'Dating' Site Imports 250k Facebook Profiles

mark72005 sends this snippet from Wired: "How does a unknown dating site, with the absurd intention of destroying Facebook, launch with 250,000 member profiles on the first day? Simple. You scrape data from Facebook. At least, that's the approach taken by two provocateurs who launched Lovely-Faces.com this week, with profiles — names, locations and photos — scraped from publicly accessible Facebook pages. The site categorizes these unwitting volunteers into personality types, using a facial recognition algorithm, so you can search for someone in your general area who is 'easy going,' 'smug' or 'sly.' ... [The creators] say they will take down a user’s profile if a person asks, and the site doesn’t have any indication they are actually trying to make any money. Instead, it’s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths. Moreover, it’s a bit funny hearing Facebook complain about scraping of personal data that is quasi-public."

Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

But if someones wife happens along and sees their spouse on a new dating site there's gonna be hell to pay for this particular " joke"

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[nlawalker]

itâ(TM)s part of a series of prank sites, the first two of which aimed at Google and Amazon, intended to make people think more about data in the age of internet behemoths

Making it a Facebook app would have largely defeated the point. The impact is made greater by removing the data from the context of Facebook entirely and putting it up somewhere else in another context.

Re:More Please....

[Locke2005]

Gee, what are the chances that the Facebook Terms of Service explicitly forbids scraping all the profile data and using it on another website? These two guys are probably going to have their Facebook accounts canceled! Other than that, I'm not sure what recourse Facebook has.

Re:That's a lot of photos

[recoiledsnake]

Because they will kill the new site's referrer requests ASAP.

Re:Not a problem for the slashdot crowd

[Korin43]

If your wife trusts a random website over you, then your relationship has more serious problems than this.

Re:Maybe it is a dumb question..

[SomeJoel]

If Commander Taco was really Sarah Palin, I'd date her, except she's married.

Let's go over your fantasy:

(a) Commander Taco is really Sarah Palin. <-- Check!
(b) Taco/Palin would date you. <-- Check!
(c) You would date a married woman. <-- No Way!

That's an interesting place to inject reality...

Re:Unethical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose for a moment there was no implication whatsoever that the people listed on Lovely Faces intentionally signed up.

This supposition greatly changes the situation; it's no longer the same question. As others have stated, this site is billing itself as a dating site. If I'm happily married, and a single friend of mine happens to see my face on this site, it would be reasonable for them to assume that I'm a cheating scumbag. This has real consequences for real people. They do not have the right to imply that I signed up for their service, and this is not a minor point.

Even with your supposition, "the data is publicly available" does not imply that they have a right to do anything they want with the data. (See any /. story that even tangentially mentions free software or the GPL.) In particular, they do not have the right to redistribute it from their site.