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Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. As an iOS developer who worked with apps that

Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Starting the camera takes a brief few hundred milliseconds which is easily noticable from a user perspective. By keeping the camera ready, they are making the experience smoother. I think this is it. Just because Facebook is an evil company doesn't mean this directly is a malicious move.

kevingadd 6y ago
One of the most annoying things is to try and launch your camera on a phone and have to wait multiple seconds before you can hit the shutter, at which point the thing you want to photograph might already be gone. So I can definitely understand the logic behind this, even if it's creepy. IIRC, Apple has invested specifically in reducing startup latency for the camera, but I don't know if that applies to apps.
- can16358p 6y ago
  From what I can tell the startup time is more or less the same for both the built in camera app and the third party apps. IIRC built in camera used to start a bit faster in the past but that's not an issue anymore. The problem is that we launch the camera app and because the icon animates from home screen to fill the device window the latency is less noticeable, but for example in Instagram, the app is already open in full screen so starting the camera from a user action, even though it takes the same time with launching the camera app, is more noticeable from a user perspective.
pferde 6y ago
Doesn't keeping camera on increase battery drain, though? Also, with Facebook being evil and all, what's stopping them from hopping on "hey, the camera is already on, let's not waste that, and use the incoming visual data for something while we're at it" line of thinking eventually?
- can16358p 6y ago
  It does, indeed. Not like constantly recording though. I think they apply some heuristics that keep the camera on in the background (e.g if you open on story camera frequently and on the main screen, but not while at a screen when camera is not accesible). Otherwise the device would become noticeably hot, but I haven't encountered such an issue.
  - redwall_hp 6y ago
    The way that would make sense, for that particular example, is to start the camera up when the user begins the interaction to open it. Like how https://instant.page/ https://instant.page/ works. If it takes 200ms to get the camera running, do it while the gesture to swipe over to the camera is in progress. It will take more than 200ms for the user to physically move. iOS has events for gesture start, in progress, finished and cancelled.
- qwertox 6y ago
  Assuming that this happens only when the user is actively using the app, I'd guess that the display would consume dramatically more energy, making the camera's usage of the battery negligible, also compared to the benefit of then having a very responsive camera. In any case, I do think that providing visual feedback to the user is very important. Like a small picture-in-picture-overlay.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Many flagship apps absolutely destroy battery life. Just something users put up with…
  - higerordermap 6y ago
    Something users often don't observe even. The OS should warn about it.
wheybags 6y ago
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.
- iRomain 6y ago
  > 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.
  - mtnGoat 6y ago
    For good reason though, a lot of big tech kind of burned their trust wholesale to increase valuation.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  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?
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    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.
    - bostik 6y ago
      It's the 95-5 rule. 95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.
      - daerogami 6y ago
        That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?
corobo 6y ago
I'd rather the lag tbh. If Facebook has options just assume they picked the scummiest one
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I'd say that's most corporate entities as a general rule of thumb.
  - rbg246 6y ago
    But we aren't talking about most corporate entities we are talking about Facebook and their scummy behaviour. If we always say everyone behaves this way we make it acceptable to behave this way.
Saint_Genet 6y ago
If you keep doing malicious things, you no longer get to enjoy the benefit of doubt.
- izacus 6y ago
  It's one thing to enjoy benefit of doubt, it's another to just make up utterly unbelievable fringe crap that can be explained by hundreds of other explanations.
  - noworriesnate 6y ago
    Snowden revealed a lot of stuff that was the just domain of crazy fringe theories before. Anyone morally okay with facebook's known problems would also most likely be morally okay with spying on users like this. Hence, I agree that giving them the benefit of the doubt is irrational.
    - switch11 6y ago
      yeah, people like to believe Snowden didn't happen Look back at everything he revealed That's LITERALLY conspiracy Theory proven to be conspiracy reality And that guy, Keith Alexander, is now on the board of Amazon so giving large tech companies like Google, Amazon, FB the benefit of the doubt is insanity
      - izacus 6y ago
        If you missed my point: it's one thing to give benefit of the doubt (which they don't deserve) and it's another thing to just make up dream rantings about what companies are supposedly doing with the data which can be easily checked for truth with basic understanding of underlying mechanisms.
tchalla 6y ago
> As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Here's what Facebook does once you give access to the iOS Photos app. Every time you open the Facebook app, it asks you - "Would you like to post these photos on Facebook?". Basically, they are reading the Photos library repeatedly to scan for recent (or past) photos along with their meta data. It could be just UX optimisation. It could also be UX optimisation for harvesting data.
- izacus 6y ago
  Or, more likely, it's an engagement optimization to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up. These bizarre over-the-top conspiracy theories are really starting to get old, it's almost flat earth believers level.
  - te_chris 6y ago
    It’s not conspiratorial if they have form and it’s ridiculously easy for them to do.
  - TranceMan 6y ago
    Is it not both?
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up But... that is data harvesting. When you upload photos to Facebook, you are giving them that data. That's not a conspiracy, that's just how Facebook's TOS works. It gets to look at the photos you upload and use that data to help build its internal profile for you. What's your definition of data harvesting? I would say that getting people to upload useful data to your servers qualifies.
    - spunker540 6y ago
      Photos and videos of people are not generally useful for ads. You know what is valuable? Actual purchase decisions sent in by advertisers. Photos and videos of people’s dogs and food and kids etc is strictly to entertain the other Facebook users and keep them coming back. An advertiser is willing to pay tons more to serve an ad to someone who has bought similar products in the past, and is likely to buy their product again, or has recently abandoned a non-empty shopping cart. Or has even just interacted with a previous ad. That is the data that increases ad revenue. Not facial expressions while scrolling or group photos at restaurants.
rozab 6y ago
Sounds like iOS's fault for not providing a way to keep the camera on standby at the expense of battery life, without compromising privacy. Just like how there should be more privacy-preserving methods for querying clipboard contents, as in the similar TikTok scandal when a UX optimisation was mistaken for a data collection issue.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > at the expense of battery life iOS doesn't really like providing APIs like that.
rbg246 6y ago
So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on camera startup time' Tech lead: this is brilliant no potential problems here Tech lead to management team: got this great new feature, we leave the camera on all the time makes the app 200ms faster. Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no chance of reputational damage there. And it's all innocent and noone has any idea why anyone would get the wrong idea?
- koonsolo 6y ago
  I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy instagrammer keeps happily instagramming.
  - slantaclaus 6y ago
    +1 for realistic dialogue
  - NewOrderNow 6y ago
    As realistic as this is, it seems like contempt for mediocrity
  - thrav 6y ago
    This is so true that at other companies it often takes a lawyer (in-house counsel) reminding product that something is legally precarious to stop it, and they still push. For something that has no real legal ramifications, there’s no way you’re stopping it.
  - diffsensitivity 6y ago
    That’s how the explicit narrative goes. The implicit one we can never admit to is something like: Instagrammer has a different sensitivity for 200ms than the dev and never cared. Dev has to justify his egregious salary by manufacturing statistics to “experiment with engagement” nevermind the literal reality of having such a gadget is titillating as is, manufacturing belief that specific dev making a camera respond 200ms faster is what really made the app is where that paper is.
rglover 6y ago
This isn't a good excuse for spying on people.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
> Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. This is about consumer trust. To the vast majority of consumers, a smartphone is a magic box with a lens and a display. What happens inside - how data is stored and processed, how the OS functions, how apps work,... - has been abstracted away behind those "UX optimized" interfaces you just mentioned. Consumer don't buy black box devices because they trust the few big companies that manufacture the hardware and software: they buy them because there aren't any alternatives that provide the same level of convenience, and can solidly guarantee a due level of privacy as to what happens behind the screens. When consumers buy a smartphone or download an app, they have to blindly put their trust in manufacturers acting in good faith. And just that has been damaged by plenty of scandals in the past decade. So, next time you're in public, try to pay attention to this: how many people have taped off the camera of their devices? And why is this product a thing? [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=webcam+cover https://www.amazon.com/s?k=webcam+cover It's because there's a fundamental trust issue. Consumers tape those things on their devices because they don't feel in control of what a device does or doesn't record. Covering the camera is literally the only way they feel they are 100% in control. So, that should leave you with two questions here. (a) If there's a fundamental trust issue about "magic" technology, do you think people will remotely accept any rationalization about "UX optimization" and "not recording" (e.g. your asking them to trust them on your word)? and (b) If people go so far as to tape off their camera lenses because of a deep trust issue, how much sense does it even make to implement such an UX optimization in the first place? Isn't that a tone deaf act of sorts? I totally understand why this happens, and I can see the convenience of having a snappy camera. It's just that the technical solution to enable this, flies against what people perceive as acceptable.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  > So, next time you're in public, try to pay attention to this: how many people have taped off the camera of their devices? I usually do pay attention and so far I have seen one person with a camera taped over. This is just not a thing, no matter how the media wants it to be.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
rorykoehler 6y ago
It doesn't matter. It's still shady as shit and figuring out good UX with the camera off is a design constraint.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Starting the camera takes a brief few hundred milliseconds which is easily noticable from a user perspective. Look at it from a user's perspective: As a user, I don't know you. I have no reason to believe you. If I see my camera being accessed, I have no way to tell whether the data stream gets processed by the app or sent straight to /dev/null. I'd have to assume the latter on trust. But what reasons to do that does your app give me? The loads of ads assaulting me? Or perhaps the malicious UX dark patterns sprinkled everywhere? The regular media stories about omnipresent surveillance capitalism don't reassure me either. It may very well be a performance optimization in Instagram, or in many other applications. But users have no way to know it, no way to be sure of it, or (in most cases) no way to even conceive that such optimization is needed. Meanwhile, they have perfectly good reasons to assume nefarious purpose.
- can16358p 6y ago
  Yup, I don't trust Facebook either. But many regular users (not the people here on HN or reddit) don't even know that that means, let alone care. Facebook knows only a minority would make this an issue whatsoever, and they keep it. Not defending right or wrong, but I think this is just it.
fabrice_d 6y ago
It's true that initializing camera hardware takes noticeable time. We had the same complaint from app developers in Firefox OS and we implement a small trick to improve the experience: when launching an app that has the "camera" permission listed, we start to initialize the camera hardware in parallel with other app startup tasks. That doesn't trigger stream acquisition so it's fully safe, but we gain a few hundred of ms overall when the app actually needs the camera preview.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
danudey 6y ago
Your point is well said and accurate, and was the first thing I thought of as well. That said, I think we're well past the point of no return vis-a-vis giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt on basically anything privacy-related. I don't know anyone who would argue that Facebook wouldn't do this if they thought they could get away with it; the "Facebook is listening to my conversations and showing me ads" conspiracy theory gained so much traction, not because people want to believe in conspiracy theories, but because people have no difficulty imagining that Facebook would do something like that if they could.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It seems like a dumb move, which is why I don't think they're doing what they're being accused of. It could certainly just be a technical glitch. I don't think they are spying on uses like that. They have -plenty- of data already and getting more everyday..
noexcuses7 6y ago
We've gone from "it's a service to share photos with friends" to "Sure, the camera is on, but it's not recording or transmitting!" Advocating for the Devil generally gets you sent to hell. At this point I don't even really care to hear legitimate technical reasons for this because time and time and time and time again, Facebook continually acts in antisocial ways, and it does so with impunity. I'm so sick of it, and I'm so sick of the apologetics. Facebook is incentivized to do bad things. Facebook indeed does bad things. Any action they take needs to be examined through that lens. Facebook started out as a social network (well, originally it was a tool to stalk women), and rapidly grew to be a democracy-ending ad machine. So please don't sit there and make excuses for this company.
sizzle 6y ago
Why is there no LED light when the camera gets power on a smartphone like a macbook? This is insane that smartphone manufacturers thought it was a good idea to not indicate when your camera(s) activated. I've never understood this antipattern...
- can16358p 6y ago
  Starting from iOS 14 which was released just a few days ago (I don't know about Android side), it does. It also displays which apps have used camera/microphone in control center recently in case you've missed the subtle dot. I think they've nailed it this time. (Though I personally think the design can improve)
boublepop 6y ago
Very good point. User experience is very important. This is also why Amazon periodically breaks into your home and makes sure they have a complete inventory of what you own, so they can ensure a speedier and more appropriate ordering workflow. At face value this seems unethical, but you have to remember that they are improving your user experience and making money, so it’s all ok. And I mean it’s not like they are stealing anything anyway, and you can’t really expect them to respect your privacy when you’ve signed the eula. Ups sorry, that seems to be a message out of Bizarro world that crossed over.
kyberias 6y ago
Yes. For example, Webex on Windows seems to keep the camera on (led lit) even though I'm not in a call. Irritating. One more reason why I don't love that software. Teams (and many others) handle the camera correctly.

kevingadd 6y ago

One of the most annoying things is to try and launch your camera on a phone and have to wait multiple seconds before you can hit the shutter, at which point the thing you want to photograph might already be gone. So I can definitely understand the logic behind this, even if it's creepy. IIRC, Apple has invested specifically in reducing startup latency for the camera, but I don't know if that applies to apps.

can16358p 6y ago
From what I can tell the startup time is more or less the same for both the built in camera app and the third party apps. IIRC built in camera used to start a bit faster in the past but that's not an issue anymore. The problem is that we launch the camera app and because the icon animates from home screen to fill the device window the latency is less noticeable, but for example in Instagram, the app is already open in full screen so starting the camera from a user action, even though it takes the same time with launching the camera app, is more noticeable from a user perspective.

pferde 6y ago

Doesn't keeping camera on increase battery drain, though? Also, with Facebook being evil and all, what's stopping them from hopping on "hey, the camera is already on, let's not waste that, and use the incoming visual data for something while we're at it" line of thinking eventually?

can16358p 6y ago
It does, indeed. Not like constantly recording though. I think they apply some heuristics that keep the camera on in the background (e.g if you open on story camera frequently and on the main screen, but not while at a screen when camera is not accesible). Otherwise the device would become noticeably hot, but I haven't encountered such an issue.
- redwall_hp 6y ago
  The way that would make sense, for that particular example, is to start the camera up when the user begins the interaction to open it. Like how https://instant.page/ https://instant.page/ works. If it takes 200ms to get the camera running, do it while the gesture to swipe over to the camera is in progress. It will take more than 200ms for the user to physically move. iOS has events for gesture start, in progress, finished and cancelled.
qwertox 6y ago
Assuming that this happens only when the user is actively using the app, I'd guess that the display would consume dramatically more energy, making the camera's usage of the battery negligible, also compared to the benefit of then having a very responsive camera. In any case, I do think that providing visual feedback to the user is very important. Like a small picture-in-picture-overlay.
saagarjha 6y ago
Many flagship apps absolutely destroy battery life. Just something users put up with…
- higerordermap 6y ago
  Something users often don't observe even. The OS should warn about it.

wheybags 6y ago

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.

iRomain 6y ago
> 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.
- mtnGoat 6y ago
  For good reason though, a lot of big tech kind of burned their trust wholesale to increase valuation.
bagacrap 6y ago
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?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  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.
  - bostik 6y ago
    It's the 95-5 rule. 95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.
    - daerogami 6y ago
      That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?

corobo 6y ago

I'd rather the lag tbh. If Facebook has options just assume they picked the scummiest one

Frost1x 6y ago
I'd say that's most corporate entities as a general rule of thumb.
- rbg246 6y ago
  But we aren't talking about most corporate entities we are talking about Facebook and their scummy behaviour. If we always say everyone behaves this way we make it acceptable to behave this way.

Saint_Genet 6y ago

If you keep doing malicious things, you no longer get to enjoy the benefit of doubt.

izacus 6y ago
It's one thing to enjoy benefit of doubt, it's another to just make up utterly unbelievable fringe crap that can be explained by hundreds of other explanations.
- noworriesnate 6y ago
  Snowden revealed a lot of stuff that was the just domain of crazy fringe theories before. Anyone morally okay with facebook's known problems would also most likely be morally okay with spying on users like this. Hence, I agree that giving them the benefit of the doubt is irrational.
  - switch11 6y ago
    yeah, people like to believe Snowden didn't happen Look back at everything he revealed That's LITERALLY conspiracy Theory proven to be conspiracy reality And that guy, Keith Alexander, is now on the board of Amazon so giving large tech companies like Google, Amazon, FB the benefit of the doubt is insanity
    - izacus 6y ago
      If you missed my point: it's one thing to give benefit of the doubt (which they don't deserve) and it's another thing to just make up dream rantings about what companies are supposedly doing with the data which can be easily checked for truth with basic understanding of underlying mechanisms.

tchalla 6y ago

> As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Here's what Facebook does once you give access to the iOS Photos app. Every time you open the Facebook app, it asks you - "Would you like to post these photos on Facebook?". Basically, they are reading the Photos library repeatedly to scan for recent (or past) photos along with their meta data. It could be just UX optimisation. It could also be UX optimisation for harvesting data.

izacus 6y ago
Or, more likely, it's an engagement optimization to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up. These bizarre over-the-top conspiracy theories are really starting to get old, it's almost flat earth believers level.
- te_chris 6y ago
  It’s not conspiratorial if they have form and it’s ridiculously easy for them to do.
- TranceMan 6y ago
  Is it not both?
- danShumway 6y ago
  > to have people post more photos and keep those metrics up But... that is data harvesting. When you upload photos to Facebook, you are giving them that data. That's not a conspiracy, that's just how Facebook's TOS works. It gets to look at the photos you upload and use that data to help build its internal profile for you. What's your definition of data harvesting? I would say that getting people to upload useful data to your servers qualifies.
  - spunker540 6y ago
    Photos and videos of people are not generally useful for ads. You know what is valuable? Actual purchase decisions sent in by advertisers. Photos and videos of people’s dogs and food and kids etc is strictly to entertain the other Facebook users and keep them coming back. An advertiser is willing to pay tons more to serve an ad to someone who has bought similar products in the past, and is likely to buy their product again, or has recently abandoned a non-empty shopping cart. Or has even just interacted with a previous ad. That is the data that increases ad revenue. Not facial expressions while scrolling or group photos at restaurants.

rozab 6y ago

Sounds like iOS's fault for not providing a way to keep the camera on standby at the expense of battery life, without compromising privacy. Just like how there should be more privacy-preserving methods for querying clipboard contents, as in the similar TikTok scandal when a UX optimisation was mistaken for a data collection issue.

saagarjha 6y ago
> at the expense of battery life iOS doesn't really like providing APIs like that.

rbg246 6y ago

So you are saying.. A developer went to their tech lead and said 'hey we can make the app much better by leaving the camera on all the time saves 200ms on camera startup time' Tech lead: this is brilliant no potential problems here Tech lead to management team: got this great new feature, we leave the camera on all the time makes the app 200ms faster. Management: wow that's great can't see any problem with that, no chance of reputational damage there. And it's all innocent and noone has any idea why anyone would get the wrong idea?

koonsolo 6y ago
I see you don't have much experience in development. It probably went more like this: business: "Opening the camera seems slow", dev: "it takes 200ms for the system to start it", "Can you make it faster?", "Not really, unless we keep the camera on", "Do that!", "Won't it have privacy issues?", "Don't worry about that". EDIT: And in the end business is correct, because nobody really cares about this. Every happy instagrammer keeps happily instagramming.
- slantaclaus 6y ago
  +1 for realistic dialogue
- NewOrderNow 6y ago
  As realistic as this is, it seems like contempt for mediocrity
- thrav 6y ago
  This is so true that at other companies it often takes a lawyer (in-house counsel) reminding product that something is legally precarious to stop it, and they still push. For something that has no real legal ramifications, there’s no way you’re stopping it.
- diffsensitivity 6y ago
  That’s how the explicit narrative goes. The implicit one we can never admit to is something like: Instagrammer has a different sensitivity for 200ms than the dev and never cared. Dev has to justify his egregious salary by manufacturing statistics to “experiment with engagement” nevermind the literal reality of having such a gadget is titillating as is, manufacturing belief that specific dev making a camera respond 200ms faster is what really made the app is where that paper is.

rglover 6y ago

This isn't a good excuse for spying on people.

CaptArmchair 6y ago

> Don't want to be the devil's advocate here but just because camera is on doesn't mean anything is being recorded. This is about consumer trust. To the vast majority of consumers, a smartphone is a magic box with a lens and a display. What happens inside - how data is stored and processed, how the OS functions, how apps work,... - has been abstracted away behind those "UX optimized" interfaces you just mentioned. Consumer don't buy black box devices because they trust the few big companies that manufacture the hardware and software: they buy them because there aren't any alternatives that provide the same level of convenience, and can solidly guarantee a due level of privacy as to what happens behind the screens. When consumers buy a smartphone or download an app, they have to blindly put their trust in manufacturers acting in good faith. And just that has been damaged by plenty of scandals in the past decade. So, next time you're in public, try to pay attention to this: how many people have taped off the camera of their devices? And why is this product a thing? [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=webcam+cover https://www.amazon.com/s?k=webcam+cover It's because there's a fundamental trust issue. Consumers tape those things on their devices because they don't feel in control of what a device does or doesn't record. Covering the camera is literally the only way they feel they are 100% in control. So, that should leave you with two questions here. (a) If there's a fundamental trust issue about "magic" technology, do you think people will remotely accept any rationalization about "UX optimization" and "not recording" (e.g. your asking them to trust them on your word)? and (b) If people go so far as to tape off their camera lenses because of a deep trust issue, how much sense does it even make to implement such an UX optimization in the first place? Isn't that a tone deaf act of sorts? I totally understand why this happens, and I can see the convenience of having a snappy camera. It's just that the technical solution to enable this, flies against what people perceive as acceptable.

yoz-y 6y ago
> So, next time you're in public, try to pay attention to this: how many people have taped off the camera of their devices? I usually do pay attention and so far I have seen one person with a camera taped over. This is just not a thing, no matter how the media wants it to be.
- reaperducer 6y ago

rorykoehler 6y ago

It doesn't matter. It's still shady as shit and figuring out good UX with the camera off is a design constraint.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> As an iOS developer who worked with apps that access camera frequently, I can confidently say that it's just a UX optimization. Starting the camera takes a brief few hundred milliseconds which is easily noticable from a user perspective. Look at it from a user's perspective: As a user, I don't know you. I have no reason to believe you. If I see my camera being accessed, I have no way to tell whether the data stream gets processed by the app or sent straight to /dev/null. I'd have to assume the latter on trust. But what reasons to do that does your app give me? The loads of ads assaulting me? Or perhaps the malicious UX dark patterns sprinkled everywhere? The regular media stories about omnipresent surveillance capitalism don't reassure me either. It may very well be a performance optimization in Instagram, or in many other applications. But users have no way to know it, no way to be sure of it, or (in most cases) no way to even conceive that such optimization is needed. Meanwhile, they have perfectly good reasons to assume nefarious purpose.

can16358p 6y ago
Yup, I don't trust Facebook either. But many regular users (not the people here on HN or reddit) don't even know that that means, let alone care. Facebook knows only a minority would make this an issue whatsoever, and they keep it. Not defending right or wrong, but I think this is just it.

fabrice_d 6y ago

It's true that initializing camera hardware takes noticeable time. We had the same complaint from app developers in Firefox OS and we implement a small trick to improve the experience: when launching an app that has the "camera" permission listed, we start to initialize the camera hardware in parallel with other app startup tasks. That doesn't trigger stream acquisition so it's fully safe, but we gain a few hundred of ms overall when the app actually needs the camera preview.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

danudey 6y ago

Your point is well said and accurate, and was the first thing I thought of as well. That said, I think we're well past the point of no return vis-a-vis giving Facebook the benefit of the doubt on basically anything privacy-related. I don't know anyone who would argue that Facebook wouldn't do this if they thought they could get away with it; the "Facebook is listening to my conversations and showing me ads" conspiracy theory gained so much traction, not because people want to believe in conspiracy theories, but because people have no difficulty imagining that Facebook would do something like that if they could.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

It seems like a dumb move, which is why I don't think they're doing what they're being accused of. It could certainly just be a technical glitch. I don't think they are spying on uses like that. They have -plenty- of data already and getting more everyday..

noexcuses7 6y ago

We've gone from "it's a service to share photos with friends" to "Sure, the camera is on, but it's not recording or transmitting!" Advocating for the Devil generally gets you sent to hell. At this point I don't even really care to hear legitimate technical reasons for this because time and time and time and time again, Facebook continually acts in antisocial ways, and it does so with impunity. I'm so sick of it, and I'm so sick of the apologetics. Facebook is incentivized to do bad things. Facebook indeed does bad things. Any action they take needs to be examined through that lens. Facebook started out as a social network (well, originally it was a tool to stalk women), and rapidly grew to be a democracy-ending ad machine. So please don't sit there and make excuses for this company.

sizzle 6y ago

Why is there no LED light when the camera gets power on a smartphone like a macbook? This is insane that smartphone manufacturers thought it was a good idea to not indicate when your camera(s) activated. I've never understood this antipattern...

can16358p 6y ago
Starting from iOS 14 which was released just a few days ago (I don't know about Android side), it does. It also displays which apps have used camera/microphone in control center recently in case you've missed the subtle dot. I think they've nailed it this time. (Though I personally think the design can improve)

boublepop 6y ago

Very good point. User experience is very important. This is also why Amazon periodically breaks into your home and makes sure they have a complete inventory of what you own, so they can ensure a speedier and more appropriate ordering workflow. At face value this seems unethical, but you have to remember that they are improving your user experience and making money, so it’s all ok. And I mean it’s not like they are stealing anything anyway, and you can’t really expect them to respect your privacy when you’ve signed the eula. Ups sorry, that seems to be a message out of Bizarro world that crossed over.

kyberias 6y ago

Yes. For example, Webex on Windows seems to keep the camera on (led lit) even though I'm not in a call. Irritating. One more reason why I don't love that software. Teams (and many others) handle the camera correctly.