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

Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 213 posts

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#61

Post by wil421 »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #56
rbg246 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on camera startup time' Tech lead: this is brilliant no potential problems here Tech lead to management team: got this great new feature, we leave the camera on all the time makes the app 200ms faster. Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no c…

Developer: Damn camera takes almost half a second to start! Tech lead: Can we just leave it on or pre-start it somehow? Developer: But... Tech lead: I will think of something. Tech lead to management: We made camera start 150% faster! Management: Wow wow wow. It is so great to have such an experienced tech lead we pay so much for. Tech lead drives into the sunset with his brand new Tesla.

You forgot the part where Tech Lead creates a YouTube channel. His Tesla is featured prominently.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#62

Post by rglover »

can16358p wrote: post #9

Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Starting the camera takes a brief few hundred milliseconds which is easily noticable from a user perspective. By keeping the camera ready, they are making the experience smoother…

This isn't a good excuse for spying on people.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#63

Post by srtjstjsj »

kovac wrote: post #30
jjbinx007 wrote: post #16

Even if this was true, which I doubt, what would Facebook actually gain by doing this? They'd see a person's face from an unflattering angle with an unflattering expression. Or they'd see whatever the front camera sees at the time, which in my case right now is the back of my phone case or possibly the floor. I don't see that as valuable data to mine.

For a fun demo of what they can do, check this out: https://github.com/noahlevenson/stealing-ur-feelings

That conspiracy theory assumes people are mugging for their news feed, which no one does.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#64

Post by wil421 »

qwertox wrote: post #50
zupreme wrote: post #45

This is why iOS is badly in need of a “Task Manager” and of an “Event Viewer”, so that users may easily audit what resources each app is currently accessing, and which resources they have accessed in the past, including logging each instance of camera or microphone use by any app. Apple has the power to easily mitigate these concerns - yet they do not. Why?

There could be an industry wide agreement to reserve the top two pixel rows for realtime visual feedback of sensor use. 1st quarter of the display refers to the microphone, 2nd to the camera, 3rd to GPS and so on, with standardized ways of notifying what is happening, ie blinking means it's currently active, red that it has been used at least once during the last 5 minutes or so, with more detailed information in the…

Or iOS shows an icon similar to location services. Full camera icon means it’s in use, hollow icon means it’s been used recently. Ideally it would have a list of apps just like the location services.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#65

Post by srtjstjsj »

rbg246 wrote: post #54
can16358p wrote: post #9

Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Starting the camera takes a brief few hundred milliseconds which is easily noticable from a user perspective. By keeping the camera ready, they are making the experience smoother…

So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on camera startup time' Tech lead: this is brilliant no potential problems here Tech lead to management team: got this great new feature, we leave the camera on all the time makes the app 200ms faster. Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no c…

Is it Facebook's fault that the OS had a bug that triggers the camera notification when the camera is in standby mode?

There's no reputational damage because the world is already split between people who think FB is the devil and people who don't care.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#66

Post by Alex3917 »

wil421 wrote: post #61
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developer: Damn camera takes almost half a second to start! Tech lead: Can we just leave it on or pre-start it somehow? Developer: But... Tech lead: I will think of something. Tech lead to management: We made camera start 150% faster! Management: Wow wow wow. It is so great to have such an experienced tech lead we pay so much for. Tech lead drives into the sunset with his brand new Tesla.

You forgot the part where Tech Lead creates a YouTube channel. His Tesla is featured prominently.

"How I made the camera 200ms faster (as a millionaire)"

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#67

Post by numpad0 »

Being lawful-evil person I am, I once imagined a “news” app such that display content or suggestion ever so unnoticeably slightly change depending on how user behaves judged by device camera.

A facial expression ML model would be trained beforehand so camera data would not have to be collected, but only pushed to users along app updates, and content would be analyzed and encoded at server side to determine what users are to feel, along with hints to aid learning and correlation between different stories, all subconsciously and automatically.

As for what to do with a system like that...I don’t know, make boatloads of cash by forcing in-app purchases? Push your favorite but little known novels and comics? Make group of people I like by my specifications? Promote good posture, regular exercises and force people to look up? I wouldn’t want to use it so specific elected officials pass or resign, or world’s atrocities to become accepted...

Then I got bored. But could it have been something like this?

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#68

Post by jclardy »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #34
CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

Is this the same scandal from before: where the app had the camera on because when you swipe to record a story they wanted it to be instantly available? Did it just take a while to reach lawsuit status or is this about some new thing?

One of us would have had to write this code, a PM would have had to authorize and break it down, a UX designer might have had to design its internal dashboard for "how to perv on users most efficiently" including flows and user stories, and then that code would have had to be pushed to the Instagram git repo which surely has some ~hundred devs on it that saw it go in, or may notice it at some time in the future. Now…

You have a very optimistic outlook on corporate culture. Do you code review every piece of code that goes into a corporate project? I work at a relatively small company with three apps and 5 iOS devs, and I look at maybe 20% of things committed. If every dev looked at every line of code every other dev produced, 100 devs would get nothing done, ever.

The reality is this was probably a marketing initiative - "Can we tell what users are most interested in on the screen" and the answer is yes - on-device eye tracking is very simple to achieve using Apple's vision framework.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#69

Post by danShumway »

izacus wrote: post #40
tchalla wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Here's what Facebook does once you give access to the iOS Photos app. Every time you open the Facebook app, it asks you - "Would you like to post these photos on Facebook?". Basically, they are reading the Photos library repeatedly to scan for recent (or past) photos along with their meta…

Or, more likely, it's an engagement optimization to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up. These bizarre over-the-top conspiracy theories are really starting to get old, it's almost flat earth believers level.

> to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up

But... that is data harvesting. When you upload photos to Facebook, you are giving them that data. That's not a conspiracy, that's just how Facebook's TOS works. It gets to look at the photos you upload and use that data to help build its internal profile for you.

What's your definition of data harvesting? I would say that getting people to upload useful data to your servers qualifies.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#70

Post by loriverkutya »

anhner wrote: post #51
loriverkutya wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because my mother is using an iphone and nothing you described would make sense for her. She is pretty good with tech and understands how computers and phones work, but she just does not want to browse a process list to see which process is using the camera.

then she can choose not to browse the list?

My main point is that you need to present this information on a way that even those people can interpret it who can't/don't want to know about process lists because they are the majority.

It's the same as you have an engine temperature gauge in most cars. I'm not really interested on what's going on inside the engine, I just want to know if the engine overheats so I can check basic things (cooling system leaks, etc) and if I cannot see what's wrong I wait and try to get to the nearest garage or call roadside assistance.

As a power user, I see value in a process list but I see why it does not take priority over other features.

Edit: spelling

Post reply on HN