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

181–190 of 213 posts

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#181

Post by saagarjha »

rozab wrote: post #35
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…

Sounds like iOS's fault for not providing a way to keep the camera on standby at the expense of battery life, without compromising privacy. Just like how there should be more privacy-preserving methods for querying clipboard contents, as in the similar TikTok scandal when a UX optimisation was mistaken for a data collection issue.

> at the expense of battery life

iOS doesn't really like providing APIs like that.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#182

Post by daerogami »

bostik wrote: post #158
reaperducer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people read yet another story about FB's bad behavior somehow conclude all of big tech are bad guys. For the same reason that people believe all politicians are evil, and the all lawyers kick puppies into a woodchipper for fun. It's "otherism." Or to put it in gambling terms: Playing the odds.

It's the 95-5 rule. 95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.

That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#183

Post by saagarjha »

ethanbond wrote: post #151
bitxbit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not saying they shouldn't do it, but in a company with finite resources dedicated to the needs of 100,000,000 users, <1% of whom would ever look at such a thing, not getting around to that feature would make a non-zero amount of sense.

You're off by more than one order of magnitude.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#184

Post by bitxbit »

ethanbond wrote: post #151
bitxbit wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not saying they shouldn't do it, but in a company with finite resources dedicated to the needs of 100,000,000 users, <1% of whom would ever look at such a thing, not getting around to that feature would make a non-zero amount of sense.

But said company has practically unlimited resources and actually touts privacy and security in ads.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#185

Post by danudey »

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…

Your point is well said and accurate, and was the first thing I thought of as well.

That said, I think we're well past the point of no return vis-a-vis giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt on basically anything privacy-related. I don't know anyone who would argue that Facebook wouldn't do this if they thought they could get away with it; the "Facebook is listening to my conversations and showing me ads" conspiracy theory gained so much traction, not because people want to believe in conspiracy theories, but because people have no difficulty imagining that Facebook would do something like that if they could.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#186

Post by danudey »

daerogami wrote: post #182
bostik wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the 95-5 rule. 95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.

That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?

You would think so, but I think the general consensus is that every SV tech company will do evil in a heartbeat if it will improve adoption, retention, or any other KPI, making privacy-respecting companies the exception, not the rule.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#187

Post by danudey »

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 someone and where they are is valuable for ads. The logo on the beer you're holding in your photo with your friends at the bar, the faces of those friends and what drinks they have, the geolocation information in the image metadata, the date and time the photo was taken, and so on. All of that is valuable data to Facebook, and they're operating at a scale that allows them to fully harvest and take advantage of all of that and more.

At Facebook's scale, even tiny, inconsequential data can be useful in aggregate.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#188

Post by stjohnswarts »

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 seems like a dumb move, which is why I don't think they're doing what they're being accused of. It could certainly just be a technical glitch. I don't think they are spying on uses like that. They have -plenty- of data already and getting more everyday..

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#189

Post by noexcuses7 »

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…

We've gone from "it's a service to share photos with friends" to "Sure, the camera is on, but it's not recording or transmitting!"

Advocating for the Devil generally gets you sent to hell. At this point I don't even really care to hear legitimate technical reasons for this because time and time and time and time again, Facebook continually acts in antisocial ways, and it does so with impunity. I'm so sick of it, and I'm so sick of the apologetics.

Facebook is incentivized to do bad things. Facebook indeed does bad things. Any action they take needs to be examined through that lens. Facebook started out as a social network (well, originally it was a tool to stalk women), and rapidly grew to be a democracy-ending ad machine.

So please don't sit there and make excuses for this company.

Re: Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras

#190

Post by mopierotti »

diffsensitivity wrote: post #126
koonsolo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s how the explicit narrative goes. The implicit one we can never admit to is something like: Instagrammer has a different sensitivity for 200ms than the dev and never cared. Dev has to justify his egregious salary by manufacturing statistics to “experiment with engagement” nevermind the literal reality of having such a gadget is titillating as is, manufacturing belief that specific dev making a camera respond 20…

Camera start up time actually is quite important in my opinion. For example, I stopped using snapchat primarily because it felt laggy to get the camera open. That really grates on you when an app is mostly used for spontaneous image/video capture.
Post reply on HN