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While I have a facebook account I'm not a big user, it's mostly for a few contacts that are only on messenger. I don't look at my "stream" a lot, and when I do
by nolok 7y ago
While I have a facebook account I'm not a big user, it's mostly for a few contacts that are only on messenger. I don't look at my "stream" a lot, and when I do it's mostly useless content like meme, self-centered post and whatnot that I personnaly have zero interest in, with maybe 1% of actually interesting thing in between like birth annoncement from acquaintances etc ...
I don't plan to delete my account because I want to keep the ability to be in touch with those few friends, and I haven't reached the point where I want to delete the messenger app, but the main FB/messenger duo just doesn't fill any major need for me.
But two things that struck me recently:
1. When opening my stream just to gloss over, there is A TON of ads. Like, the first 4/5 posts are real, then it's one post one ad one post one ad. And the targeting is abysmal. The only ones that are kind of on target are the amazon retargeting, except in typical amazon retargeting fashion it advertises to me stuff that I have already bought (on amazon no less). At least google has the decency to show me stuff I may be interested in, if vaguely.
2. I'm not sure when this was added to android, or if this is a specific samsung thing, but I had a weird warning that I had never seen before: my phone warned me that messenger, while not being open, was trying to access the "microphone" permission. Kudos to android for blocking it and warning me, so I could disable that permission for good. I can't think of a single reason for that app to do it that isn't super evil.
I'm also 99,9% certain it's not even legal where I live (France), I can't record my customers without asking or warning them on each instance of a conversation and with a clear non hidden message, so I doubt they can do that no matter what's in their TOS.
- quelltext 7y agoThe microphone permission is used for you to be able to record a voice message to send to someone. I don't know why it would suddenly ask but I have pressed that voice message / microphone button by accident in the past. Or maybe it's just something the app requests globally on newer versions.
- nolok 7y agoI was not asking why the microphone permission is needed, but why it would be used with the app in the background, not being used. > I have pressed that voice message / microphone button by accident in the past App in the background. It's not due to a keypress or to do any user-initiated action. Googling it, seems it's not a one off and that the app does indeed access the microphone from the background from time to time to do god knows what
- paulie_a 7y agoThe targeting of ads on Facebook is complete garbage. But it seems to have improved in the sheer quantity. It wasn't even one to one, more so two ads for one bit of content from friends I actually was interesting. My usage went way down from hours a week to maybe ten minutes. I don't know how the the algorithms work but I just started hitting the report button on ever single ad. There are still some of those insidious ads that pretend to be legitimate posts but my usage is up. I actually get to see interesting content from friends and family.
- calaphos 7y agoI 've heard thag Facebook uses microphones in smartpones to correlate users with TV or billboard ads. They use ultra or infrasound to broadcast information to nearby phone microphones so Facebook (or others) now that you watched the add
- ljlolel 7y agoSome apps do this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/business/media/alphonso-app-tracking.html?_r=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/business/media/alphonso-a... https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/02/some-apps-were-listening-to-you-through-the-smartphones-mic-says-report/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/02/some-apps-were-listening-t...