Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

theinformation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 192 posts

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#101

Post by tannhaeuser »

hart_russell wrote: post #2

+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)

I've also switched, after my 1 year old Samsung S8 brick phone dropped to the floor one time too often. I'm not only enjoying the privacy, but also the classic, non-phablet form factor of a brand new iPhone 6s in 2019 and hope it will last me longer. Compared to Samsung's, my typing speed is up, but it's true that autocomplete suggestions are useless.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#102

Post by bashwizard »

peteretep wrote: post #55
charlesju wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What voice assistant features do you miss? I've never used Android so I'm curious.

Once I had Alexa in my home I stopped asking Siri for anything ever

Siri is probably pissed as fuck. I'd sleep with one eye open if I were you.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#103

Post by bashwizard »

hermitdev wrote: post #93
lyctc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The footer's Payment Policy says: Monthly – $39 Annually – $399

$400 annually for a news site as a casual user? Fuck no. Edit: I mean, my wife's Netflix sub is on about $14/month, which we would use far more often than a random single website. About 3x a Netflix subscription for a single "news" site? I think they're dramatically overvalualing themselves.

> About 3x a Netflix subscription for a single "news" site? I think they're dramatically overvalualing themselves.

The mainstream media in general have been overvalualing themselves for the past decades.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#104

Post by EGreg »

buildzr wrote: post #96

Am I reading this right? If WhatsApp and similar are no longer able to implement End-To-End crypto because they have to use an Apple API which supports only specific protocols, this is going to be a huge loss for users. I've considered switching to an iOS device, but stuff like this keeps me away, I'm very glad I can keep direct SIP, SSH, IMAP and XMPP connections open at all hours of the day.

Doesn’t he mention explicitly in the video that you can use standard notifications and decrypt the payload before showing them?

How exactly do you deliver notifications in Android? Can background apps simply listen on an open websocket or something?? What exactly is your technique on android

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#105

Post by fourthark »

alexanderchr wrote: post #51
codeulike wrote: post #19

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 intentional. Facebook has had this bug for several years. Interestingly one of the reasons they created react/flux was to fix it: https://youtu.be/nYkdrAPrdcw (15 minute mark)

We had our most annoying chat bug happen over and over. Users would get an unseen count and there would be no unseen messages behind it. And everyone's sort of used to seeing one of these numbers, click on it, you get something new behind it. That's exciting. But when they get that number, they click and there's nothing there, or they refresh the page and it's gone, that's really annoying. That's really frustrating... And it wasn't like we wouldn't fix the problem. We would always fix some particular edge case. But this problem would keep coming back just because the whole system was fragile.

2014. And still not fixed. Either flux/react does not automatically fix the problem, or the fix never made it to the app. Or dark patterns.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#106

Post by giovannibajo1 »

smallbigfish wrote: post #83
buzzert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it appalling? Can you be more specific?

That even today many European languages don't even have a basic dictionary. I'm not talking about the "guess the next word" feature. All I want is a dictionary that could suggest a correction to a misspelled word. Use two languages at once? No way! I guess they need to invent a new chip or something. Swipe to type? Hehe. The keyboard in itself is fast and good but it lacks features.

Typing in two languages works since iOS 11 (IIRC). I’m routinely typing in either English or Italian without ever manually switching language

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#107

Post by fourthark »

buildzr wrote: post #96

Am I reading this right? If WhatsApp and similar are no longer able to implement End-To-End crypto because they have to use an Apple API which supports only specific protocols, this is going to be a huge loss for users. I've considered switching to an iOS device, but stuff like this keeps me away, I'm very glad I can keep direct SIP, SSH, IMAP and XMPP connections open at all hours of the day.

It wasn't clear why they are using VoIP for WhatsApp. Sounded like it was because it allowed more background processing?

I doubt they would ban end to end crypto, but you are right, it is more of a locked down system.

Edit: keep reading. People explain this nicely below.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#108

Post by kreetx »

rosser wrote: post #23
codeulike wrote: post #19

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…

I use mbasic.facebook.com on my phone (since there is no messenger on facebook's mobile site). Reading messages on mbasic doesn't remove the "new messages" notification from the regular website. That is to say, this might also be a technical issue, i.e they keep state of "messages read" per front-end.

And, of course, it's an engagement thing probably, too.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#109

Post by a254613e »

sib wrote: post #77
usefulcat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it all the time to set reminders. "Ok Google. At 2 PM next Tuesday remind me to ".

I use Siri to do the same. Is it an issue of better ASR or NLP that makes the difference for you?

Google assistant is so much better to look up information and understand what you want.

I use Alexa, Siri, and google assistant. And others don't come even close to assistant when it comes to understanding what you mean and the context. Or even understanding what I've said.

You can ask it stuff like "What's the name of the blonde actress from that new tarantino movie" and you will get the result (works on google.com too), then you can ask follow up questions about her.

This also carries over into setting reminders, controlling smart home devices. "Set a timer", "No, you know what, cancel it". It feels like talking to a person. And it sounds more like a person too.

The ONLY reason I use assistant the least of the 3, is the wake word.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#110

Post by fourthark »

killjoywashere wrote: post #65

That last line though: > more of a focus on privacy from the operating systems, and the impact that that can have on measurements and also on targeting. That could have been lifted from an NSA brief. I don't think people realize just how much "targeting" really is indistinguishable from military targeting.

Could just be the editing, but that line read like them admitting, "yeah we're listening all the time, it makes us money".
Post reply on HN