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Facebook drains users' cellphone batteries intentionally says ex-employee

phonearena.com

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

#71

Post by pawelmurias »

otherme123 wrote: post #29
foldr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or...buy some phones and run the tests yourself.

You could buy 100 iphones... Or you could "borrow" a million for free, to get rock solid stats. Also there are hundreds, if not thousands, of different phone models. The allegedly used way of negative testing is much better than buying phones, and is virtually free.

"Borrowing" a million phones and draining their battery down would make increase the perception of your app draining batteries. Seems pretty dubious if you would be willing to do that just to get a bit better low battery prices.

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

#72

Post by earthnail »

sofixa wrote: post #54
scarface74 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t work for Facebook because I don’t hate myself enough. But I also don’t clutch my pearls and think that any for profit company is feeding starving children. You can make a negative case for any of the large tech company.

> You can make a negative case for any of the large tech company. Yes you can, but it's a spectrum. Microsoft abusing their monopolistic position to strangle competition and adding adware and spyware in an OS people pay for is ethically and morally bad, but is much less bad than Facebook profiting from and doing nothing to stop an actual active genocide. Facebook is by far the worst, ethically and morally, offender o…

And just went you think Facebook is the worst, TikTok comes around.

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

#73

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

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…

Facebook app installed on GrapheneOS... talk about an intense yin/yang.

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

#74

Post by Shish2k »

flemhans wrote: post #2

What testing?

For a random subset of users, when they view one image, the app downloads two images (eg webp and jpeg) and makes a note of which one decodes fastest; the goal being that in the future they can just download the fastest-decoding one, saving CPU load (and thus battery usage) for everybody in the future.

The argument is that downloading two images when you only need one is “deliberately wasting battery”.

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

#75

Post by pshirshov »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #73
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…

Facebook app installed on GrapheneOS... talk about an intense yin/yang.

What's wrong? GrapheneOS is the perfect tool for that.

They are installed into a work profile. Created specifically for all the untrusted shit around. Moreover, the networking in that profile is routed through a VPN.

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

#76

Post by moogly »

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…

Sounds more than plausible, but I don't really see how that would be "horrible" (quote from the ex-employee). Also I don't think it jives with the reported name "negative testing".

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

#77

Post by bjornsing »

bArray wrote: post #32
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.

Exactly. I found myself asking "but how would draining batteries help them?". I think lots of companies already do stuff like this, for example, Microsoft rolls out updates to smaller groups before doing larger deployments. Google Chrome tests some experimental features before a full deployment. It would be better if there was simply an opt-out of being part of this testing group. If the user goes to the effort of op…

But why would you call something like that "negative testing"?

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but my interpretation was that they wanted to know e.g. how many would uninstall the app if it consumed more power. Would make business sense to test this, and would be logical to call it "negative testing": do something negative to the user and see if they react.

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

#78

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

"load just one image across some small % of the user base" sounds harmless, especially while the app is open. Different world from intentional draining.

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

#79

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

The Facebook app has always been a battery hog; even on the best days. I use the Web site, which I think is intentionally broken for mobile users.

I have not had it installed for years.

I think I may still have the Messenger app, though. I need to make sure that's gone, too.

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

#80

Post by cma »

seanhunter wrote: post #5
flemhans wrote: post #2

What testing?

The claim in TFA is they run a/b style tests where a sample group would have their battery deliberately drained to test performance of the app in low-power situations. Based on the general fixation on tests at Meta and Alphabet et al, it seems pretty plausible to me that they might try such a thing although: 1) the article is just the employee's claims in the context of employment arbitration, rather than evidence. F…

> That document would presumably be subject to discovery in a lawsuit, although in arbitration it's unlikely it would be in the public record unless someone with standing made a freedom of information request (which may or may not reveal it).

Facebook doesn't retain documents for any significant period of time to the point where they lobotomize their own memory to avoid stuff like this in lawsuits (and to reduce costs of discovery).

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