Facebook Silently Removes Ability To Download Your Posts 229
dcollins writes "Facebook has a 'Download Info' capability that I've used regularly since 2010 to archive, backup, and search all the information that I've written and shared there (called 'wall posts'). But I've discovered that sometime in the last few months, Facebook silently removed this largest component from the Downloaded Info, locking up all of your posted information internally where it can no longer be exported or digitally searched. Will they reverse course if this is publicized and they're pressured on the matter?"
It does appear that the archive of your wall posts is now only available through the not-very-useful Activity Log.
has that ever worked? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will they reverse course if this is publicized and they're pressured on the matter?
How often has that been successful in getting Facebook to change anything?
Re:has that ever worked? (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically to this issue? No, it's abundantly clear that most facebookers don't care. But when it comes to trivial things like "where did the 'like' button go why did you move it all the way to the line below oh my god this is horrible" then maybe.
gamed out annoyance (Score:2)
This.
facebook's entire business model is based on abusing the user...using personal data as a commodity to trade for a free internet service is, in theory, acceptable within bounds.
facebook does that, but to the absolute maximum as a matter of defined business. It's in their IPO filing, under threats to profits...legislation that protects user's data and gives them control. End of story.
facebook is legally defined as a business that pr
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon [wikipedia.org]
Malicious? (Score:3)
I don't really understand why Facebook would do this. What benefit is there for them?
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Force people to use their search tools rather than your own?
Re:Malicious? (Score:5, Insightful)
not having to fix the download info tool to work with something minor that broke it.
Re:Malicious? (Score:4, Insightful)
This. Probably one person that knows how to keep it running, and they got busy with other stuff.
Though to be fair, FB has enough money to throw at a problem that it shouldn't be a real issue.
Re:Malicious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious benefit is that it makes it harder for their Products to move to a possible competitor's website should they want to do so.
Re:Malicious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who the hell would want to repost all their old opinions & photos?
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One might want a copy of their stuff on their own storage media for reference or safe-keeping. For instance.
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That wasn't the point I was arguing against.
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Old opinions - no
Photos - much more likely
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I do all of my posts to Facebook via Twitter. That means the Library of Congress has all my content archived.
Also, it means I don't have to run the Facebook app on my Android device to post. Double win!
the text of the links at least (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the LoC is only storing the text characters in a Tweet. That means the photo is stored as a link to a file on Twitter's servers.
I'm not a hosting expert but I figure there's a way to 'mirror' the actual image files on your own server.
But really, the links should be fine...safer than a photo album. If Twitter was gone for some reason it's highly probable that other options would be limited as well given the circumstan
easy target (Score:2)
this should scare the siht out of every facebook employee and shareholder....
facebook.com is **easy** to compete against...google, yahoo, amazon...any of them could **take facebook down** with a non-abusive, non-user alienating 'social networking' site.
your cost is hosting, storage and retreival...throw out all the 'U/X' bullshit and facebook.com is **very simple**...it's text and pictures.
it's just **text and pictures**
the thing that keeps
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Facebook has users? or the used?
Reasons (Score:2, Funny)
1) Buzz. You're talking about them. Free Advertisements rule! ... Zuckerberg.
2) Trial balloon. Did anyone notice? A little. Oh well, we'll dial it back a bit. Maybe you can only download the last few days' worth.
3) All your data are belong to
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
3) All your data are belong to ... Zuckerberg.
An excellent reason to NOT post personal information on ANY site, your data becomes another's property. Sites like Facebook collect an astounding amount of information from your activity, more than you likely suspect.
I know of multiple births which where announced on Facebook. Birth announcements only gave the full name and date of the birth but one could deduce a lot more from Facebook. One parent posts the announcement of full name and date. You got the proud parent's name who has a spouse relationship so you now have both parents' names. You look at the mother who has her mother shown and volia, mother's maiden name. Births are recorded in the county records, so you look for what counties are close to their home address. You can usually weed that down to one or two. Now we have Father's name, Mother's name, Mother's maiden name, date of birth and county of birth which is more than enough information to take over somebodies identity. Poor kids...Don't even know how much trouble their parents may have caused them, even before they get out of the hospital for the first time.
Seriously, if you find the need to download all your posts from Facebook and filter though them, you have a problem...
Re:Reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
It applies equally much if the stranger's handing out free candy from a windowless van in a city park, or handing out free web services online. And remember that to you Sergei, Zuckerberg, and MySpace Tom are strangers no matter how much they claim to be "friends" who "don't be evil".
Even Fox News tells you to not give facebook honest information [foxbusiness.com] (perhaps encouraging you to violate Facebook's terms of use).
Personally I encourage everyone who needs to use Facebook to do it with entirely fictitious data. It's more fun. Your actual friends will know what your aliases are; and you probably don't want your non-actual-friends spying on you anyway.
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But the problem is, that nobody thinks "I give my data to Facebook". The users think "I announce the birth to my friends and family".
That is why in the EU we have strong privacy laws, and that laws should be expanded. At some point Facebook becomes a carrier like the telephone company or postal office. But Facebook is not transferring telephone calls or letters, but digital mails and pictures.
Good luck try and explain that your baby pictures you post are going not to your friends and family but to Facebook,
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Sites like Facebook collect an astounding amount of information from your activity, more than you likely suspect.
A friend just had a baby, he refused to use the FB birth announcement for the same reasons.
When I signed up on FB this past fall, I purposely left few personal details in my profile. Having been a victim of identity theft, I am militant about protecting my privacy. I also despise advertising and am well aware of FB using personal profiles for advertising, and I do not want ads targetted to me based on where I live, where I work, my interests, etc. I take the usual precautions such as no discussion of
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At least in the U.S., if you've ever had a ticket, or was a plaintiff or defendant in a court case, or own real estate, or have liens on your property - you're out there already. The system that stole your identity was most likely automated malware that you had on your PC. That's how identities get typically stolen. No one has the time to give you personal attention, let's not be deluded about that. Identity theft by and large is an entirely automated process. What you do on Facebook is pretty much irreleva
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Public records are bad for identity theft, to be sure. It used to be worse, but now some places are tightening up access to this information and redacting some of the more sensitive data.
I'm just trying to make folks aware of how trivial it is to piece together information when you decide to give Facebook information like your birthday, family relationships and such. I've seen nutty folks posting "Wish you where here!" photo galleries while on vacation, not realizing that they pretty much just said "My ho
Re:Malicious? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't want you to able to access your stuff if you're not on Facebook. This "encourages" you to stay on Facebook.
Re:Malicious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Malicious? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the way you're speaking here is any indication, is not surprising that you do not get it. Expressing ignorance of other people's views and subsequently declaring that your simplistic response is the end of the discussion indicates that you're not interested in understanding the views of others. Yet in the ever optimistic hope that I've misunderstood you, and that you ask because you wish to understand, allow me to offer a few thoughts.
Those in favor of information freedom and privacy rights understand the problem differently from the way you do. Your proposed solution indicates an atomized view of human action and choice-making. An individual chooses this or that option and is responsible for the consequences of those choices. That is all well and good, as far as it goes. But that an individual can act thus in a vacuum, freely choosing from a free market of options, is a myth--perhaps even the founding myth of Western liberal capitalist civilization. The problem those for information freedom and privacy rights (IFPR, hereafter) have in mind is not individual, but structural.
An individual's choices are constrained by the structures of his environment. This is true online, but it can sometimes be easier to see in the physical world. When and where I grew up, there tended to be numerous small towns, each having small shops, grocers, banks, etc. The available items for consumption were fewer, but whom one chose to purchase from was more diverse. Over the years I've seen people gravitate ever closer to the cities, while retail in the smaller towns has increasingly been dominated by big-box stores like Walmart. In some ways people now have more choices--e.g. one can get at a Walmart today what he once would have had to special order. In some ways there are fewer choices--e.g. one can only get anything at the Walmart and even if he moves to another town he'll still find little more than a dead Main Street and a bypass dominated by another Walmart. It's a mixed blessing and curse, but regardless the choices one can make in the new environment verses the old one are different not because of the decisions an individual can make (i.e. not because of 'personal responsibility') but because of larger changes in the environment.
The concern for IFPR is not that a few people might choose to surrender their privacy or that someone might lose track of every post he's ever made on a social network. The concern is that the web might cease to be an open platform, that it might be changed structurally to the benefit of a few corporations and for easier exploitation by governments. If this latter happens, the web could become the antithesis of individual choice--or personal responsibility--as available options are restricted to a few approved items. IFPR advocates wish to encourage corporations like Facebook to be allies of a free and open internet, but this is only possible if people can migrate from platform to platform, retaining their own data. Sure, that may make it easier for users to leave but if they provide a superior product then they needn't worry about that, do they?
And lest you think IFPR is only a concern for Facebook users (which, as an aside, I am not and never have been), you should know that they track non-users all over the net as well. If we really want individual choice, we must do what we can to resist the balkanization that threatens to undermine the freedom and diversity of the web.
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Deja Vu... AOL tried the same tactic with their "walled garden" in which they did everything possible to keep you inside AOL - news, purchases, chats, everything was done inside AOL. And like FB, these tactics gradually appeared due to shareholder pressure after they went public.
Captive audience (Score:5, Insightful)
The harder it is for you to download your data, the harder it is for you to leave.
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Don't have to spend money maintaining the feature.
Hotel California (Score:3)
I don't really understand why Facebook would do this. What benefit is there for them?
You can check out any time you like; but you can never leave... with your data, at least not easily.
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You can check out any time you like; but you can never leave... with your data, at least not easily.
You mean "their data". It's not your data when you post it to Facebook, it's theirs, you've given it to them.
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It's a copy of data, data doesn't have ownership, it just is. They have a copy of it, if you deleted your copy then you no longer have a copy of it.
Re:Hotel California (Score:5, Funny)
Man, you just literally kicked his ass!
Re:Hotel California (Score:5, Funny)
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I think I could of done better.
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Don't worry, I'm sure their will be another opportunity to kick they're butt.
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Sorry, but the language doesn't get mangled, it evolves. You may not like the direction and may even call it "stupid" but it will either catch on and become the next norm that some pedantic prick can complain about in the future, or it will fall to the wayside.
Re:Hotel California (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but the language doesn't get mangled, it evolves.
And your car wasn't "totalled" by a collision with a tractor trailer, it just "evolved".
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Meh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook removes a little-known, little-used feature that they no longer want to spend money supporting. The feature can be replaced on the user end with screen scraping. "News" at 11.
Get a court order. (Score:5, Interesting)
If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.
Re:Get a court order. (Score:5, Funny)
If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.
If the government's archiving all digital communications, who needs a court order? Just file a FOIA for your old stuff.
Re:Get a court order. (Score:5, Funny)
That could work, but you risk having them black out the parts you're interested in.
Re:Get a court order. (Score:5, Informative)
US centric: The Freedom of Information Act is designed to get information on other subjects. The Privacy Act is what you cite and a far better tool to get information on yourself.
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it would violate your privacy for the gov to tell you what they know about you
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If retrieving your posts is that important to you, get a court order, so Facebook must give you access to download them.
If the government's archiving all digital communications, who needs a court order? Just file a FOIA for your old stuff.
I wouldn't trust the government to provide the accurate number of "likes" the post received. ;)
or if (Score:5, Interesting)
Data protection request (Score:5, Informative)
Depending on where you are, you might be able to send them a Subject Access Request or your local equivalent, forcing them to provide you with all the personal data they hold about you, give or take a bit of wriggling on their part, for a token amount of money.
Re: (Score:2)
I was under the impression this is why Facebook implemented this feature in the first place, to try and ward off some of the people who were doing exactly that.
Perhaps now the whole "contact Facebook to get all personal data held on you on a CD" thing has calmed down they think they can backtrack on that. Maybe they need a reminder, maybe it's time to start requesting data again as you say?
If you can view it you can download it. (Score:2)
If you can still view the posts you can download them yourself. Look at this as a chance to learn about some scripting language a little more. You might even be able to publish this work for fame or money.
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And they enforce that how exactly?
That says users, not your own. So my assumption would be you are fine as long as you only run it against your own account.
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I still see it. (Score:2, Informative)
I have the "Download a copy of your Facebook data" on my Account Settings page. Maybe this was selectively removed from some accounts only?
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Down the memory hole (Score:5, Interesting)
On Sunday or Monday, I shared a "What is happening in Turkey" post, in English, from a Turkish friend's wall to my own. It was shared to "Friends except acquaintances" and got a few likes and comments. This morning I noticed it was gone from my wall. It is not to be found in my activity log, and the notifications of that it had been commented on were also gone.
I was starting to doubt I had posted it at all, when I remembered to check Google Reader (Yep, still running), as I ages ago had set up a RSS feed with my notifications there. There it was, "[Friend's name] likes your link", with a clickable link to facebook.com/my name/posts/ followed by a numerical value. However clicking on it gave this message: "This content is currently unavailable. The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page". Other posts in my RSS feed works fine, so it was just this particular one.
If it wasn't for the RSS feed, I probably would have shrugged it off and thought no more of it, so I guess the RSS feature will be gone soon too.
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Down the *censorship* hole, more accurately.
Re:Down the memory hole (Score:4, Informative)
Have you read 1984? That's what a memory hole was.
Chocolate rations are up (Score:2)
On the plus side, chocolate rations are scheduled to increase soon!
For those living in the Free-only ghetto (Score:2)
Re:Down the memory hole (Score:5, Interesting)
Or your friend took down his post. When someone deletes their post, I think it cascade deletes the sharing of that post.
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I've had this happen multiple times on very non-provocative posts. They usually come back after a while.
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Facebook uses MySQL with a bunch of their own sharding stuff on top. It's possible they just had a server fail, so some small groups of users' data just fail back to an earlier copy. However, losing a day's data that way seems unlikely.
All your posts... (Score:2)
Are belong to facebook...
How do I download my Slashdot posts? (Score:2)
How do I download my Slashdot posts? I've wanted to do that for years.
It's still there (Score:2)
The capability is still there it's just available under the "police" menu.
is this simply the anti google measure? (Score:2)
Allow Bing access to internal posts, but shut out google?
Doesn't anybody get it. (Score:2)
Idiots!! The feature has NOT been removed. (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.facebook.com/settings [facebook.com]
Simply click "Download a copy of your Facebook data."
It has, indeed, been removed (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA. You can download an archive of some of your data. While that archive used to include your wall posts (a substantial portion of the content you generate on Facebook), that content is no longer included. I have tried and verified this.
Re:It has, indeed, been removed (Score:4, Informative)
I just did it and my wall posts were included in the downloaded archive. Strange that it works for some, but not for others.
Re: (Score:2)
That's standard operating procedure for Facebook. They don't just have a single server that everybody in the world logs in to, and they don't update everything at the same time.
Whenever new code is deployed, it is sent to a small group of servers, tested on the group of users there, and then finally pushed out to the rest. If something is broken by a new release then Facebook's Reverting is for losers! [arstechnica.com] policy applies, and anyone affected by the bug just gets to live with it until it is fixed.
Don't be su
Re:It has, indeed, been removed (Score:4, Insightful)
then they haven't updated their what's in doc:
What's in your archive?
Photos or videos you've shared on Facebook
Your Wall posts, messages and chat conversations
Your friends' names and some of their email addresses
(Note: We'll only include email addresses for friends who've allowed this in their account settings.)
What's not in your archive?
Your friends' photos and status updates
Other people's personal info
Comments you've made on other people's posts
Re: (Score:2)
That's contradicted both by (1) the "Accessing Your Facebook Info" page that currently says Your Posts are only available online and not in the Downloaded Info, and (2) the fact that the downloaded archive really doesn't include them anymore (see linked article on both points).
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually the point of the article. The fact that they didn't change the download button will trick people into not knowing that the contents have changed. Namely: a bunch of trivial stuff, but no wall post content.
Did it ever occur to anyone (Score:4, Insightful)
I still have the option to download everything... (Score:3, Informative)
The link is here in your settings: https://www.facebook.com/settings [facebook.com]
Link is at the bottom... "Download a copy of your Facebook data."
-- Dave
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TFA says that no longer includes wall posts. Several /. posters have confirmed the change. Couldn't say, myself, but have you tried it today and seen whether everything is still there?
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The download page still says it includes wall posts. I have yet to verify:
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As I wrote above: That's actually the point of the article. The fact that they didn't change the download button will trick people into not knowing that the contents have changed. Namely: a bunch of trivial account details, but no wall post content.
Why the fuck does anyone use FB? (Score:3)
Really? Because of network effects. That's it. Everyone else is communicating on it.
It's purely a predatory play- they capture people who are at a time in their lives when they're well known to be indiscreet. They then record all that indiscretion. Then they monetize it.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg is taking the results of that monetization and campaigning -hard - for XL Keystone pipeline.
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_23151754/keystone-xl-foes-rally-front-facebook-protest-zuckerbergs [mercurynews.com]
a fact he's aggressively trying to lie about:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/04/30/1943091/facebook-rejects-ad-highlighting-zuckerberg-groups-support-for-keystone-xl/ [thinkprogress.org]
because like all other deniers,. he's first and foremost a narcissist:
http://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/narcissistic-personality-disorder/ [afterpsychotherapy.com]
who relishes the idea that he's smarter and more knowledgeable across a highly technical domain than are the the world's scientists who have spent their lives disciplined in and mastering that domain.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm [skepticalscience.com]
But one thing he doesn't have in common with other deniers
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer [newyorker.com]
is he's going to be around long enough to be forced by society to bear, without reserve, the consequences of his actions today, which depending on how bad things get, could range anywhere from total dissolution of his personal wealth to fund emergency, remedial action against global warming - an outcome that is now a virtually certainty- to extended torture at the hands of enraged mobs / quasi-civilization, should we reach five degrees of warming and real civilization just breaks down.:
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm [berrens.nl]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nRf2RTqANg [youtube.com]
Fakeblock (Score:2)
George Maharris is going to be the next Zuckerberg.
Um. (Score:2)
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/search/ [facebook.com]
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/post/ [facebook.com]
Maybe they just replaced it with something better? Maybe learn how to use google for even a single moment? I don't recall facebook ever promising to me that they would meet my every data need if I signed up for their free ad-supported service.
Maybe build a tron canoe to ride on your river of digital tears?
meh. so what? (Score:2)
Greasemonkey could solve this (Score:2)
Its also available via the API (Score:2)
So who cares?
The link is still there (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you really think that when you delete it that it actually deletes it? It's been standard operating procedure for years where I've worked that things appear deleted as far as the end user sees, but it's still there in the database just flagged "deleted".
Doing this makes it far easier to "undelete" something when it was inadvertently deleted, investigate something that a user was trying to cover up, or just keep a record for our own data mining purposes that's separate to the end user's use of the data.
Re:Some whine with that cheese? (Score:5, Insightful)
By your logic, you couldn’t complain if I offered you a ride to the airport and then kicked you out of the car on the side of the freeway halfway there.
Re: (Score:3)
Based on the ad revenue generated per user, a bit more than four dollars per year. Maybe as much as five.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
FWIW, last time I tried to set this up, a FB rep asked for an admin login to my Wordpress to 'verify the setup' (you have to apply for an 'app' to do the link). I just ignored it, not being worth the tradeoff to me and moved on.
Then a few weeks ago, my blog posts started showing up on my Timeline. Which is fine - since I kicked the habit a while ago, I'm very rarely on there anymore. But I was surprised they approved the app.
BTW, if there are any religious facebookers here: try quitting for a week and se
Re:I would ahve got a frosty (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I would ahve got a frosty (Score:5, Informative)
Where is the link on slashdot to download all my comments?
Here! [slashdot.org]
Re:I would ahve got a frosty (Score:5, Informative)
That page only has comments going back to December for me. My complete posting history goes back over a decade.
Re: (Score:3)
I got tired of clicking "older" and hadn't even gotten past February. Nowhere did I see a link or button to d/l all one's posts. Also found a slew of topic posts mixed in for unknown reasons.
So unless someone has "the key", getting your posts - however far back they may go - off /. is a non-trivial exercise.
Re:I would ahve got a frosty (Score:5, Informative)
That page only has comments going back to December for me. My complete posting history goes back over a decade.
This is slashdot. News for Nerds.
The Slashdot search function goes something like this:
wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=1 [google.com]\&num=100\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search01.html
wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=101 [google.com]\&num=200\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search02.html
wget -U “Lynx/3.0 http://www.google.com/search?&start=201 [google.com]\&num=300\&q=27352+site:slashdot.org -O Search03.html
Then
lynx -dump -listonly Search01.html >> URL_list.ascii
lynx -dump -listonly Search02.html >> URL_list.ascii
lynx -dump -listonly Search03.html >> URL_list.ascii
Then grep out the webcache and google URLs and trim off anything that prepends the URL you want with a Perl substitution
s/(https?\:\/\/)(\w*\.)?(slashdot\.org\/.*)/$1$2$3/
And finally, wget again
wget -U "Lynx/22.0" -i ./URL_list.ascii
It is at this stage you realize that you have just downloaded 200MB of javascript and are found 2 days later sitting under a cold shower in the foetal position
Re: (Score:2)
Brilliant, though I'm not sure I ever post anything worth searching for again on FB. It is, after all, FB.
Re: (Score:2)
It's still yours. In return for their hosting you provide them a non-exlusive license for use. Facebook is not an archive system for you, though - you should always have backups or - in this case - masters somewhere else. Really, it's not meant to be your personal blog, it's an ephemeral communication tool. I'm not quite sure why people keep thinking it's some kind of social Evernote.