News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by wheybags on Friday September 18, 2020 @06:22AM (#24514986)
If this was the case, they wouldn't have claimed it was a bug. Besides, big tech companies have lost the benefit of the doubt.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by iRomain on Friday September 18, 2020 @06:30AM (#24515030)
> Besides, big tech companies have lost the benefit of the doubt.

This is so spot on and pretty much sums up everything that's going on at the moment.

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by mtnGoat on Saturday September 19, 2020 @12:21AM (#24525029)
For good reason though, a lot of big tech kind of burned their trust wholesale to increase valuation.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by bagacrap on Friday September 18, 2020 @10:14AM (#24517028)
Fb* has lost benefit of the doubt.

I don't understand why people read yet another story about FB's bad behavior somehow conclude all of big tech are bad guys. Is it really so hard to keep them straight?

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by bearcobra on Friday September 18, 2020 @01:28PM (#24519515)
I mean, there are plenty of stories about Google, Amazon, Apple behaving in ways that could lead someone to that conclusion. Microsoft has the best reputation to me, but I'm young enough that the EEE days don't hold much resonance.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by reaperducer on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:00PM (#24518416)
I don't understand why people read yet another story about FB's bad behavior somehow conclude all of big tech are bad guys.

For the same reason that people believe all politicians are evil, and the all lawyers kick puppies into a woodchipper for fun.

It's "otherism." Or to put it in gambling terms: Playing the odds.

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by bostik on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:48PM (#24519031)
It's the 95-5 rule.

95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by daerogami on Friday September 18, 2020 @02:09PM (#24520000)
That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by danudey on Friday September 18, 2020 @02:44PM (#24520444)
You would think so, but I think the general consensus is that every SV tech company will do evil in a heartbeat if it will improve adoption, retention, or any other KPI, making privacy-respecting companies the exception, not the rule.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by maxmamis on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:32PM (#24518839)
Incentives. FB behaves like this because it's profitable for them to do so. Do you expect this sort of behavior is somehow not profitable for other companies of their scale?
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by teawrecks on Friday September 18, 2020 @04:46PM (#24521741)
Because only one of these companies needs to make a mistake before they all should learn from it. It would be like watching every construction company make the same egregious safety error one after the other. The first one to make the mistake is not as guilty as the 10th company to make the mistake after having just watched the previous 9.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by TrainedMonkey on Friday September 18, 2020 @01:10PM (#24519285)
This could be a disconnect between engineers who wanted to make a smooth experience on all devices and PR manager who does not want anything that could be construed as unethical behavior. IMO if this does affect performance it should probably be an option.
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by SpicyLemonZest on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:22PM (#24518725)
It's quite common to characterize intended features which cause unintended problems as "bugs".
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by EmilioMartinez on Sunday September 20, 2020 @12:13AM (#24531844)
This. It's a handwavy familiar term (without defending its usage).

Remember that nowadays people call soundless videos "GIFs", browsers curtail web adresses, and companies report leak passwords as being encrypted when they were actually hashed.

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by higerordermap on Friday September 18, 2020 @11:28PM (#24524724)
Tangentially related. Big tech (FB, Google etc..) used to be favourite workplaces for programmers. Now what are the exciting workspaces for engineers considering big tech is doing lot of unethical things?
Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by haburka on Sunday September 20, 2020 @11:56AM (#24534693)
Everyone will have a different experience - it’s difficult to fathom the scale of how much work is being done at these companies from the outside.

Consumers often have the mistaken assumption that they know what a large tech company is basically doing. In reality, there are thousands of projects, most of which you’ll never hear about.

In my experience people are more affected by their manager and working group than the company clashing with their ideals.

Re:Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras by jtsiskin on Saturday September 19, 2020 @02:36AM (#24525636)
They are still the exciting workplaces.

If you are passionate about privacy, I believe one of the best things you could do in practice is is join a big tech co and work on E2E encryption, security, privacy controls, homomorphic encryption, etc. Change is easier from within