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Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

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Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#351

Post by jedrek »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #268
jedrek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of events/organizations that organize almost exclusively through Facebook. Unfortunately, there effectively no other free platforms with a critical mass of sign ups big enough to be used in that way.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of events/organizations that organize almost exclusively through Facebook And there are services that require a Facebook account in order to use them. But you know what? If your business, event, whatever relies on the fact that I have a Facebook account then fuck you very much! I'm not interested.

Except that I want to partake. I'm not willing to drop out of my hobbies just because of this, this isn't the hill I'm going to die on.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#352

Post by tracker1 »

TomMarius wrote: post #344
jmanderley wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, enable Netflix notifications but disable Netflix notifications at a system level? Seems like a silly reason to prefer iOS, considering every modern Android has the same feature.

He's just saying that iOS had this feature way sooner than Android did

And android could sync my contacts through the cloud (google servers) to a new device and edit online, syncing the other way before iOS. What's the point?

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#353

Post by ryanwaggoner »

danbruc wrote: post #210
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wishful thinking. Facebook may be struggling in 2020, but they certainly won’t be dead. I’d wager they’ll still have more than a billion DAU. Edit: do you have an explanation for why this graph has been cratering for years while Facebook’s MAU and DAU have continued to climb? Also, see Youtube’s search trend. Pretty sure it hasn’t been dying for years now. This just isn’t a good signal, sorry.

My best guess is that the active user numbers are not representative. Once you have an Facebook account checking once a day if something interesting happened or sending a few messages makes you an active user, I guess, but in my book that does not mean you are really using Facebook. I still visit Facebook almost every day, mostly to chat with friends, even though my feed has mostly become an uninteresting desert year…

Ah, I see. So in this case, “dead” means billions of people who login multiple times per week and the accompanying tens of billions in ad revenue.

May we all have startups that suffer such a fate.

Seriously though, I’m not sure what your point even is. Facebook doesn’t care about how often you login or why, as long as ad revenue keeps flowing. And those numbers have grown like crazy over the period where you say their search traffic (and thus their userbase) has been cratering. I just don’t see it. Every meaningful metric for Facebook that you can find for the period in question points to the search trend not being a reliable predictor.

Also, my point with YouTube is that their search trend has been flat or declining since 2012, but YouTube as a platform has been anything but over that time period.

Not a useful signal.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#354

Post by tripzilch »

Sylos wrote: post #350
taneq wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it not a choice for the user. You make it a statistical guarantee that sooner or later, most users will cave in and hit yes, even if by accident. Fucking YouTube and their "Would you like to merge your account with your Google Account and use your real name forever more? Yes / Soon."

I'd still like to know, what the particular difference between that acquisition and Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp is, that made so many countries block the sharing of data between WhatsApp and Facebook, but not the sharing of data between YouTube and Google. If it really is just that asshole prompt that made the difference, then man, did Facebook fuck up. They should have just blocked people from using WhatsApp…

WhatsApp has a shitload of alternatives, and it's much easier to switch. YouTube users had way more investment in retaining their account and not switching to another video hosting service (the best alternative is Vimeo I guess?).

I've only had a FB account for a very short while and that was 8 years ago or so, their disrespect for user privacy creeped me out back then already, never went back.

If WhatsApp had forced me to link to a FB account (and thus make a new one), I'd have told my friends "yeah that's nice you can message me on a different platform from now on". And I wouldn't have been the only one.

There's no social network for people refusing to use FB, so we don't know each other :) But there is way more of us than you'd expect (and from many different corners of society too, not just the tech crowd, friend of mine is a doctor and she's very intent on privacy, even if she sometimes lacks the tech knowledge to make the "perfect" choices, she's much more hard core about it than I am, as if I didn't have enough reason already for respecting the hell out of her).

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#355

Post by tripzilch »

kyteland wrote: post #194
saguro wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thing facebook does with demanding your phone number, that's my favorite dark pattern. Apple does the same thing with iOS upgrades. First you pose a seemingly innocent question, like 'would you like to give us your phone number so we can keep your account secure?' or 'would you like to upgrade to new iOS?'. Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it no…

> Whoever the designers are who came up with this stuff, fuck them. Are you sure you're laying the blame at the feet of the right people? I'm a design lead on a mobile game and I find myself in a constant battle against these kind of shenanigans with the PM team.

You are one of the people that can actively make a difference. So yes. Many of us can't because we're not anywhere near any of these decisions.

It's somewhat puzzling to me. Do you really disagree with these practices? Because you are in a (relatively) unique position to do something about it.

Have you ever noticed something that is just wrong in society but couldn't really think of any plan of action to work against it? Maybe you live in one of those places where your vote doesn't really count, one way or the other. Know that feel? Or maybe you recognized injustice somewhere but it's just so far removed from your area of influence that you'd need to upend your life, change career or education to even begin pulling it right.

Of course you can always donate money or I guess, advocate, tell your friends, etc. But that doesn't really do anything (or very indirectly), and you know it in your heart.

This time you have an opportunity. So use it.

On this particular topic, all I can do is encourage you to act and make the world a little bit better. On other topics, I look out and try to notice such opportunities to better the world from my own sphere of influence, and try my hardest to be virtuous and do the right thing (we might not even agree on what is "right", as I don't know you), even if it's hard and it requires exposing myself to risk, going against the grain.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#356

Post by sizzle »

wastedhours wrote: post #319
sizzle wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ethical UX designer, unethical UX designers/PMs/ need to be shamed for creating/allowing dark pattern in their work. This goes against the fundamental tenets of empathetic UX design and in downright manipulative and bordering evil.

But who/where do we draw the line for "ethical" design? Every design decision is on a spectrum, and anything above helping someone eat, sleep or shit, is to some degree "un-needed" design.

I'd say anything that faces a user in a digital experience that utilizes cheap psychological or behavioral manipulation/UI obsfucation to benefit from their interaction in achieving a desired business metric/outcome in which a user may not have otherwise consented to/authorized said interaction had the user interface been written clearly in plain language (no jargon) and accessibly designed for the common lay person (user testing).

In design, everything is intentional and I fail to believe these cheap UI tricks were anything other than intended as designed by whoever designed it. Any seasoned UX designer worth their title knows if what they are designing removes their agency in deciding on how to act or if it feels icky or wrong in a manipulative sense.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#357

Post by JankySolutions »

Faaak wrote: post #338
JankySolutions wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not legal? What part is illegal?

When a website offers you a quote about water fountains/new printers/whatever, I doub't it's legal to say that you're company X and that you'd be interested in this particular quote.

I'd be interested in seeing a specific law or case where that sort of thing was illegal. Lying by itself isn't illegal (in the United States at least, i dunno about elsewhere)

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#358

Post by nikofeyn »

saguro wrote: post #157
SamLevin88 wrote: post #4

Finally, somewhere I can appropriately vent about this. About TWO years ago I was constantly annoyed by the 'secure your account: add your phone number here' banner frequently displayed at the top of the page upon loading FB, so I input my number to make it disappear for good. (Also, they kept hiding the 'x' (close) icon in different spots, making the banner difficult to dismiss.) A few days later I got a text messag…

That thing facebook does with demanding your phone number, that's my favorite dark pattern. Apple does the same thing with iOS upgrades. First you pose a seemingly innocent question, like 'would you like to give us your phone number so we can keep your account secure?' or 'would you like to upgrade to new iOS?'. Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it no…

this behavior in iOS drives me absolutely insane. and somehow apple gets away with it when it's just as intrusive as the shit microsoft and facebook do.

in that interface, and in mac os x as well, it seems it will upgrade at a certain point anyway, no mater what you choose. i always answer remind me later, and i will often come home to my macbook pro or iPad having been restarted due to an upgrade. the macbook is particularly annoying when it upgrades because it leaves about 10 minutes or so of stuff left to do that isn't triggered until i go to unlock my computer. so i come home having something urgent to do, try to wakeup and login to my macbook only to find it needs to finish the installation i never chose to do (or at least never intended to do). and still apple gets away with it.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#359

Post by sizzle »

GuiA wrote: post #217
sizzle wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ethical UX designer, unethical UX designers/PMs/ need to be shamed for creating/allowing dark pattern in their work. This goes against the fundamental tenets of empathetic UX design and in downright manipulative and bordering evil.

Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”? I’m sure you could find an Apple designer who would claim that forcing people to upgrade ensures that their device is patched and secure, preventing many potentially livelihood threatening problems down the line, so they are just as ethical of an UX designer as you are, if not more so since you do not want to protect people from their device b…

"Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”?"

Simply put, I would never allow these dark design patterns into the product if I was the designer, by arguing that it would affect perceived trustworthiness of the company and brand credibility if dark patterns start to become pervasive and the norm across the product. As a professional UX designer, it's my duty to be the voice of the user and I'd put my neck on the line to make sure I voiced my concern before they went over my head and implemented dark patterns. I'll never sign off on it.

The issue is a lack of accountability by designers/PMs who hide behind the company name when these dark patterns are exposed. In an era when companies like Facebook sway political elections through their dark pattern designed newsfeeds, watchdog groups and regulatory bodies need to be created to keep them in check.

Re: Facebook spamming users via their 2FA phone numbers

#360

Post by Tijdreiziger »

teddyfrozevelt wrote: post #349
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a current Android phone, it will have privacy controls for 90% (guesstimate) of apps in the Play Store.

You can allow/block permissions from any app, no matter what Android version it targets. If the app targets a version below 6.0 (Marshmallow) then the app won't ask at runtime and Android will warn you that block a permission for that app may break it.

Ah yes, I forgot about that.
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