I'm sure nobody will like this idea, but cameras and microphones should have a physical switch that kills the power and data feed, in my opinion. So you would have airplane mode and trade-secret sharing mode. Power should be diverted to an LED so that people can see you have disabled camera and microphone.
Jeff Bezos wanted this (though unsure if it was his idea) for the original Amazon Echo. The "mute" button was originally transparent, revealing the circuitry of the switch, enabling users to visually verify that the circuitry of the button severed the microphone in order to power the red mute LED.
I don't think it's that nobody _likes_ the idea, I think the problem is that very few people really care. You see this in products everywhere. Rough edges sacrificing the user experience which could be technically solved but are punted in favor of More Important Things.
I don't know why it was axed, but my best guess is that it aesthetically looked pretty bad, and it was probably a pain to produce at high yields. Also, I can imagine users finding it more confusing than an obvious well-labelled button.
Uploads all of your speech to a company centered in one of the more privacy-hostile regimes, is strictly for-profit, has a set of policies subject to change at any time, policies are hard to read and therefore difficult to track changes in, unclear when the microphone is truly on and uploading. The list actually goes on but I feel like you get the idea.
i assume you're referring to the West/EU/USA here.
i share your skepticism, especially around the EU's own GDPR. "government agencies and law enforcement", as well as "activities under the scope of Chapter 2, Title V of the Treaty on European Union" are exempted from GDPR.
I am referring to the US. I have never received any actual proof that the theoretical separation of a datacenter from the mother US-based company will make it immune from the US' draconian surveillance laws, therefore I should assume that it's not trustworthy. Given past experience, I think this is a reasonable stance to take.
The GDPR isn't very topical here, because big conglomerates have been violating it since it's inception. Until the teeth have been enforced, we have to assume that a US company is not only shovelling all of your data to every government agency (which would happen even with the GDPR being followed, as you say) that blinks at them a few times but is also selling it to every marketing agency that is capable of paying.
I agree and can somewhat chime in. I am not a lawyer. I have spoken to folks that would be involved if we receive an NSL. We would obey the NSL regardless of GDPR. For standard legal requests, I am not sure of the current status of what we would do. AFAIK no U.S. company will risk disobeying the gag order and compliance aspects of a national security letter.
Valid points although I suggest “very few people” could be hundreds of thousands or even millions at the scale of consumer phones and thus I submit “a very small percentage” as a more fitting description.
As much as I love math and logic, sometimes I wish it would go fuck itself with all this "majority" shit. It's really putting a hamper on my ability to have any optimism that things might ever change.
The new Echo Flex has this feature though. The mute button electronically disconnects the microphone. This feature is highlighted dominantly in promo materials. No transparency/visual verification though.
The problem I see with this - other than being cool - that it requires motion, so more likely to fail with time.
A good start that would be trivial on ALL smartphones would be to simply notify when the camera and mic is active by using an icon. This is already the case for Location services, I can't see why it could be used for audio/video recording. Add to that an Audit log where I can see that application so and so used the camera at time X, and I'm at least able to tell whether I have been spied on after the fact so I can get rid of the application in question.
The iPhone does this, at least for the mic. Cortana would randomly turn on the mic even while I wasn't in the app, when I opened the app it stopped. I uninstalled it.
That is a good start. That said, anything done in software can be conditionally disabled. So this assumes that the malicious behavior does not have root level access on the phone. But I agree, it is a start and is much easier and cheaper than requiring hardware changes.
Can't think of anyone that would object to the idea, indeed I think it should be the default.
I'm so sick of reading daily the scummy tactics these tech giants are using to hoover up private/personal data, and then reading their little acolytes on HN defending them ("Oh, it's probably just an A/B test, nothing to worry about!" or "It's too hard to monitor what our company is doing, even when presented to hard facts on the daily, what's a dev to do!").
Those switches are software under the hood though, at least as far as I can tell. I installed freebsd on my purism laptop, and it no longer shuts off the camera/microphone.
> Two hardware kill switches, microphone/camera and wireless/bluetooth
> Now with a physical toggle switch, when your camera and microphone are switched off, you know they are off. Wireless and Bluetooth are combined in a second hardware switch to control all your radio signals inbound and outbound.
That would be a flat out lie if it wasn't actually a hardware switch which is hard to believe for a company whose entire identity and reputation is tied to these exact features.
I reached out to them a couple of times, and they asked if I had rfkill installed, I told them no, but it shouldn't matter if it was a hardware switch.
They told me that they would look into it, and then never responded after that.
Interesting indeed! Here [1] is how it allegedly works. Is the laptop easy enough to open and check if the board you have looks anything like those photos?
On the other hand, putting a signal onto disable pins is not exactly a kill switch. The description sounds like a hardware switch in front of a soft kill, which would make it some sort of quasi-HKS. A real kill switch would need to totally cut power to that controller rather than rely on it playing nice.
On the gripping hand, I find it hard to believe they would overlook something that crucial. Eg, if it didn't work, it would /have/ to show up during testing.
I wonder if the chip needs to be tightly integrated into the board and a proper HKS would require cutting signal to dozens of those pins -- something that is perhaps impractical -- so they went for a lesser option.
FWIW, there is at least one more person alleging the same broken functionality [2]
That's a major accusation. Can you do a video or blog post where you show this happening? Eg, start recording something and hit the switch and show it continuing to record.
Switches on one device don't necessarily indicate how it's done on a different device.
As far as I remember Purism has always claimed that it's hardware switches on the phone, and I don't see why they'd lie because it would be very easy to verify.
I've never installed purism's version of linux, and they seem to work - I recall the camera/microphone disappear from the usb bus, shown in syslog. I don't remember what happened with the wifi/bt as I leave them off.
I could go check this behavior.
I haven't tried freebsd - could it be freebsd doesn't check for a hotplug?
Well if we didn't have an economy that makes us replace everything every year (an exaggeration but you get the point), we wouldn't care about the expensiveness.
We already have good enough technology that a phone should last us 10 years at least without having issues with the performance. The only problem is having replaceable batteries.
We need to move back towards things that last and backwards compatibility. Then it would make sense to pay $1000 or even $2000 on a phone, since you know it works perfectly and it'll last you 10-20 years.
In addition, since switches are an electromechanical component, they also affect your mechanical case engineering which electronic components don't do.
Finally, if your device is "water resistant" or somesuch, you now have an even bigger engineering headache waiting for your design team. Especially since you don't want a pushbutton, you probably want a slide switch.
Switches and buttons are really expensive on electronics components from a relative cost and engineering cost standpoint.
Finally, if your device is "water resistant" or somesuch, you now have an even bigger engineering headache waiting for your design team. Especially since you don't want a pushbutton, you probably want a slide switch
The easy way to ensure that a switch is waterproof is to use something like a magnetic reed switch or hall effect sensor, so the switch just moves a magnet, which is sensed thorugh the plastic case. It uses more real estate than a pure switch, but requires no open holes through the case.
> The easy way to ensure that a switch is waterproof is to use something like a magnetic reed switch or hall effect sensor,
Um, using a hall effect sensor is exactly the kind of "soft switch" we're trying to avoid, no?
And magnetic reed switches are big, very expensive, vibration sensitive and failure prone. Since this is security, you're going to want it to fail open and you're not going to want a switch that closes briefly if you vibrate the phone.
Mechanical engineering is hard. Let's go shopping! ;)
What's the difference between a hall-effect sensor + transistor that the manufacturer promises is a hardware off switch and a hardware switch with inaccessible contacts that the manufacturer promises is a hardware off switch? Either way, the consumer is going to want a light or other indicator that shows when the camera is in use.
Reed switches are available that are a few mm long, they aren't exactly huge.
OnePlus, which is a comparatively "budget" smartphone, has water resistance and a slider switch. So there's no reason phones with even bigger margins couldn't manage it, not from a cost perspective. It just comes down to the fact that most users don't care.
The switch itself may not be, but the mechanical effects (hole in case, board space, waterproofing, design testing and as GP said, warranty) makes it expensive.
How come they can make a thin, power sipping high resolution OLED panel for like $100 that fits in a phone but they can't make a reliable switch that ensures privacy?
That's a business case problem. Not enough people are asking for it. It's expensive because it lowers their margin by a notable (maybe not huge) amount. No one said it couldn't be done, just that it's effort for too little payoff.
Up until now, I've been focused on hardware (non-firmware) status lights which show outbound cell traffic, outbound wifi traffic, microphone data, and camera data.
You know what? I think I'd like your physical kill so much better. It could cleaner to implement, too. If the manufacturer couldn't offer it, I'd be happy to do business with a modder who could.
An existing exterior button like the iPhone's ring/silent switch seems like an ideal starting point to work a third-party hardware solution around. But given what little free space exists inside these devices, here's hoping that solution is more wiring than components!
I like the idea. In addition to that, we should just not use Facebook at all. They do something shady, we plug that hole. Then they do something else shady, we plug that hole and the cycle will continue. We're long past the stage of trusting these gigantic for-profit corporations to behave or the gov to watch its citizens back.
Blackberry used to sell modified versions of their phones without cameras or the sound recorder app, to corporate and security-conscious clients. Common sense product to sell if your sales channels are B2B rather than B2C.
I love this idea and would pay extra for a phone with hardware switches for camera and mic! Then again, I'd also buy a phone that had no camera but that is damn near impossible today.
https://puri.sm/ makes great laptops with hardware switches. I have one, love it, and reluctantly accept that this market will always just be the same ~1400 nerds.
Apple should add a status bar icon that appears whenever your camera is on and in use. Or even color the status bar similarly to how they do for GPS, tethering and calls being active.
Isn’t that the idea with the hardware “camera is on” light on laptops? That it shouldn’t be possible to override with software? Maybe phones should have something similar.
This does happen when the microphone is being used while you’re on AirPlay. My wife was scrolling Instagram as I drove, and we noticed it was using the mic.
Whaat ? Is this for real ? How do we combat this ? Do i need to go snowden on my phone, open it up, disconnect everything and use a jack based mic ? I really dont care about the frontal camera, idt i’ve ever used it tbh.
I removed Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from my phone completely. On the rare a occasion I need Facebook I just login with Safari. Not sure how Instagram is on Safari because I don’t get caught up in it.
At my newish job I don’t communicate with anyone overseas but I can see why people would need to use WhatsApp.
Next up, Google Maps and Gmail. I plan to use Fastmail but I need a domain without my name in it for non-professional use.
I do the same. No Facebook on phone except logging in with iOS safari in private mode very rarely.
However, WhatsApp is the killer app that I’m being peer pressured into keeping on the phone because of social effect. There is just no alternative to it in sight :-( I wish.
Gmail -> FastMail. I’d heartily recommend as a very happy customer.
Google maps is still another cancer I don’t know how to get rid of.
Yes, I have been concerned with the stupid law in Australia. To be honest, email is not encrypted, and I use it with its limitations in mind. What worries me the most is not a government reading into my emails.. it is advertisement companies and a mighty powerful Google that constantly profiles me with whatever data it can get on me.
If FastMail could keep my data away from Google and other advertisement companies, I’m all good. Although I wish Australia doesn’t do something as stupid as this law.
Not a fastmail customer, but someone who is looking for other paid email providers, the whole privacy thing is concerning, but more concerning to me is getting Google banned and losing access to much of my online life.
Telegram is great for group chats and I actually see it being a potential replacement for twitter in some specialized domains thanks to the Channels feature.
Signal is great for when you want to talk about things that governments have decided shouldn't be talked about.
I think Signal is better for group chats and is a potential replacement.
Briar is better suited, in my opinion, for talking about things that governments have decided shouldn't be talked about.
It's nearly impossible to us Instagram now without the app. You can't watch videos, and you can probably view one image before getting goaded into getting the app IME.
I don't use it, but I think the appeal is scrolling through images to satisfy our lizard brain's thirst for novel stimulation. If they made it possible to _browse_ without an account, I might spend time on it. But Facebook is allergic to anything remotely anonymous.
I'm quite fine with only malicious apps spying on me to begin with. I'm pretty sure Facebook or other large players wouldn't use that kind of trick.
Obviously that might not be enough for everyone, but it's by far the best solution that works with existing hardware. Tomorrows phones might have indicator LEDs or hardware switches, but my current one doesn't.
It’d be interesting to see if Apple added system UI on top of apps that tried to access the camera, displayed by SpringBoard so apps couldn’t draw over it.
dont install their app, just use it in the browser
edit: and they wont let you use messenger that way, for no good reason. So just use messenger on desktop or in desktop mode. edit: or mbasic.facebook.com for messenger
New favorite way to perma-delete your account: start posting eggplant/peach emojis.
Unlike the "delete my account" button which actually just deactivates your account until you're ready to come home, triggering the algorithms' sex-account ban is the cortez-burn-your-ships approach to account deletion.
it takes guts! Not that easy. You are greatly overestimating an average user. Dopamine generated by the daily drama FB provides is hard (again, for an average person) to quit.
Facebook is the circus (as in panem et curcenses) that masses learned to crave
EDIT: same goes for twitter.
CONTEXTUAL EDIT: I understand that emotional weakness, unawareness, and gullibility of the general population is a controversial topic, it is still very useful to be aware of and hence put reminders in place.
But I 100% acknowledge there's social gatherings and events I miss out on now because they're exclusively organised/promoted on FB. And mostly I'm OK with that.
I personally don’t understand the draw of Facebook. Prior to deleting my account, I just seemed to be constantly unfollowing people because of their over sharing, excessive baby pictures or reposting dumb political stuff or starting massive arguments over literally anything.
If this is the new public square then lordy, I want no part of it. And it’s funny and really scary that people are so into Facebook that’ll come for the photos of a grandkid and stay for the misinformation and repeated privacy invasions.
Facebook's surviving active users are self-selecting very effectively. Anyone not into photos of friends' relatives' offspring and misinformation tailored for maximum emotional impact are at the highest risk of leaving, if they haven't already.
All three of your complaints are about one feature of Facebook, the feed. Facebook also has a wildly used messenger, marketplace, and events for pretty much any activity announced.
They may not want to when all one’s family and friends use it. Personally I couldn’t stand the business and deleted it years ago, but for some people it’s not a option. They need it to communicate, plus there is no clear alternative in 2019.
I'd say email + SMS solves 99.9% of problems and also limits the garbage received because people can't be bothered to start/write an email and don't want to spend money on images in MMS/SMS.
My life is blissfully quiet because of this, or I have to physically see people which is much better than all the noise.
Perhaps most people would do alright with WhatsApp or Apple Messages for IM?
Seeing how much my wife's phone bings and beeps with her apps is enough to put me off it.
Friend tax is a real thing. Its when a friend doesn't have access to something that the rest of the friend group has. For example, if your friend group uses Facebook messenger and Facebook events to plan stuff but you don't have that then they will try to include you through second-hand reach out such as texts or emails, in-person, etc. However, since you are not involved in the primary mode of communication you will miss important details and may even show up to incorrect locations as it is not clear who in the group is responsible for informing you of the change.
I think this is from agreements various manufacturers have with Facebook? Not sure but I just switched from a Samsung Note 9 to a Pixel 4 and there's no Facebook bloat preinstalled that I can't uninstall.
Yes, it isn't "Android", it is particular vendors or carriers that load the phone up with crapware, or pointless mods that make things worse (cough Samsung).
Can we all agree to not use messenger? I find that the best way to devalue messenger as a platform is to make it an unreliable medium. I try to respond stochastically, and when I do immediately push the conversation to...anything else.
It feels like a tiny act of resistance against the hegemonic steamroller that is Facebook.
I just tested this on my partner's phone. She uses Instagram through the app still. I asked her to disable all of the camera/microphone permissions.
We then used the Shortcuts app to set up a "desktop" icon to take a photo and share with IG.
It worked like a charm. It still gives her the option to edit the image/filter it/whatever, but she doesn't have to give her entire photo roll or camera access to the application.
She's actually thrilled (and sufficiently creeped out by these accounts). We don't keep FB around as an application so someone else might have to test that out.
I use an extension that re-enable the messenger in the mobile browser... it is very broken but better then nothing (broken on purpose by Facebook because they want to spy on you with the app) ... it is called, "unblock facebook chat"
On Android you can use "Tinfoil for Facebook", which is basicallt a separte browser which will limit facebook interaction with other site and work with Messenger
They're so user hostile that they don't even allow you to copy and paste pictures. You MUST save them, giving them access.
Honestly, I have no idea how one company can be so horrible. It's like they read the site about Dark Patterns and asked themselves: What if we combined them ALL?
Have you read anything from or about Zuck? Remember when he said that everyone around him is sheep? And then there was a brief period of time when everyone thought he grew up? And then turns out he didn’t. Oops.
Why would he? The way he does things is very clearly working, as he is one of the most successful people on Earth by typical measurements. Everything he has done has been validated as “the right thing” by the market.
Sorry for getting all political on this but we need to stop associating success only with financial wealth.
He is successful at amassing billions of dollars. From my point of view, his success in the grand scheme of things is below zero. His actions have degraded quality of life and hurt future generations.
That's precisely why, instead of an app, I have a browser shortcut on my home screen for Twitter/reddit (I don't use Facebook on my phone). I can select the text and do with it what I please, with no artificial restrictions.
There's an app called "Bouncer" on Android that does this system-wide. Upon installation (with your permission) it disables all permissions for all apps and then any time you enable a permission for an app, it will ask if you want to keep it, disallow it, or schedule it to be disabled after a specified amount of time.
I've run into a couple apps that essentially won't run without the disabled perm, and Airbnb literally won't start without perms - no re-ask or anything. I generally put that on the dev and decide if the app is worth it at that point.
That's also why the scheduled perms are nice, where I can enable the perm for a few minutes or until I close the app.
It does, but apps want to customize the experience instead of using the OS provided picker for some annoying reason. At least they should fallback if you deny access to your library, I’d like to see Apple mandate that.
The narrative is that the app using the camera is a bug. I don't know what to think about that yet. On one hand, I expect Facebook (and many other things) to spy on users in every way possible. On the other, it seems to be the rear facing camera being activated and I would think they'd get more value out of the front facing camera. Who knows though. Guess it's time to go all Snowden on my phone. Or maybe just full RMS...
It's definitely a bug, over the last few days I'd notice that when viewing images in landscape mode, it would first load the camera, then load the image. And when you closed the image, it would leave you on the camera page.
IIRC The app used to have a feature that allowed you to swipe to the right to quickly bring up the camera. I wonder if this bug is a remnant of that feature.
The feature still exists. It's for their Stories support.
Basically, the iOS app is prematurely pulling up the camera view. Nothing super shady as the linked (garbage) article implies.
Yeah... the article is pretty garbage. If you have given the Facebook app permission to use your camera, it can use it whether it's showing you a frame in the background or not. The tweet in question is merely showing a bug that happens to speed up the loading of the camera UI. If FB is spying on users, they're doing it whether this article is true or not.
Stated intention and actual intention are different.
And besides, even if that is the intention... this company is way too big and influential to be making blatant privacy violations and having internet commenters try to sell the public on a corporation's ethics.
Somebody explain this to me, as I've never worked at a large company. Facebook has tens of thousands of employees. How is more not known about the extent that they track you like this (and other slimy practices)? I imagibe if somebody leaks something it would be impossible to pinpoint who exactly did so. Does really nobody whistleblow?
I read a thread on Twitter about this. It's an interesting take by the guy who used to be CSO at Facebook, has since resigned, and at some point commented that Zuckerberg should step down [1]:
Because the company is large and the churn in the app is very high, it is hard to keep track of what's happening across the app.
Does Facebook activate the camera during feed? The answer may depend on which user is logged in (A/B test), which device is being used, which version of the app (weekly releases), etc. A definitive answer may depend on when you ask, or not exist at all.
Maybe this is the default behavior, but it's possible that this is an experiment that Maddux happened to fall into. You can imagine that Facebook would be interested in gauging facial reactions to feed items.
It also may legitimately be a bug. It's reasonable that if you navigate to a camera surface, and then back, that the camera is not turned off. Because Facebook releases so often, the cost of bugs is reduced, so the number of bugs rises.
(Not trying to defend Fb here, simply answering the question.)
Most of internet articles about Facebook is complete trash and over exaggeration. And most HN commenters are paranoids.
There are no leaks because there’s actually nothing to leak. Thousands of engineers routinely perform thousands of experiments on different features (including both UI and data), and there’s no mastermind who designs or even approves all these changes. Sometimes bugs happen, sometimes bug in data handling happen (like tables joined which are not supposed to be joined).
Also, I don’t know about Facebook’s significantly slimy practices. Facebook collected my phone number and matched it to something? I don’t care, because the worst can happen is I will get more interesting ads. I know that Facebook (despite these endless accusations on HN) does not sell data, my credit card won’t be stolen, I won’t get unwanted phone or email spam, and that’s good enough for me.
This actually anecdotally confirms the thread from Alex Stamos I posted about in reply:
> There are a couple of big differences between Uber and FB that make whistleblowing less likely, namely 1) a much stronger HR culture and 2) the fact that even internal critics see external criticism as often unfair or incorrect.
> [...]
> On 2), there is a lot written about FB that is seen as directionally correct but unfair or incorrect in the details. This reduces the trust internal critics have in the external press; nobody wants to leak and have their statements twisted to fit the media's narrative.
> Even to internal Cassandras, it is clear that there is a moral panic around Facebook that reduces the pressure in the media to get the story straight. As a result, 20-70% of the details in any story are wrong and that is clear to most employees.
> For example, the NY Times has done a number of privacy stories that are directionally correct, in that the proliferation of partnerships and APIs creates a real data protection challenge.
> However, sloppy details like the idea that Netflix is reading your Messenger messages or the mixing of real data-sharing with APIs that allow for 3rd-party clients makes it clear to employees that the story is getting mangled.
> Likewise, the discussion of Myanmar. This is a spectacularly complicated situation that a lot of Facebook employees feel sick to their stomachs about. But there isn't a clean issue to blow the whistle on nor does the external discussion encourage FBers to participate.
> [...]
> The media portrayal of the situation as simple or FB as not caring does not match up to the experience of the hundreds of people working on this problem, which makes it much less likely that they will talk to the press.
> This doesn't mean the media should go easy on FB, but if you portray mistakes as intentional decisions made for the most venal of reasons, then don't be surprised when the actual people working on these problems don't DM you for your Signal.
Company policy (literally almost any company) prohibits talking about the company publicly. Simply because any words can be misinterpreted by bad journalists looking for the next sensation.
So Facebook has something to hide. And you are exercising civil disobedience, which means that you also have something to hide. This argument isn't just sophistry. Think about it.
It was fine to ask a sincere question about a throwaway account, but please don't push the point. People shouldn't be hounded for sharing information about situations they know a lot about, such as their employers. We don't want to disincentivize people from showing up to add information, and if they feel a need to create a temporary account to do that with, that's fine.
The problem was solved several years before journalists learned about it. When Facebook grew, they started working with data more carefully, that’s it.
We discuss it over and over again simply because people have nothing serious to use against the company.
Why doesn't Apple turn on a green light when the camera is in use, just like their laptops do when using the webcam? Or even something like the GPS indicator you see when an app is using your GPS? Seems like a pretty easy fix. Could even do it in software.
The public became aware of remote non-consensual hardware access about 5 iPhones ago.
And since the laptops all have that feature... it looks like Apple is aware of the problem. Surely there is some crosstalk in the company between product designers. With a company like Apple, anything less is inexcusable.
Honestly, I never thought that I'd be defending facebook, but I honestly think its a bug.
It always takes some time until the camera is initialized and the first frame rendered on the canvas. I bet the Instagram app, Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp are doing the same thing. I honestly think it is a feature to improve the user experience when starting the camera.
That being said, while they are already using the camera, they'd probably be able to do some on device ML to detect faces, emotions etc.
But I'm pretty confident they're not constantly streaming your private camera feed.
Really I related I suppose, but if you’ve never attempted to use the camera or microphone in the FB app it doesn’t even show those permissions in the app settings, just basic Locations, Photos, etc.
Yes, the way the Settings app works, it doesn't show permissions until the app requests them (the idea being, I suppose, to avoid cluttering up the settings screen for apps that will never need access to certain things).
Down side is that on newer iPhones you’ll have to cut it down to not block all the screen, small price to pay for a little extra privacy.
Also why does iOS have a blinking status bar when the camera is on or at least provide on the settings app how much camera was used per app (in minutes or frames and at what time stamps), this way one can easily validate if the app is using the camera without the user prompting for it.
I’ve long suspected this as the Facebook app in particular causes the phone to get hot around where the main camera module ic is located. It is also a battery drain. They appear to be doing this in collaboration with Apple as the battery usage for the camera does not increase despite the camera constantly being initiated while using the Facebook app.
I’ve also noticed that when certain ad platforms inject their code into Safari taboola/outbrain the same heating occurs. This would make sense as taboola and outbrain appear to be linked to Israeli intelligence.
I guess they not only don’t care about our privacy they also don’t care about our battery life / health of our devices either.
It sort of reminds me of how windows would spin up your HDD In the middle of the night and scan through your entire hard drive causing it to prematurely fail. All under the guise of windows update or whatever the cover was for what I consider criminal damage.
... and I was only joking when a few years back, I asked my then girlfriend if she could maybe not check her Facebook feed lying next to me in bed, "because who knows, Zuckerberg might be watching us through that little camera".
Has a bunch of PMs or whoever decided that they'll f* up
the business in the long term chasing OKRs? It looks like
they introduce these sort of "features" every now and then
which should spark more outrage but looks like people don't care even if they are aware.
I am unfortunately in the minority who cares enough not to use FB/IG :-(
“Apple announces apps will no longer have access to the camera for more than a minute after authorization, will have to tell call new iOS methods to say when they’re done using the camera, indicators will appear in the status bar when camera is on, ...”
When they could have just had a green light like macbooks, at least on the front (or if they care about rights of others to know when they are being recorded, the back too)
"We further noticed the issue only occurs if you have given the Facebook app access to your camera." Are there any good reasons for FB to be asking for this, or for people to grant it?
Just disable permissions for camera and microphone in the Facebook app. It doesn't affect uploading photos, and you can still use Messenger to take selfies and send voice messages.
Pixelfed doesn’t yet have a mobile app, which is the primary requirement for a platform that wants to compete with Instagram. Until there’s an app, I don’t see it picking up more users.
It's been reported many times that Facebook creates shadow profiles for everyone who does not use FB, and still tracks them across the web. So avoiding them is harder than "just dont use his products"
When I first heard about Zuck's quote I agreed with one of the commenters below who views it as an adolescent gaffe.
But in the years since, it's become clear that Facebook is not a trustworthy platform. It is, in essence the social credit score AND great firewall of the US (and much of the world).
No data in Facebook is off limits to governments, period. Think about the many trillions of crimes that have been committed where solid evidence (even confessions) is on Facebook's servers.
It's just a matter of time until Facebook's data is used for law enforcement and profiling in ways that dramatically violate the 4th amendment and human rights in general.
We learned recently that two Twitter employees had been Saudi agents. I think it ought to be considered obvious that most state actors have various employees in key roles in major tech firms, so it doesn't really matter what Facebook's official policies are with respect to warrant compliance, crime preemption, etc., state actors have access.
On the other hand, if I was at the head of a company the scale of Facebook I'd just admit my past mistakes, apologise and do my best to regain people's trust. To the best of my knowledge, Zuckerberg hasn't done any of that and tried to cover up other potential mistakes by deleting all his past IMs from people's messaging histories [0] (something normal users still can't do).
