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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

#61

Post by alpaca128 »

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…

But why not just limit such benchmarks to times when the phone is being charged? If they write internal guides on how to do this "thoughtfully" one would think they thought more about this.

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

#62

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

gorgoiler wrote: post #40

It is surprising that this blogger, Friedman, did not or could not get a response from Meta. Even if it were a simple “a Meta spokesperson said that no such feature exists.” It would give a tiny bit of balance to an article that otherwise echos this fired employee’s complaint. Journalism 101. Edit: yeah this is blog spam. The New York Post article it links to has all the same details but with an extra line saying Met…

I mean, the nypost’s reputation is bad enough that you have to prove who copied who

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

#63

Post by hardwaresofton »

theragra wrote: post #52
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…

But there is beta version fot that, right? I don't see anything wrong doing this in beta. If i installed beta, i consent to be a lab rat

You're right -- this is a mitigation that highly ethical/moral companies will take. It's likely that EULAs/ToS permit experimentation at any time on any version of an application though.

There's also the question of how much of a lab rat people really consent to being -- given that you can't really know what experiments will be run ahead of time.

What are the disclosure rules? What is an experiment versus what is not? What is legal to use to experiment on people with? This is the kind of place regulation is normally present, and it hasn't caught up yet.

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

#64

Post by dijit »

avgcorrection wrote: post #24
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…

Easy to discredit a comment which only comes up with explanations which disfavors one of the sides.

I'm making an observation with the same data everyone has.

You're free to come to a different conclusion.

FWIW I'm even on the side of the guy, I really don't like facebook.

But even if I don't like something it doesn't mean I should just agree with everything that casts them in a bad light.

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

#65

Post by hardwaresofton »

alpaca128 wrote: post #61
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…

But why not just limit such benchmarks to times when the phone is being charged? If they write internal guides on how to do this "thoughtfully" one would think they thought more about this.

Sure, they could (maybe they did, I have no idea) -- but note that George had this to say about the doc:

> The document included examples of how to run such tests. After reading the document, Hayward said that it appeared to him that Facebook had used negative testing before. He added, "I have never seen a more horrible document in my career."

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

#66

Post by johnchristopher »

pshirshov wrote: post #58

This is curious. I've recently migrated to Pixel 7 Pro with GrapheneOS and noticed that my battery was lasting for about 6 hours. And there was nothing unusual in the battery usage report. Initially I thought that something is wrong with new Pixels or GrapheneOS. So, I've started reading ADB logs and assumed that something might be wrong with Meta apps - (which I installed in work profile). The logs were full of vari…

> In the end I've also restricted Telegram and now my battery lasts for 17 hours.

Do notifications for messages still work in restricted mode (sorry if silly question) ?

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

#67

Post by pshirshov »

johnchristopher wrote: post #66
pshirshov wrote: post #58

This is curious. I've recently migrated to Pixel 7 Pro with GrapheneOS and noticed that my battery was lasting for about 6 hours. And there was nothing unusual in the battery usage report. Initially I thought that something is wrong with new Pixels or GrapheneOS. So, I've started reading ADB logs and assumed that something might be wrong with Meta apps - (which I installed in work profile). The logs were full of vari…

> In the end I've also restricted Telegram and now my battery lasts for 17 hours. Do notifications for messages still work in restricted mode (sorry if silly question) ?

Yes. But there may be delays and sometimes when you tap on a notification nothing happens.

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

#68

Post by ricardobeat »

relix wrote: post #55
darren_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't find it too compelling, but this test could potentially help you understand, to some degree, how important battery consumption of an app actually is to users. so you run a test where you intentionally consume more of some cohort of users' battery power (you could have several cohorts where you consume more and more power, even). and you look to see if the rate at which your app is deleted/force-quit by the co…

hard to make that study work, it presupposes that users (a) understand that their battery life is decreasing and (b) understand that this application is responsible for it (and to what degree). Those are two big if's, it's more likely they'll chalk it up to battery aging than to a malicious application that used to be well-behaved. That doesn't however prove that users don't care - it only takes one article with a he…

You just measure user behaviour to prove your hypothesis. If your assumptions were wrong, you’ll get null results and move on.

An article like that coming out would bias and invalidate the test.

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

#69

Post by TylerE »

alpaca128 wrote: post #61
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…

But why not just limit such benchmarks to times when the phone is being charged? If they write internal guides on how to do this "thoughtfully" one would think they thought more about this.

Would not give representative data. Many devices have different power management profiles when plugged in.
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