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Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

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Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#141

Post by rmrfstar »

numpad0 wrote: post #106
rmrfstar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being lawful-evil person The word you are looking for is "sociopath". Oliver Wendell Holmes' "bad man" is an analytical tool, not a recommendation. There's nothing inherently evil about the mood-detection feature you have described, provided it is deployed with continuing and informed consent from the user. The feature is already deployed on billboards in public spaces, although this instantiation is evil as "users…

Existing implementations only detect moods and collect data for analysis, my idea is if you're just going to do open-loop brainwashing, you don't have to know users at all so it could be done without "invading privacy". > sociopath ok, I mean no harm to humanity, but, um,

I was making a general statement that the ideology of "maximize profits by any lawful means" is a profoundly antisocial one.

I don't think many people actually subscribe to that ideology, but enough do that it's worth challenging whenever it is articulated (as it seems to have been in your comment).

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#142

Post by heartbeats »

numpad0 wrote: post #67

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…

The real question is why nobody bothers. Why doesn't Facebook psychologically manipulate their users into being OK with tracking?

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#143

Post by antegamisou »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #32
amelius wrote: post #8

Why isn't the user better protected by the OS from these kinds of malpractices?

This is starting to happen. E.g.: New iOS 14 feature warns you if someone is spying on you through your iPhone: Look out for the orange dot at the top of your screen https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8744423/iOS-...

This is the exact same thing as the red microphone banner popping up at the top left in all previous iOS versions.

Also, strongly reconsider citing tabloids as accurate - reliable news' source, especially when it comes to tech.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#144

Post by reaperducer »

spunker540 wrote: post #100
danShumway wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dat…

Photos and videos of people are not generally useful for ads. You know what is valuable? Actual purchase decisions sent in by advertisers. Photos and videos of people’s dogs and food and kids etc is strictly to entertain the other Facebook users and keep them coming back. An advertiser is willing to pay tons more to serve an ad to someone who has bought similar products in the past, and is likely to buy their product…

Photos and videos of people are not generally useful for ads

If that's true, then how come there was a big hoo-ha a few years ago about Facebook putting pictures of people's friends in ads for unrelated companies, as if the friends were endorsing those products?

Sounds like a very useful way to use someone's photos for ads.

Also, with the state of machine learning, it's hard to imagine how image processing wouldn't be useful for advertising.

I can type "cat" into my phone, and its on-device learning shows me all the pictures with cats in them.

Facebook has the technical ability to scan people's pictures and tell all the cat food advertisers, "Here's all the people interested in cats." Or, even more precisely, scan the photos products or logos and tell an advertiser, "Here's all the people who use your competitor's product."

It's not hard to see where this is going, assuming it's not already there.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#145

Post by bitxbit »

loriverkutya wrote: post #48
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?

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.

Ok so we are going for the least common denominator based on your mother. Makes zero sense.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#146

Post by krisgenre »

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…

Long back there was similar bug in iOS camera itself https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413926

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#147

Post by reaperducer »

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…

There could be an industry wide agreement to reserve the top two pixel rows for realtime visual feedback of sensor use.

Apple already has this. Little orange dot indicates audio. There's a blue arrow for location access. I don't know if there's something for video or not.

You can then go into the Settings app and see which apps were using those features.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#148

Post by ethanbond »

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…

This is why Facebook's culture is the real problem, and it won't be fixed no matter how many "independent" oversight boards they produce.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#149

Post by reaperducer »

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…

would people stop using Instagram because of it?

Any responsible parent would make sure their young children didn't use it.

There is a minority of users who will feel rightfully violated in their privacy

So? Because they're in the minority their voices don't matter?

The worst that will happen is that FB will be sanctioned to pay a laughably low fine.

Sadly, you're spot-on with this one.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#150

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

wheybags wrote: post #21
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…

If this was the case, they wouldn't have claimed it was a bug. Besides, big tech companies have lost the benefit of the doubt.

It's quite common to characterize intended features which cause unintended problems as "bugs".
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