Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

zeropartydata.es

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 286 posts

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#141

Post by absurdo »

ryandrake wrote: post #114
ls-a wrote: post #81

What's funny is that the engineers who implemented this are probably one of us here on HN. I don't think Zuck implemented this himself

AND, whenever you suggest here that engineers should consider the morals or ethics of what they are being asked to work on, you often get lots of push back in the comments. "I just want to work on cool tech! It's my company's problem what they use it for!" and "Hey, I'm just a code monkey, don't blame me! If my manager tells me to build the Torment Nexus, I build the Torment Nexus!"

Some time later on HN front page:

> Why I left FB,GOOG,Whatever

>> Author describes seemingly abhorrently unethical and immoral practices they were completely ignorant of, occurring right in front of them that they were a key participant in.

>> Accepted a massive salary to be ignorant.

>> Shocked as all fuck about ethics and implications.

>> Returned 0 money, cashed out.

>> 100% ethical now.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#142

Post by extraduder_ire »

philistine wrote: post #64
frenchmajesty wrote: post #15

Very impressive but not surprising coming from Meta. They have an history of doing this kind of things. Back in the early 2010s, they found a way to spy on HTTPS traffic on the iOS App Store to monitor which apps were getting popular. That's what allowed them to know WhatsApp and Instagram were good acquisition targets. At this point, I think the race for Zuckerberg is, can Meta survive long enough for the next platf…

I disagree that they're on track to make it. Their platform, Quest VR, has sold around 20 million headsets. Any company would be over the moon but we're talking Facebook here. They need way more users than that, which can only be achieved with explosive growth. So maybe they're growing fast? Nope. Their better selling product, at 14 million of those 20 million is the Quest 2 which has been discontinued for 9 months.…

The quest 2 was considerably cheaper, I believe it sold at a loss initially, and most of its sales lifetime was during a pandemic. It's hard to directly compare the two.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#144

Post by pesus »

acatnamedjoe wrote: post #139
ribosometronome wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the EU fine American engineers who live and are paid in America?

Can't America fine them? Surely this is illegal there too?

There is probably little to no chance of that happening in the current political climate.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#145

Post by hollerith »

riddley wrote: post #140

I'm guessing I'll get down-voted for this, but what's to stop any browser/executable from trolling through /proc on Linux and knowing about what every process running as you is doing?

File mode bits prevent processes not running as root from reading much of the info in /proc.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#146

Post by extraduder_ire »

kccqzy wrote: post #133
geerlingguy wrote: post #11

Sounds like you're affected if you have either Facebook or Instagram app installed on an Android phone, you're signed into your account, and you don't have anything set up to block tracking pixels and the like (though that last part I'm not as sure of). Getting through VPNs and incognito mode are the most egregious parts of this offense, though. I think some people are under the impression that's a way to act like yo…

And if you actually leave the Facebook or instagram apps running in the background. Some people hate apps running in the background and they terminate all apps as soon as they are done using them.

Android apps can continue running software in the background even if you dismiss them from the switcher. It's up to the OS to decide when to kill them, unless you go into the settings and press force stop.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#147

Post by mbreese »

hollerith wrote: post #145
riddley wrote: post #140

I'm guessing I'll get down-voted for this, but what's to stop any browser/executable from trolling through /proc on Linux and knowing about what every process running as you is doing?

File mode bits prevent processes not running as root from reading much of the info in /proc.

I don’t know… with a stock Linux, the information a user can get from top (via /proc, I assume), is pretty thorough. You can at least get a list of running programs, which by itself could be valuable.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#148

Post by haliskerbas »

globalise83 wrote: post #124

This system was designed and implemented by engineers who committed code in a source control system with their name attached, and the changes were requested by product managers in tickets in the ticketing system with their name attached. Those engineers and product managers should be personally liable for an equivalent % of their annual salary as Facebook is liable for a % of its annual revenue.

[deleted]

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#149

Post by dcminter »

aorth wrote: post #92

Remember in 2014 when the Android Twitter app started sending a list of all your installed applications back to Twitter? https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/twit... Ever since then I refused to install native versions of apps that could be used in a browser. I don't use Facebook or Instagram so I don't know if that works anymore, and I recall testing that they were intentionally crippling Facebook…

> they were intentionally crippling Facebook Messenger at one point [in a browser]

They were/did. I was using Messenger Lite for a bit which was ok, but they killed that and the mobile browser mode.

I still need FB for some events and contacts, but I refuse to have the fat messenger app installed so now I end up using the damn thing in desktop mode which is ... painful.

All I seem to see in my feed these days is "suggested for you" so it's a lot less addictive than it was back in the day. Not sure why they're so determined to drive the user base away, but that does seem to be the plan.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#150

Post by LadyCailin »

ryandrake wrote: post #114
ls-a wrote: post #81

What's funny is that the engineers who implemented this are probably one of us here on HN. I don't think Zuck implemented this himself

AND, whenever you suggest here that engineers should consider the morals or ethics of what they are being asked to work on, you often get lots of push back in the comments. "I just want to work on cool tech! It's my company's problem what they use it for!" and "Hey, I'm just a code monkey, don't blame me! If my manager tells me to build the Torment Nexus, I build the Torment Nexus!"

This is one of the main reasons I’m for licensing software engineers like civil engineers are. You know that without a license, you can’t work in the civilized world. So when your license requires you to not build the torment nexus, and some manager comes and says “build the torment nexus” then you tell them no, knowing that they can’t just fire you and hire someone else to do it. Yes, they might outsource it, but you can create regulations that say that companies that offer products in the civilized world anyways can’t offer the torment nexus as a product, and then you get a super compelling argument for preventing the torment nexus.

The plan isn’t without flaws, but nobody ever even wants to discuss, they just cut off the conversation early.

Post reply on HN