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Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

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Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#41

Post by stinos »

nickdothutton wrote: post #37

I’ve read this short article carefully twice now and I still find myself trying to guess why Facebook would do this. I conclude it’s not a good article.

Why? Just like for other telemetry: all they have to do is push a small modification somewhere and they instantly get access to millions of data points which they can then use to analyse what works best for them. Though I agree it is very, very vague if the 'battery draining' is really just that or it's more a result of something like 'for _ in range(10000000): measurePerfOfAvsB()'. But I assume the original source did/could not enclose that.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#43

Post by BiteCode_dev »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #39
mkl95 wrote: post #12

What I can't believe: Facebook shipped a feature to drain users' batteries. What I can believe: Engineers at Facebook were micromanaged into dismissing issues such as users' batteries being drained.

Here's how I imagine it was introduced: Engineer A: Hey how would we know whether loading this image as a .webp vs a .jpg would perform? Our lab testing is one thing but the different hardware out there vastly differs from phone to phone -- we need some data on the whether the average phone has enough optimizations for one versus the other. Engineer B: Oh, what if we just run a background task on some of the phones t…

Well, if you work for facebook, ethics is not your priority in the first place.

On the other hand, if I ever decided to throw mine on the toilet and work for a company that manipulate people, and perform mass spying on them, then I would go all the way and just do things like this.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#44

Post by mmcgaha »

dijit wrote: post #3

Annoyingly easy to discredit this article as a disgruntled former-employee trying to stick it to Facebook/Meta. I'm no fan of Facebook, seriously. But it's hard to take an article like this at face value. Was he fired for not doing his job, and his grievance was a reframed legitimate problem (IE doing data analysis in the background will run down the battery)? Was he just laid off during this most recent round of lay…

I understand you point but the "How to run thoughtful negative tests" document is pretty specific. Now if that document does not exist, you are 100% right but if that document exists, you may be wrong and this would need to be looked at more closely.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#45

Post by dijit »

friendlyHornet wrote: post #25
dijit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard, despite hating Facebook, to believe the article with the lack of evidence and how easy it would be to explain the symptoms described as part of another (less intentionally malicious) operation.

What sort of evidence are you looking for? Source code? I would agree with you if his name was kept anonymous but since he's attaching his reputation to this claim, it makes it slightly more believable Unfortunately it remains an unfalsifiable claim so I am skeptical, as well, but I won't dismiss this outright

I also wont dismiss it, but the point is that I find it difficult to get irrationally angry, which is definitely the aim of the article.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#46

Post by mkl95 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #38
mkl95 wrote: post #12

What I can't believe: Facebook shipped a feature to drain users' batteries. What I can believe: Engineers at Facebook were micromanaged into dismissing issues such as users' batteries being drained.

The problem is not one suffered by Facebook users, it's a problem suffered by people working at Facebook at the hands of evil management. Noble Facebook employees, fighting with their superiors, trying to do the right thing, whilst collecting a fat paycheck.

Middle managers are regular employees too.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#48

Post by [deleted] »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #39
mkl95 wrote: post #12

What I can't believe: Facebook shipped a feature to drain users' batteries. What I can believe: Engineers at Facebook were micromanaged into dismissing issues such as users' batteries being drained.

Here's how I imagine it was introduced: Engineer A: Hey how would we know whether loading this image as a .webp vs a .jpg would perform? Our lab testing is one thing but the different hardware out there vastly differs from phone to phone -- we need some data on the whether the average phone has enough optimizations for one versus the other. Engineer B: Oh, what if we just run a background task on some of the phones t…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#49

Post by scarface74 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #43
hardwaresofton wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's how I imagine it was introduced: Engineer A: Hey how would we know whether loading this image as a .webp vs a .jpg would perform? Our lab testing is one thing but the different hardware out there vastly differs from phone to phone -- we need some data on the whether the average phone has enough optimizations for one versus the other. Engineer B: Oh, what if we just run a background task on some of the phones t…

Well, if you work for facebook, ethics is not your priority in the first place. On the other hand, if I ever decided to throw mine on the toilet and work for a company that manipulate people, and perform mass spying on them, then I would go all the way and just do things like this.

I wouldn’t work for Facebook because I don’t hate myself enough. But I also don’t clutch my pearls and think that any for profit company is feeding starving children.

You can make a negative case for any of the large tech company.

Re: Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

#50

Post by scarface74 »

willyt wrote: post #36

Anecdata: I pretty much never go on Facebook anymore and now my phone battery comfortably lasts all day. The current worst app on my phone is Duolingo, it guzzles 15% in about 15 mins and makes the phone noticeably hot. The most impressive app is Apple Music which feels like it should use a lot of battery but doesn’t.

Why would a music app use a lot of battery? Apple has been optimizing its hardware for over 20 years to play media efficiently.
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