Downloading Facebook posts to document a trip

During a recent trip to Seoul South Korea I did a travelogue through Facebook posts about the odd sorts of things that interest me. I wanted to get them into a folder where I'm storying notes and information about the trip.

I found this worked reasonably well:

1. Follow Facebook's directions for downloading a copy of Facebook data.
2. Specify posts and the date range you want. If time zones are a factor you may want to go a day beyond what you'd expect. (The first download range ended Dec 15 when we left Korea, but that last day was not in the download. I suspect a time zone bug. I did it again specifying Dec 16.)
3. Specify HTML as a format and highest resolution images

I was notified the download was ready after about 30 minutes or so. The downloaded archive pages rendered in my browser. It's not a pretty layout but it has my text and images and comments on the images. It didn't include comments on the posts.

Mastodon wishes: topic tags that actually work

The mastodon social network (I'm https://appdot.net/@jgordon) lets me follow people at any Mastodon community (instance). Mastodon is person-centric. Reddit, by contrast, lets me follow activity on predefined topics.

I'd like Mastodon to have better topic support; I'd like to be able to follow both people AND topics.

In theory Mastodon has support for topics through hash tags. In practice, particularly if you are on a smaller Mastodon instance, the tags are not very useful. They only "know" about posts that have been pulled into a user's home instance, most often because someone on the instance follows the post author.

I'd like to see "topic tags" that were predetermined and worked across the Mastodon part of the Fediverse. I imagine a registry of topic tags that's updated by an instance daily based on instance posts using the topic tag. There are likely better models for how to do this.

Using IFTTT Webhooks to post RSS feed data to Mastodon (requires pro account)

Update 2/19/2024: I did this using my free IFTT account but per IFTT "Starting February 15th, 2024, webhooks Applets will be disconnected for free users". Currently a subscription is $35 a year but of course that may go up.

------------ original --------------

Eleven years ago I wrote about using the IFTTT service to create tweets from the RSS feed of my Pinboard shares (which are written for myself and for Emily; there are now over 49,000 entries).  

Back then I was continuing a kind of sharing I started with Google Reader Social (details) and continued with App.net after Social died.

Now Twitter is dying, but, incredibly, Maciej Ceglowski's Pinboard endures. I've migrated to Mastodon (on an instance for veterans of App.net!) so now I use IFTTT (still free for my use) to create mastodon posts tagged #jgshare from that old Pinboard RSS.

I'm writing now to share a bit of how that works. I started with a recipe first published in 2017 and updated in 2022 by KelsonV. That recipe uses IFTTT web hooks: I tweaked it a bit to get the output I wanted:

    Descriptive Title

    URL

    Commentary

The recipe is a bit hard to follow but the key steps are:

1. In Mastodon Profile Preferences Development create an "application" with website "https://ifttt.com/" and Scope of write:statuses. After it's created copy the access token.
2. In IFTTT create a rule based on the RSS feed of your source (in my case Pinboard shares with a particular tag). My rule starts with IF "New Feed Item"
3. The action part of the rule is a web request"
1. URL: https://appdot.net/api/v1/statuses
2. Method: POST
3. Content type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
4. Authorization: Bearer 1234567890 (replace 1234... with your Mastodon access token)
5. Body as below.

KelsonV's post has additional details and screenshots.

The trick in the body was to get line spaces between Title, URL and Commentary. This worked:

status = 

<<<{{EntryTitle}}

>>>

<<<{{EntryUrl}}

>>>

<<<{{EntryContent}}

>>>

#jgshare

When I first ran this I'd get errors in my IFTTT log but the rule worked successfully. The errors went away.

How do Facebook Messenger (and Instagram Message) Link scams work?

Every day large numbers of Facebook users receive a message that appears to be from a friend that invites them to click a link. If they click that link their Facebook friends (social graph connections) receive a similar message -- from them.

Many of the victims post on Facebook that their account has been hacked and that recipients should disregard the message. Most change their account passwords, some close their account.

So how does this work?

It's the old "enter password' trick -- a phishing attack. If you click on the link a Facebook screen asks to verify your account identity. This, of course, is a fake page. The credentials you enter there are used to send messages from your Facebook account.

The attackers don't try to change your password, they just send messages to recruit new credentials. There are lots of scams that can be run using Facebook or Instagram messages so this is a profitable business.

Just change your password and try not to be tricked again.

Facebook still has RSS (iCal) feed for Calendar Events but it is insanely obscure

I thought Facebook had removed the link we used to have to see the feed URL for a Facebook "calendar". (A Facebook calendar is the set of all Events one has responded to as "going" or "maybe".) I couldn't find it anywhere even though I was pretty sure I'd use it as recently as 6 months ago.

Facebook only documents exporting a calendar file. (In the mobile app there's a simpler way to add a single Event to a system calendar.)

I couldn't even find any mention online of the Facebook calendar feed. Just sad comments on Facebook's removal of RSS feeds about 7 years ago.

I was just about to give up when a last search found a Business Insider article from Dec 2019. Some Facebook dev has kept it alive in the most obscure location possible.

You can't find it by looking your Facebook Calendar: https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar
You can't see it by looking at your Facebook Events: https://www.facebook.com/events/

The only way to find them is to use the web UI and inspect the ... context menu for any single Event.

Beneath that you will see "Export Event":

Do not be deceived. Export Event is a form of misdirection.

In fact the resulting dialog, in addition to allowing saving of a single event, also provides the secret URL for a Calendar feed (RSS, iCal) including the Facebook UID and a "key" for access:

In Google Calendar web here's where that URL goes:

It can take hours for the feed content to appear and updates are likewise slow to show.

Sooner or later Facebook will expunge this last vestige of usefulness, but I do want to thank the dev that hid it away and let it survive for so long.

PS. I do appreciate so many Facebook page URLs are readable, persistent, and meaningful. I rely on that given the ever changing menu and navigation structures.

Facebook's disappearing Pages feed

I remember when you could get an RSS feed for a Facebook wall. Years after that when away there was an RSS feed for Page posts, but I think that’s gone now.

Up until a year ago there was some obscure way to see the Pages Feed (all Pages) in Facebook Mobile, but I think that’s gone too. 

AFAIK the only way to view a page feed on mobile is to save the URL to the Home Screen. Go to https://www.facebook.com/pages then click on tab feed then save. Safari will sync un/pw via keychain across Safari on devices.

Looks like Facebook only wants Pages to show up in the news feed, and then only for a price.

My latest attempt to reclaim my wife's stolen email address from Facebook

You cannot reclaim a personal email address used by a stranger’s Facebook account. Facebook’s procedures do nothing. 

Today I tried something different.

To review, a year or so ago my wife started getting Facebook notifications from “Ding”. Her iCloud email address was used by “Ding Ling” (https://www.facebook.com/ding.ling.98031) to create a Facebook account. I don’t know if my wife accidentally validated it or not but we’ve been unable to retrieve her email address.

Since we control the email we can reset the account password, but Facebook’s poorly documented procedures to reclaim the address did nothing.

So this time I again reset the password but then I followed Facebook’s directions to upload a legal ID (a way to take control of the account):

I used my drivers license as a template to get past Facebook’s image size test then overlayed a text image requesting release of her email address.

I’ll update this post if it works. 

Yeah, there should be a law.

Update 10/29/2017

It worked. It took a few go rounds. Eventually I was directed to the same kind of form I’d submitted a year ago, but this time it got to a human. I had to send a summary response email from Emily’s iCloud account. I think it helped to point out that “Ding Ling” was obviously a fake account. Once the email was retrieved I added it to her account.

I wonder if somehow it mattered that Emily has both an iCloud and a “me” address for the same account (due to Apple’s old mobile.me migration). Her .me address was already associated with her Facebook account.

Facebook won't let you use the email '+' extension as a new email address

Gmail, and some other systems, support a very old email standard that needs a name. Gmail will treat myname+123@gmail.com as though it were myname@gmail.com. It’s handy for filtering email lists.

I wondered if it could use it with Facebook accounts.  As I discuss in my book there are many reasons to have Facebook related email for a vulnerable user go to their parent or “Guide”. Facebook doesn’t allow an email address to be associated with more than one account — maybe the + feature would work …

Except it doesn’t. I tried adding a + variant of my personal email to one of the kids accounts and Facebook told me it was in use.

Bummer. Now you know not to try.

Incidentally, iCloud support up to 3 aliases, so you can do this with an iCloud email alias. Alas, regular Gmail does not support true aliases — only the + suffix trick. Google Apps does support aliases, at least if you own a domain, but that’s strictly a geek or business thing.

pnut.io - an app.net heir

There are several heirs to app.net — I know of 10Centuries.org, pnut.io and Manton Reece’s micro.blog kickstarter.

Each of these efforts is a largely one person project. All good people. pnut.io’s creator is  33mhz/Robert. I believe the API is based on the app.net API, which means the many apps created for app.net can have a second life. I’m using ChimPnut.app for iOS and the https://noodle.s3rv.com web client to access pnut.io. I’ve been told the app.net client Riposte.app may reappear.

pnut.io has an interesting approach to social networking …

Our community network is a small, sustainable hobby. We are tied closely to our users and developers through their Patreon pledges and small opt-in features. When you invite someone, they are associated with you in the user tree and you may be responsible for them if they abuse the network.

 I made a Patreon pledge at the $5/month level but anyone can use it for free. The spam protection is the user tree. It will be interesting to see how well that works.

If you know me from app.net days or elsewhere and need an invitation send a note to me at jgordon@kateva.org. Best to mention how you know me.

 

 

Facebook: what to do when you receive a Friend request from someone who is already a friend (impersonation scam).

There are a lot of scams on Facebook. Heck, at one time their revenue came largely from shady games and the covert sale of personal information. It’s kind of in their blood. With time Facebook has become respectable, but the scams continue.

Some scams have no fix. If someone uses a personal email address you haven’t yourself associated with a Facebook account you are out of luck. At best you can lock the scammer out of Facebook by doing a password reset.

Other scams do have a fix, but the fix is usually anti-documented. What’s anti-documentation? It’s to documentation as antimatter is to matter. The opposite of useful; it gives the wrong answer to every question.

The fake-friend scam is anti-documented. When I searched recently for a good explanation I found lots of chaff and nonsense. So here’s a stab at what you do — at least until Facebook changes things again.

The fake-friend scam leverages Facebook’s default behavior of sharing your image, your name, and your friend list. A software program creates a new profile based on your image and name, then sends an invite to everyone it can find on your friend list. Friends accept, and it does the same thing to them. The resulting information can be sold. Eventually someone monetizes the network, usually by sending a link that loads malware with a payoff.

The fix is to report the fake profile. This is what I did when I received a request from someone who was already a friend (I’ve removed her identifying information). If all goes well after the report is done a confirmation request is sent to the friend who is being impersonated (though sometimes Facebook seems to remove the fake profile immediately):

1. Click the mystery drop down icon on right side and choose report.

2. Choose report.

3. They’re pretending to be … someone I know

4. Submit for review

5. Facebook will lookup the name from your friend list.

A few minutes later you should receive a Facebook notification that the case has been “closed”:

I’ve done this a few times. So far Facebook has removed the fake profile fairly quickly, but that may depend on your friend managing their followup. So let your friend no what to expect.

You cannot reclaim a personal email address used by a stranger's Facebook account.

I think Facebook knows this very well. They closed a discussion thread on this that’s over a year old, and you can’t start a new thread — Facebook will say the answer already exists. 

Their help documentation is incorrect:

If you try to do this you’ll be told the email is claimed, there’s no way to reclaim. You can use a password reset to lock the other person’s out of their account (assuming you don’t know the attacker’s password) but you will still be unable to reclaim your email address. (In my wife’s case Facebook messages were being set to her spam folder, so she probably missed the notification that the email address was being used.

We ran into the same problem with Skype, but there it is possible to take the account back.

Update: this is a very old problem - 2012. The abuse page links simply redirects to the email notifications that doesn’t belong to me page where the advice doesn’t work. I’ve tried Facebook’s “report a problem” page but I’m not optimistic:

Update 6/17/2016:

I found another Facebook page for this issue that has a different workflow:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/255904741169641

It at least does not fail immediately.

Or, you can pretend you don’t already have a Facebook account. Use an incognito window and try this one:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/537325953055459

Looks like every Facebook engineer has their own independent process…

Bandwidth use over 5 min video call: FaceTime << Facebook Messenger < Skype

As part of my Father longterm care iPad videoconferencing project I compared cellular data use during an approximately 5 minute videoconferencing call made from my iPhone (LTE) to an iPad Air 2 (WiFi). To measure data use I “reset statistics” for Cellular data before, then refreshed the view after concluding the call. I turned microphones off.

The results were:

FaceTime: 7.5MB (repeated, this is correct)s

Messenger: 32MB

Skype: 46MB

FaceTime gave the best image quality. The data use with FaceTime was so low I repeated the measurement with a similar results. Data use can vary with image activity by up to 25%.

I was very surprised by my results. FaceTime had excellent image quality despite exceptional compression. Skype is a real data hog.

The user interfaces were quite similar; names on the left, a details pane on the right. I liked Messengers easy messaging integration, but FaceTime was a 1 touch call from the left side.

My sister and I can do FaceTime, but my brother has an Android phone. I’ll suggest he try Facebook Messenger as he uses Facebook and the data usage was less than Skype.

Facebook won't use iPhone settings account? A fix.

After a Facebook password change, especially if it forces logout from other devices, you may find that Facebook.app on iOS no longer reads authentication information gfrom the iOS Settings:Facebook configuration.

You can always enter your username and password in Facebook.app, but that’s not very elegant.

Here’s how to get Facebook.app to use the account you defined in Settings:Facebook.

1. Ensure Facebook.app is installed but not running.
2. In Settings:Facebook completely delete existing account. It doesn’t work to enter the new password there, Facebook still won’t “see” the authentication information.
3. Recreate accounts in Settings:Facebook.
4. Launch Facebook.app. it should show the name of the account in Settings:Facebook and you can use that.

Mac - how do I share images to Facebook?

There should be a word for AmITheLastPersonOnEarthToKnowThis?

It’s a weird feeling. 

For years I’ve been puzzled by a lack of Mac tools for uploading to Facebook. Around 2013 or so Apple’s photo applications got that ability, but both Aperture and iPhoto have been axed (I still use Aperture, though I now avoid its native Facebook integration and iTunes photo sync). So it seems we’re back to where we started from; Photos.app doesn’t seem to have a native share option.

Except I missed this: Share on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more — probably because by the time I adopt an Apple OS update my geek sources have moved on to the next one.

From the Finder, Photos.app, and newer apps there is a context menu share sheet extension similar to iOS, and it includes Facebook sharing. You can select multiple items and you can share to Timeline or a Facebook album. You can’t create a new album, you have to do that from Facebook. There’s no synchronization/album management (was problematic for me in Aperture anyway), it’s just an uploader.

An appreciated uploader, because I’ve never gotten Facebook’s album uploader to work for me on a Mac.

In Photos.app you can’t share directly from a Shared photo stream, but you can create an album from the photo stream images an share from that. You edit your share options (Extensions) in Preferences.

Update: BEWARE - i thought I uploaded a test album as “only me” (as above) but on Facebook it was Public. Maybe I clicked the wrong target, but be careful… 

 

Facebook event sharing - July 2015

Facebook Events (calendar items) exist in some sort of Facebook twilight zone. Neither completely abandoned, nor entirely useful. You can, for example, subscribe to an Event stream in Google Calendar. That’s a useful move.

Even public events are rather hard to share however. Facebook’s limited (usually obsolete) official documentation suggests copy and paste the URL. As of today this also works...

1. View Event and choose Join.
2. Look for the (mislabeled) Invite drop down - select it.
3. Choose Share Event.

Facebook still has RSS feed for Pages. For the moment.

Once upon a time Facebook had RSS support for personal Newsfeeds. That died years ago.

I don't know if Facebook ever had RSS support for Groups; Groups used to be pretty limited. They don't now.

Pages though, they've always had RSS feeds. It's just getting a lot harder to find.

I may be dreaming, but I thought there used to be an official RSS link somewhere. If so it quietly passed on, maybe in the last 6-12 months.

The old Feed URL format still works though:

https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=121212

where the number is the Page ID.

The trick is finding the Page ID. Facebook keeps moving it around. As of June 2015 find it here:

1. Click About link beneath Page photo (Timeline, About, Photos, etc)
2. Find Facebook Page ID at bottom of the About Link.

Subscription to Facebook Events calendar now possible, including Google Calendar - for the moment

I just added a subscription to my Facebook calendar to my Google Calendar.

Is this new?

I can't say, but knowing how it works I found documentation updated in Sept 2014. So it might be new. I briefly scanned Facebook's marketing infested 'newsroom' and didn't see any notification there.

Parenthetically, this kind of discovery is a real Facebook issue. I've looked for this feature several times over the past few years. The last time I looked I found several old hacks that were either obsolete or insanely high risk.

Why is Facebook such a mystery? Partly it's lack of documentation and feature churn, but, more importantly, geeks ignore Facebook. So my usual notification systems fail.

Anyway, this is something I've really wanted. Look for the cryptic three dot icon next to a Facebook event:

Choose "Export Event". You can email a .ICS for the event, but, more importantly, you'll see webcal URL with an embedded unique identifier (token).

Copy that URL and paste it into Google Calendar "Add by URL".

Suddenly Facebook Calendar is useful.

MarsEdit feature request: backlink to a social network share ...

Red Sweater’s MarsEdit (Mac) owns the world of WordPress, Tumbler and Blogger personal publishing. It’s a small world — the major publishers have their own ‘content management’ systems, and the small number of persistent independent bloggers often use native editing tools.

It’s a small world, and it is effectively a Mac only world. Eons ago Windows Live Writer was a fabulous tool by Onfolio purchased by Microsoft then severely neglected and eventually all but broken. You can still download it, but it is known to very few and is a shadow of its former self. So, in its small niche, MarsEdit rules completely. 

MarsEdit is a fine piece of software, but it’s still not the equal of Ontolio Writer. Image handling is particularly weak. On the other hand, it’s not like the (non-existent) competition is any better.

There are many features I’d like to see in MarsEdit, but there’s one odd feature that I’d particularly love to have. It’s a bit weird, but here goes. I’d like MarsEdit to create one or more social media shares at the time of publication, then embed a link to the shares in the post footer. The sequence would probably go like this:

1. Submit post to Blog to get post URL.
2. With post URL submit tweet or alpha.app.net or microblog post based on title of blog post. Get those URLs.
3. Update blog post with links in footer like
1. Comment on … my_app_net links.

The idea is someone reading the post could easily go to Twitter or app.net to respond in a defined stream.

Ok, that’s weird and kludgy and probably inexplicable. I don’t really think of this as a reasonable MarsEdit feature. I’m not sure how else something like this could be implemented though, and I do think we need this sort of thing as a better approach to comments.

Facebook: The differences between Pages and Groups

This is short, but it took me a while to figure out and I’ve not seen it elsewhere.

Facebook offers both Pages and Groups for use by businesses, organizations, sports teams and the like.

Pages are like a multi-author blog. Authorized members can post as the Page (Facebook now shows the actual author name as well, that’s a good improvement) and all followers will see this — though unless you pay per post it may get buried deep in follower feeds.

Comments are associated with a Page Post. Non-Page posts are shunted to a somewhat hidden area and are NOT shared with all followers.

Groups are egalitarian. All posts by all members go to all followers. There are no RSS feeds for Groups. 

You can use IFTTT to create a Page or Group entry.

Pages, like blogs, are public facing. Pages can be configured to be accessible to non-Facebook audience (though they will be nagged to join Facebook), and, as noted above, they have RSS feeds. Groups are only accessible to members and members have to be approved by admins.

I’m not sure whether Pages or Groups get precedence in follower news feeds. I suspect Groups get higher rankings than Pages that don’t pay to play, but I’ve not done any testing.

it’s hard to say whether Pages or Groups are better for non-profit organizations. The big advantage of Pages is that they are available to non-Facebook members, but the nags are very annoying. I lean towards Groups for most, but Pages have promotion advantages. For business Pages are clearly better; they’re really designed for business use.

Aperture to Facebook: making images visible to Friends by default

I’d long wondered why, when I shared to Facebook from Aperture, my images were shared as ‘Only Me’.

Looks like one can change that from Facebook’s app settings:

“Visibility of app” in this case seems to be default visibility of the item shared by app…

PS. If you turn off Facebook platform to restrict misuse of data, you also turn off all app integration and lose all app settings. Ahh, Facebook, you are at least consistent.