You’ll understand more about this idea if you read the previous post (which is actually below this one). I’ll wait.

Done? Did you leave a suggestion for a derogetory term towards facebook updates? Good. Let’s continue.

Turns out someone had the exact same idea I had about a year ago: http://blog.nemik.net/2006/09/06/facebook-news-feed-rss/

All it is is a PHP script that automatically logs into your account and grabs everything that’s in your news feed, so you know what’s going on and such. Apparently it hasn’t been updated since some recent UI changes to the site, but all the concepts should still be solid, and I imagine it wouldn’t take too long to bring it up into working order.

On the negative side of things, two weeks or so after this programmer started using/posted his script online, he got a letter from a Facebook bastardeer (Disney has Fungineers… Facebook does not). The engineer said that he had suspended his account, and if he didn’t pull down his script he’d turn the case over to the Facebook law department. After a little while, the programmer closed up his Facebook account on his own, and posted the script online again. Judging from the comments, he seems like a nice guy, who’s willing to help out a bit with this script.

Apparently using an automated system to retrieve information from Facebook is a Terms of Service violation; or at least it was when this was written. With the introductin of their API, the terms may have changed a bit - but I imagine that there’s a term somewhere that says that you’re only allowed to automatically access things that the API allows you access to.

So… looks like “Operation Make Facebook Tolerable” may’ve hit a bit of a snag…

Also, leave a derogatory term for Facebook Engineers in the comments (They might be called “Developers”, or just “Employees” too…)