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How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

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Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#281

Post by thaumasiotes »

mikepurvis wrote: post #77
Waterluvian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's of course about lock-in. In the early Web-GIS era there were a few competing but popular notation standards for sharing lat/lon/zoom/ that was meant to be human readable and compatible with any WMS or similar. Ah... to imagine a world where you could just share a coordinate string and people could open it in whatever map app/page they wanted. Geo URI is probably the closest we have today but I don't think much o…

I think that's actually a separate issue. What I specifically want from a Google Maps share URL is for it to be something I can send over text that will reproduce for my recipient exactly what I see. A lat/lon/zoom/start?/dest? is kind of what a Google Maps share currently is, but it's neither an interoperable standard nor a reliable capture of the current state, so really the worst of both worlds. (Also, hi AB! Nice…

Google does provide an interoperable standard for communicating lat/lng pairs via text: https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/

I believe it was their response to what3words. It's not as good at the "communicating by text" use case as what3words.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#282

Post by expedited123 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #230

This is a pretty cool, harmless hack honestly. I don’t see how you could be mad at it.

It feels restrictive, especially since it’s part of a broader pattern of limiting user freedom on platforms. For instance, on PC you can't simply right click on a video and save it on bluesky. They add some frontend bullshit to prevent you from doing that. On "new" Reddit I remember when you saved an image it would always have a watermark on it. On PC, you can't preview the raw image/video either. On Instagram you can't save images at all easily. Cant view content without being logged in, etc.. Now contrast this with platforms like Mastodon where I can do whatever I want with the uploaded media there and there are barely any such restrictions.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#283

Post by weird-eye-issue »

MBCook wrote: post #194
skiing_crawling wrote: post #29

This is phone OS developer's fault for even allowing it. When I take a screenshot, I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time. Its not a picture of your app, its a picture of my screen. Some banking apps used to (or still) prevent this and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding. My device serves some master other than myself.

This exists for a very good reason. It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot. I think there are other places sensitive information won’t show. Bluesky, and apparently others, are abusing the functionality for advertising purposes. I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps…

Account numbers appear on checks. They are not exactly secret, and if I want to take a screenshot of one, I should be able to.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#284

Post by Dylan16807 »

nxc18 wrote: post #280
Dylan16807 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said 90% and not a higher number because of Snapchat. It's not the example of bad reasons. Nobody deliberately opted in to random information hiding in a more general purpose app, or watermarking, or DRM.

Another view of it is that’s just a creative use of the medium. An interactive button doesn’t serve any purpose in the screenshot, so why not find a better use for that space. When I’m in Safari, taking a screenshot can turn into a totally separate operation (full page scrolling screenshot) and that’s a good feature. Others complain about Google Maps showing a popup telling the user about location sharing upon screen…

The ability to show exactly what you had on your screen is one of the biggest uses of screenshots. The ability for apps to do this kind of thing breaks that use.

Offering something better can be valuable (sometimes) but don't alter the screenshot itself.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#285

Post by no-name-here »

MBCook wrote: post #194
skiing_crawling wrote: post #29

This is phone OS developer's fault for even allowing it. When I take a screenshot, I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time. Its not a picture of your app, its a picture of my screen. Some banking apps used to (or still) prevent this and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding. My device serves some master other than myself.

This exists for a very good reason. It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot. I think there are other places sensitive information won’t show. Bluesky, and apparently others, are abusing the functionality for advertising purposes. I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps…

I don't have an issue with BSky's use, but I regularly run into the functionality's abuse elsewhere, such as multiple of the biggest Thai banks' apps where every screen in the app entirely blocks screenshots (iOS). Doing a P2P money transfer and want to send a screenshot to the recipient for them to confirm their info before you hit submit on a non-reversible transfer? Blocked. Want to screenshot a promotion's terms for proof or a personal reminder? Blocked. It's even worse as multiple of the biggest brick-and-mortar Thai banks wholly dropped web access and are now smartphone-only. (Or more obscure, want to translate a single-language screen into another language? Blocked.) Etc.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#286

Post by thaumasiotes »

skiing_crawling wrote: post #29

This is phone OS developer's fault for even allowing it. When I take a screenshot, I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time. Its not a picture of your app, its a picture of my screen. Some banking apps used to (or still) prevent this and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding. My device serves some master other than myself.

So...

> and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding.

No, apps can already insert their branding anywhere they want. They're writing the app. If they want their logo to be visible in screenshots, they have infinite ways to do that.

This particular way seems basically prosocial. It's much more useful to me as a consumer of the screenshot to see that it came from Bluesky than to see that there was a "Follow" button. It's not what the feature they're using was intended for, but I can't call it an abuse of the feature. What they're actually doing is good.

The fact that you're getting unexpected behavior isn't good. Sometimes you want to create a picture of sensitive information. You should be able to override the app developer's security settings.

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#287

Post by godelski »

saagarjha wrote: post #214
godelski wrote: post #127

I'm confused why people are mad at Bluesky for this. Everyone stating their issues seems more related to Apple than Bluesky. So why point the finger at them?

Bluesky didn't have to use this API for this purpose.

Okay? Is the purpose bad? Leading to bad things? What's the problem

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#288

Post by thaumasiotes »

saghm wrote: post #224
nerdsniper wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can I take a screenshot that intentionally shows the password or whatever?

Use a device with an operating system that doesn't think it knows better than you what you want.

You're not that unlikely to leave that feature in place if you have such an operating system. What you really want is two controls: one for "safe screenshot", and another for "raw screenshot".

Re: How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots

#289

Post by userbinator »

MBCook wrote: post #194
skiing_crawling wrote: post #29

This is phone OS developer's fault for even allowing it. When I take a screenshot, I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time. Its not a picture of your app, its a picture of my screen. Some banking apps used to (or still) prevent this and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding. My device serves some master other than myself.

This exists for a very good reason. It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot. I think there are other places sensitive information won’t show. Bluesky, and apparently others, are abusing the functionality for advertising purposes. I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps…

"accidentally end up in a screenshot" --- how often do you even take a screenshot on a phone, much less accidentally?
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