Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#111

Post by rorykoehler » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

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…

It doesn't matter. It's still shady as shit and figuring out good UX with the camera off is a design constraint.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#112

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Look at it from a user's perspective:

As a user, I don't know you. I have no reason to believe you. If I see my camera being accessed, I have no way to tell whether the data stream gets processed by the app or sent straight to /dev/null. I'd have to assume the latter on trust. But what reasons to do that does your app give me? The loads of ads assaulting me? Or perhaps the malicious UX dark patterns sprinkled everywhere? The regular media stories about omnipresent surveillance capitalism don't reassure me either.

It may very well be a performance optimization in Instagram, or in many other applications. But users have no way to know it, no way to be sure of it, or (in most cases) no way to even conceive that such optimization is needed. Meanwhile, they have perfectly good reasons to assume nefarious purpose.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#113

Post by devit » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

emsy wrote: post #13

Let’s assume for a moment the story turns out to be true: would people stop using Instagram because of it?looking at the history of privacy violations and the market’s responds to it I doubt it. There is a minority of users who will feel rightfully violated in their privacy (imagine browsing instagram naked while possibly being ogled at by some creep at FB). The worst that will happen is that FB will be sanctioned to…

A lot of people would probably deny camera permissions to Instagram (and upload by sharing from gallery if they upload content), and their reputation would take a significant hit (currently they aren't known to covertly gather any personal data beyond generic OS-provided statistics).

Also Instagram isn't really essential to communicate and learn about events in the way the main Facebook service is, so stopping to use it is highly feasible.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#114

Post by what_ever » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #74

Alex3917 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How I quit (was fired from) Facebook after making camera 150% faster which made me a millionaire (in 200ms).

When did HN get to this?

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#115

Post by fatnoah » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

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…

>So you are saying..

If I had to bet my own money on what really happened, I'd guess that it's something along these lines:

DEVELOPER: Camera initialization is adding 200ms to app startup

TECH LEAD: Holy crap! We need total startup to be less than 500ms or users start to think things are slow

DEVELOPER: What if we initialize the camera early?

TECH LEAD: Can you do that without recording? It would be very bad if we were recording things.

DEVELOPER: Yes.

TECH LEAD: Do it.

Conspiracy ensues.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#116

Post by Lio » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

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.

Facebook is the company that disables copy and paste in their web app to stop you sendings details to non-users.

Meanwhile they still gather shadow profiles on the same non-users.

They regularly use dark patterns to trick users into more tracking.

Theses are not conspiracy theories, over the top or otherwise, they’re just things Facebook do because they have no moral boundaries.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#117

Post by slantaclaus » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #108

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…

I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy insta…

+1 for realistic dialogue

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#118

Post by yoz-y » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

CaptArmchair wrote: post #88

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…

> Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. This is about consumer trust. To the vast majority of consumers, a smartphone is a magic box with a lens and a display. What happens inside - how data is stored and processed, how the OS functions, how apps work,... - has been abstracted away behind those "UX optimized" interfaces you just mentioned. Co…

> So, next time you're in public, try to pay attention to this: how many people have taped off the camera of their devices?

I usually do pay attention and so far I have seen one person with a camera taped over. This is just not a thing, no matter how the media wants it to be.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#119

Post by NewOrderNow » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #108

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…

I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy insta…

As realistic as this is, it seems like contempt for mediocrity

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#120

Post by fabrice_d » Fri, Sep 18, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

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…

It's true that initializing camera hardware takes noticeable time. We had the same complaint from app developers in Firefox OS and we implement a small trick to improve the experience: when launching an app that has the "camera" permission listed, we start to initialize the camera hardware in parallel with other app startup tasks. That doesn't trigger stream acquisition so it's fully safe, but we gain a few hundred of ms overall when the app actually needs the camera preview.