly LJ toys that ask for a password to get access to protected information, and their creators are harmless fools who reason that, well, I'm a decent person and I wouldn't do that, so obviously everybody should trust me when I say I wouldn't.
But the point is that even if Frienditto are completely scrupulous with the passwords, they are using them for an intrinsically bad purpose in the first place. On the other hand, even if you believe (because all I can do is present my own opinion) that making other people's Friends Only entries public is a legitimate thing to do, as a general principle you should never reveal your passwords. Surely this is obvious?
I have the impression that the people involved in Frienditto are in fact not at all trustworthy. I'm not sufficiently certain of this to defame them though. It is possible that some of the moronic trolls claiming to be involved are actually not, but they just like having their names associated with anything that people are stressed about. It is possible that although they may have done cruel things and abused personal and private information and attempted to cause LiveJournal trouble in the past, they are not planning to do so in this case. This is not the point; I repeat, the site has no legitimate purpose, so even if they only do exactly what they have claimed they are going to do, that is still a bad thing to be doing, and the fact that they are attempting to do it on its own makes them untrustworthy.
Conclusion: Frienditto is a very bad thing. But at the same time, let's not blow things out of proportion. I really doubt that the site is going to do any serious damage to LiveJournal; LiveJournal has survived much more serious attacks before and will do so again long after Frienditto is forgotten. The world is not going to come to an end either, because a few foolish or naive or petty people have provided their passwords to a dodgy site.
My prediction is that the site will fall over in a few days because it doesn't have the infrastructure to support the volume of use it will be getting with all the fuss. (The site is in fact down at the time of writing.) Or if they manage to get it back up again, it will piss someone off enough to find itself attacked either digitally or legally. I doubt the trolls care enough to put serious money or effort into keeping the site going.
Final note: people (claiming to be) connected to Frienditto have been trolling journals with posts critical of the site. As a result of this, I have screened non-friends comments to this post, because I can't be bothered to deal with a potential troll-fest. Legitimate comments may be unscreened at my discretion.
I'm aware that I'm possibly fanning the flames by making another post on the subject, but I want to spell things out clearly. The thing is, the Frienditto site has no legitimate purpose. Let me say that again: it is facilitating nothing that any decent, honest person would want to do.
To break it down: how does this self-described "archive" site work? You provide the URL of a LiveJournal post, and the site copies all the HTML of the post and comments and displays it on the Frienditto site. Now, why would anyone want to do this? If you see a cool post that you like, you might want to draw attention to it. The sensible way to do that would be to post a link in your own journal, or post it to del.icio.us.
If it's a really cool post, you might want to archive it for posterity. Now, why on earth would any sensible person choose to archive a post from LJ, with its established infrastructure and serious, large-scale commercial presence, to some random fly-by-night website? You may doubt the security and durability of LJ, but it's pretty obvious that Frienditto is going to do worse on any of these parameters. It makes no sense for archives to be vastly less secure than the originals. The sensible thing to do would be to copy the post to your computer, if you were really concerned about archiving it.
More likely than LJ disappearing is the possibility that the post's author might decide to delete their post. Why would someone delete their post? The most likely reason is that they regret publishing it for some reason, perhaps because it's generated a really negative response, attracted trolls, caused drama, whatever. In this situation, the only purpose that is served by having a publicly available "archive" copy is to make it possible to continue trolling or harassing or creating drama related to the original post.
So Frienditto makes it possible to use someone's words against them after they've chosen to delete them. But there's a more serious problem. Frienditto also "lets" you archive Friends Only posts. The way it does this is by asking for your username and password so that the site can see posts that you have access to. This makes it possible for the site to archive, or in other words, make a publicly viewable copy of a post that was meant to be private.
Now, clearly there are ways to do this without needing to use Frienditto. If I am an untrustworthy person with access to your Friends Only entries, I can if I wish copy the entry and republish it somewhere online. It's a little trickier to do so anonymously than Frienditto makes it, but it's possible. But just look at that hypothetical scenario again: the whole point is that only if I were an untrustworthy person would I want to do such a thing.
Then there's the whole issue of giving your password to random strangers. It's possible that Frienditto could use your password to post unwanted material in your name, or to read other Friends Only entries apart from the one you decided (for some reason) to "archive", or to lock you out of your account and delete your entries and generally cause problems. I have no reason to believe Frienditto plan to do any of these things with the passwords they harvest; there are plenty of silly LJ toys that ask for a password to get access to protected information, and their creators are harmless fools who reason that, well, I'm a decent person and I wouldn't do that, so obviously everybody should trust me when I say I wouldn't.
But the point is that even if Frienditto are completely scrupulous with the passwords, they are using them for an intrinsically bad purpose in the first place. On the other hand, even if you believe (because all I can do is present my own opinion) that making other people's Friends Only entries public is a legitimate thing to do, as a general principle you should never reveal your passwords. Surely this is obvious?
I have the impression that the people involved in Frienditto are in fact not at all trustworthy. I'm not sufficiently certain of this to defame them though. It is possible that some of the moronic trolls claiming to be involved are actually not, but they just like having their names associated with anything that people are stressed about. It is possible that although they may have done cruel things and abused personal and private information and attempted to cause LiveJournal trouble in the past, they are not planning to do so in this case. This is not the point; I repeat, the site has no legitimate purpose, so even if they only do exactly what they have claimed they are going to do, that is still a bad thing to be doing, and the fact that they are attempting to do it on its own makes them untrustworthy.
Conclusion: Frienditto is a very bad thing. But at the same time, let's not blow things out of proportion. I really doubt that the site is going to do any serious damage to LiveJournal; LiveJournal has survived much more serious attacks before and will do so again long after Frienditto is forgotten. The world is not going to come to an end either, because a few foolish or naive or petty people have provided their passwords to a dodgy site.
My prediction is that the site will fall over in a few days because it doesn't have the infrastructure to support the volume of use it will be getting with all the fuss. (The site is in fact down at the time of writing.) Or if they manage to get it back up again, it will piss someone off enough to find itself attacked either digitally or legally. I doubt the trolls care enough to put serious money or effort into keeping the site going.
Final note: people (claiming to be) connected to Frienditto have been trolling journals with posts critical of the site. As a result of this, I have screened non-friends comments to this post, because I can't be bothered to deal with a potential troll-fest. Legitimate comments may be unscreened at my discretion.
Addendum 6.3.05:_hypatia_ has a really wonderful critique of my arguments in the comments. I suggest everyone should read her views because wow, I've learnt such a lot. (She doesn't disagree with me about this particular site, but does have some very interesting counters to the more general principles I was arguing from!)
Note 7.3.05: Various people seem to have been finding this through links and Google, which is great. I'm almost sorry I ended up screening comments because instead of attracting trolls I've attracted loads of people with interesting contributions and information! I hope to reply to everyone who's contributed individually, but just as a general statement, thank you all for your thoughtful remarks.
If anyone wants to link to this post they are absolutely welcome. My position against Frienditto has no bearing on my attitude towards legitimate links. And if people are finding this piece helpful, I'm happy to disseminate it.
I have left a couple of comments screened, not because they're deliberately trolling but because they're drawing attention to artificially created drama and unsubstantiated rumours. Part of the point of this post is that you don't have to believe that Frienditto is the spawn of the devil and eats babies to see why it's a bad thing. So I don't want the comments of this to degenerate into wild rumour-mongering; all that does is give Frienditto supporters a case because they can say, look, people are spreading false information about us! We are poor innocent victims!
Also word up to
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Comment part 1
Date: 2005-03-06 01:08 pm (UTC)I don't quite agree. I've seen no evidence that Frienditto wish to achieve anything constructive or anything at all beyond LJDrama/ED context - ie a great big fuss, lots of reaction, some of which will inevitibly lend itself to ridicule. Reminds me a lot of the Usenet Performance Artists but without a spell checker.
We should seperate the motive of one group from the concept of archiving public information. Note the word "public" is important here - honouring X-Noarchive or other functionally similar headers is fundamental to the process. That said it is unwise of any individual to assume everyone honours these when you publish.
If we seperate out the motive entirely then we do have an archiving service which works by building up lots of bits and pieces over time. That holds the raw material from which future, more organised archives can be built. This is precisely how the current Usenet archive was built.
If you see a cool post that you like, you might want to draw attention to it. The sensible way to do that would be to post a link in your own journal, or post it to del.icio.us.
Posting links is fine but it doesn't archive the actual information. If the original is lost you have no archive to which you can redirect those links.
Now, why on earth would any sensible person choose to archive a post from LJ, with its established infrastructure and serious, large-scale commercial presence, to some random fly-by-night website? You may doubt the security and durability of LJ, but it's pretty obvious that Frienditto is going to do worse on any of these parameters. It makes no sense for archives to be vastly less secure than the originals. The sensible thing to do would be to copy the post to your computer, if you were really concerned about archiving it.
For redundancy as much as anything else. Over time archives are built up by integrating many different stores. If someone had asked me to predict which archives/stores of Network News posts would be most reliable or valuable back in the early '80s I'd have predicted some correctly but not all. Some very small and personal archives fill important holes in the record.
LJ may go from strength to strength, it may crash and disappear or be bought out by a hostile company charging for access - I have no idea. Also I'm considering blogging at large rather than just LJ which holds a subset of the world's blogs. The Usenet archives are not just built from one or two archives they are the product of many, many small archives being added to fill in gaps and make it a more complete record. As for storing it on a local computer - ok so my home network has a couple of Terabytes of storage and runs scheduled backups every 6 hours plus incrementals of all user and data areas plus the OS etc etc so yes I can archive stuff of interest to me with some confidence. I'm at the extreme end (the end known as 'sad') of a bell curve which peaks with people backing up their personal machine less than once a month if ever. Archive sites really can provide a service and that should be considered in itself and not just bundled into the motivations behind Frienditto.
I'm also talking to much - I need to split this comment, part 2 follows...
Re: Comment part 1
Date: 2005-03-06 02:04 pm (UTC)There is definitely a use to archiving friendspages and other private posts on your own computer (or other secure space). Same reason tools like lj archive exist.
There is a definite purpose for mirror sites and publically available archives. Pick a case study (google cache will do).
Frienditto is neither of these. Frienditto would claim to be a combination of the two (as in some ways it is). What it does includes automatically makeing a public archive of private posts. It is this last "feature" that can have no legitimate purpose.
Public discussions are one thing. Private discussions are another. Confusing the two is a bad idea. I believe that it is this rather than the rest that has everyone up in arms. (Other than that, I agree with your points)
Re: Comment part 1
Date: 2005-03-06 04:37 pm (UTC)Define "automatically".
AFAIK the only FO/private posts archived are those submitted by user action, not by any automatic process (such as, say, using the supplied credentials to upload all of a given person's protected entries, or all those matching certain criteria such as containing certain words).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-06 06:44 pm (UTC)By the standard functioning of the tool.
AFAIK, there is no way to get your flist archived by frienditto without submitting your LJ password.
In short, other than for people with no access to friendsonly posts (a vanishingly small number), use of this tool is automatically unethical (and probably illegal in America under the DMCA).
The only people who would use such a tool are therefore either dupes (stupid enough to upload their password) or have malicious (and possibly criminal) intent.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-06 07:10 pm (UTC)I thought it just allowed you to archive individual posts. And it claims you can indeed archive public posts without submitting a password (google cache of the page (http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:6sJPQ02c5WEJ:www.frienditto.com/faq.php+frienditto+password&hl=en&client=firefox-a), as on the site itself I can only reach the front page requesting money)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-06 07:39 pm (UTC)Not sure what you mean with "flist" since the site doesn't archive lists; it archives entries.
And you can (well, could) submit a public entry without needing to enter username and password.
And AFAIK submitting a FO entry (which requires username and password of an account that can see that FO entry) will submit only that one entry -- not an entire journal, let alone all journals that that account can see.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-06 10:45 pm (UTC)Archiving friends pages is not what's going on here. LJ deliberately don't provide an automatic way to do it (beyond the unpreventable level of direct HTML scraping). They even make it damn difficult to get an RSS feed of your friends page, obviously not impossible, but difficult enough to put 99% of people off trying. The LJArchive tool only archives your own posts (although if you had someone else's password you could archive theirs as well, but that's not what the tool is meant for.) Frienditto, for all its other faults, also isn't archiving friends pages, just individual posts.
There is a definite purpose for mirror sites and publically available archives.
There is indeed, and I find I overstated my case because I didn't think of this angle until
What it does includes automatically makeing a public archive of private posts.
It doesn't do it automatically. Users have to positively choose to publicize private posts. That doesn't make it a lot better, because it's basically a tool for doing naughty things, but it doesn't automatically make public all locked posts you have access to on signing up. So some of the people who have been defending it are saying that Frienditto is not to blame if its users choose to violate locked posts. I'm sure I don't need to point out why this is a weak argument, but they are legitimately able to make it in the sense that users have responsibility for whether they use the tool for that purpose.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-06 10:35 pm (UTC)Interesting; I hadn't thought of that as a possibility. I'm glad you pointed it out because I really would never have imagined that such a thing could be useful at all.
Some very small and personal archives fill important holes in the record.
I think I'm showing my youth here; it doesn't naturally occur to me to imagine a world without Google.
Also I'm considering blogging at large rather than just LJ which holds a subset of the world's blogs.
That's a very good point. I suppose I think of blogs (including LJ ones) as more of a personal thing, and I kind of assume that each author has their own archive of their own stuff. But that's not going to be very useful in a couple of decades' time, I quite agree. Until I saw your comment in
Archive sites really can provide a service and that should be considered in itself and not just bundled into the motivations behind Frienditto.
A very sound point, and thank you for bringing it to my attention.
I'm also talking to much
Oh, I constantly talk too much, about absolutely every topic I address. So a comment that needs three comment spaces is completely fine by me!
Re: Comment part 1
Date: 2005-03-06 11:47 pm (UTC)If it's a friend only post of something really important, something I want to remember, than I occasionally save it, by making a private post in my own journal of that text. You see, people who have me on their flist, trust me with the contents of that post, I wouldn't even risk letting anyone who have access to my computer to read it especially if it's deep emotional stuff. Later, maybe when I have access to say, a locked box, than I can save it to a floppy or maybe print it out, and store it in the box like cards and letters. If stuff in question is intended for my eyes only, or the eyes of the few who can view that post, I want it stay that way.
Public/Flocked is also the keywords, I wouldn't mind as much if there is a site out there that keeps track of the public entries of LJ in case of crashing, even though it'll still feel a little creepy with the personal LJs, but here, frienditto is making public what is intended for friends.
Re: Comment part 1
Date: 2005-03-07 05:29 am (UTC)We should seperate the motive of one group from the concept of archiving public information.
Perhaps I didn't read
I really don't see the need (other than causing drama) that Frienditto fills. Yes, archiving is good. If you're gonna do it, though, do it right. Don't just toss a bunch of entries that may or may be flocked into a public directory. Frienditto didn't even preserve the links on archived entries. That creates more gaps than it fills.