I wouldn't say Facebook is "fooling" you per se. I think it's just a matter of perspective: the user and the developer.
I feel like the "Profile Picture Guard" is really only there to "guard" against the not-so-tech-savvy people. I mean I could easily open up the DevTools to pull in the link for somebody's Facebook (or any other social media) profile picture. For the common user, they wouldn't even know that the DevTools existed. Since most of the world are not as familiar of web technologies as we—the developers—are, then yes, you could say that Facebook is fooling the developers. Otherwise, for the normal user, they are not exactly being "fooled" because most of the world is not even aware of the fact that you can pull in profile pictures yourself. The "Profile Picture Guard" acts as a pseudo-guard against the normal users.
In conclusion, the "Profile Picture Guard" is indeed protecting you from the normal users, which constitute most of the world. With that said, Facebook is not exactly fooling anyone but the developers.
Yes, one can argue that the users are also being fooled by extension if the developers are also fooled. On that note, then sure, Facebook is in fact fooling everyone with the feature. However, I wouldn't see it as a big deal. The user did upload their picture to the Web. It has to be expected that anything that comes into the Web can never be taken back. There is no magic undo button. It just comes with the fact that the user "agreed" to the Terms and Conditions and the Privacy Policy of Facebook upon the creation of their account. At that moment, the user surrendered their rights to have a say on what can be done with their profile pictures.
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I wouldn't say Facebook is "fooling" you per se. I think it's just a matter of perspective: the user and the developer.
I feel like the "Profile Picture Guard" is really only there to "guard" against the not-so-tech-savvy people. I mean I could easily open up the DevTools to pull in the link for somebody's Facebook (or any other social media) profile picture. For the common user, they wouldn't even know that the DevTools existed. Since most of the world are not as familiar of web technologies as we—the developers—are, then yes, you could say that Facebook is fooling the developers. Otherwise, for the normal user, they are not exactly being "fooled" because most of the world is not even aware of the fact that you can pull in profile pictures yourself. The "Profile Picture Guard" acts as a pseudo-guard against the normal users.
In conclusion, the "Profile Picture Guard" is indeed protecting you from the normal users, which constitute most of the world. With that said, Facebook is not exactly fooling anyone but the developers.
Yes, one can argue that the users are also being fooled by extension if the developers are also fooled. On that note, then sure, Facebook is in fact fooling everyone with the feature. However, I wouldn't see it as a big deal. The user did upload their picture to the Web. It has to be expected that anything that comes into the Web can never be taken back. There is no magic undo button. It just comes with the fact that the user "agreed" to the Terms and Conditions and the Privacy Policy of Facebook upon the creation of their account. At that moment, the user surrendered their rights to have a say on what can be done with their profile pictures.
I agree, but now about 100 people know how to get somebody's Guarded Profile Picture so easily
I would imagine the number of people who could get someone's profile picture within a minute numbers in the millions.