So Facebook can now do everything Apple and Google has been able to do for years.
Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
61–70 of 158 posts
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#62The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers, telling it your whereabouts at any time. I really hope someone can finally make something like Loopt work on smartphones. I can't believe we need to manually check in to see where friends are right now. FindMyFriends on iOS requires your apple password, and much like GameCenter, the social design is horrendous. Focusing just on the privacy si…
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Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#63The article brings up a very good point about FB getting access to a lot more user data on the phone outside of their app since they essentially are replacing the app launcher as well. Google gets access to all this data by owning the OS. FB in that sense made a brilliant play. It kind of corrupts google's data collection as well since all user interaction will be going through the FB Home app now. Also its kind of n…
You think Google will let that happen? They are enemies competing for the same market. What I think will happen is that Facebook will fork Android, offer facebook edition phones, and simply one up google. How come? Google is awfully bad at marketing, and Facebook is not.
Facebook doesn't need to fork Android. They're commandeering Android from Google. People using this will be spending time in Facebook's ecosystem, pushing Google's services into the background. And considering that Google doesn't directly profit from Android but instead tries to profit from people using their services and subsequently ads, this is bad for Google.
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#64This is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook doesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App Annie. For another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what he's describing. Also what does "Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well," mean? Unless you're rolling your own ve…
I agree with OM, Facebook Home is not just one app but a suite of apps running on your phone. The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall :( Think about the scenarios when you start to see all kinds of ad's popping up on your home screen and impossible to remove? . Remember, fb still needs to solve the problem of serving ad's on mobile well.
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#65I don't think we should be too surprised with how FB will use the new data. I'm just wondering who Facebook is going to share this data with.
I know a guy who works at one of Facebook's "partner companies" that pays gobs for FB user data. This partner company gets (as far as they can tell) fully-populated user data in Facebook's user dumps - way, way more information than they need or ask for. So the partner company puts this data through arduous preprocessing steps to filter out most of the details before any user data hits real systems. They're scared of the legal liability of holding onto all the personal details they receive don't need but Facebook shares anyway because Facebook genuinely doesn't care as long as they're monetizing.
So yeah, I'm scared of where this new data is going to go. Not what FB uses it for themselves.
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#66This is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook doesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App Annie. For another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what he's describing. Also what does "Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well," mean? Unless you're rolling your own ve…
> As far as I can tell this is just another third party launcher with the same privacy implications as any app that has GPS permissions.
Except for the part where no other app collects or maintains anywhere near as much data about your personal history, your friends, what you look like, what your friends look like, what you like, what your friends like, who you talk to, what you talk about, what your friends talk about, which services you subscribe to, where you went to school, where you worked, when you worked, when you graduated, when you began a relationship, when you ended a relationship, your sexual preferences...
I could keep going.
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't trust them, you wouldn't install this app. So... whats the issue? Nobody will be harmed by this.
"If you don't trust them, you wouldn't install this app. So... whats the issue?" Other people will install it without thinking about the implications. "Nobody will be harmed by this." What definition of 'harm' are we using? Because they've already shown that given access to people's address books they cause trouble.
I believe his point was that you don't trust them enough to install their normal app, so you wouldn't be expected to install Facebook Home.
However, someone who has already installed the normal app doesn't need much more trust to add Home as well.
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#68This is idiotic. For one, it's no secret which apps are popular. Facebook doesn't need a trojan horse to figure that out, they just need to look at App Annie. For another, any app with location services permissions can do exactly what he's describing. Also what does "Android allows Facebook to do whatever it wants on the platform, and that means accessing the hardware as well," mean? Unless you're rolling your own ve…
I agree with OM, Facebook Home is not just one app but a suite of apps running on your phone. The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall :( Think about the scenarios when you start to see all kinds of ad's popping up on your home screen and impossible to remove? . Remember, fb still needs to solve the problem of serving ad's on mobile well.
Exactly, this is "the money quote":
"The scary part is that these would be bundled by OEM's and might be harder to stop and even uninstall".
Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#69Re: Facebook Home destroys any notion of privacy
#70If this is a problem for you, then don't use it.
That assumes you know about this in the first place. It's not like everyone reads Hacker News or GigaOM; this kind of news often doesn't trickle down to MM.