41–50 of 192 posts
The submitted URL was https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facebook-hit-by-appl... , which was hard-paywalled. But The Information has been unlocking many of their articles for HN readers. I asked if they would do that for this one and they said yes, so everyone who clicks on the link above should be able to read it now.
it is still pay-walled for me.
On another note the reader view on iOS (safari on iPadOS 13 public beta) show only first paragraph
I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…
I don't think it's an attempt to get you to install messenger so much as it's a cheap tactic to drive engagement, generally. I do have Messenger installed on a device, and it also shows unread notifications for conversations where I sent the last message, a bit (I've never timed how long) after the message was sent. I assumed it was just some shitty dark pattern, that (enough) people are Pavlov-ing at unread notifica…
So then, why do they do it? I think it's because Facebook is made up of many separate teams that are trying to get ahead of each other. Some team did this and had really positive short term numbers and that got them all promoted, and then they hope nobody is able to attribute the long term loss to their team. This is Facebook creating fake engagement to scam itself.
Essence from this site (from my understanding, read the whole article): WhatsApp is using VoIP iOS features to display end2end encrypted notifications in iOS. This loophole will be closed on iOS13. So either WhatsApp does not display any notifications text on iOS13 with WhatsApp or WhatsApp will remove end2end encryption for the sake of having notifications with text on iOS. This is really alarming for privacy. Seems…
It has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption: they’re abusing the VoIP feature to stay running in the background, which is trading battery life for better surveillance of your activities. Apple is doing it to _protect_ privacy by closing one of the ways unscrupulous app developers keep trackers running.
I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption: they’re abusing the VoIP feature to stay running in the background, which is trading battery life for better surveillance of your activities. Apple is doing it to _protect_ privacy by closing one of the ways unscrupulous app developers keep trackers running.
The use of voip mode is well established technique for building encrypted messaging apps on iOS, and its unsurprising that whatsapp is built around it, especially when you consider that whatsapp is a voip app . No conspiracy theories are necessary.
Essence from this site (from my understanding, read the whole article): WhatsApp is using VoIP iOS features to display end2end encrypted notifications in iOS. This loophole will be closed on iOS13. So either WhatsApp does not display any notifications text on iOS13 with WhatsApp or WhatsApp will remove end2end encryption for the sake of having notifications with text on iOS. This is really alarming for privacy. Seems…
It has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption: they’re abusing the VoIP feature to stay running in the background, which is trading battery life for better surveillance of your activities. Apple is doing it to _protect_ privacy by closing one of the ways unscrupulous app developers keep trackers running.
It might be possible for companies like Facebook to rewrite their code to use an iOS 10+ Notification Service app extension to decrypt the notifications instead, but that requires major code changes and has additional limitations.
Also, from what I can tell Facebook Messenger etc haven't had access to the old APIs which just let VoIP apps run in the background all the time since about 2016. That's not available for apps linked to the iOS 10 API and they've been using the iOS-10-only CallKit since about that time.
I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…
Bookmark https://mbasic.facebook.com to get the messenger features in a readable format on smaller screens.
I think we must be at the point where it's arguably irresponsible journalism for The Information to broadcast a claim like that from Facebook without immediately pointing out the occasions in the past when identical claims about data collection have turned out to be barefaced lies. Not every reader is going to have that context when reading the article, and they need to be equipped with the appropriate skepticism.
I'm not saying we need to dredge up the 90s any time Microsoft speaks publicly about open source. But the Facebook thing is an ongoing issue, and it hasn't been that long since their absolute worst abusive behavior, and there's been no change in management since then. I think it's reasonable that any quote from Facebook denying privacy abuses should be positively dripping with disclaimers.
(By the way, I'm loving the articles from The Information when they hit HN. Quality content.)
+1 to Apple's track record for user privacy. I do not regret switching from Android to iOS (even if siri is woefully behind the voice assistant game)
Use the Google Assistant app for iOS if you need a voice assistant. No hands-free usage (unless you set up a cumbersome Siri shortcut), but it is light-years beyond Siri for practical purposes.
I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…