Good stuff! Can they really sandbox / close off an app completely, so that it doesn’t fire up mic or camera randomly? Additionally you can really infer a lot of data from limited data. I’m not using FB much myself, but would prefer them over TikTok ;)
Yes they can, but there's a bunch of caveats there because you can grant permission for one thing and the app can try to use it for other things. But the big apps are under a lot of scrutiny from people trying to reverse engineer them, do packet sniffing, etc, so it's hard to keep secret.
I was talking about this the other day with a friend: in open source communities, for example, everyone assumes that someone else is checking stuff and people just go on with it.
This is similar with some reviews, where each subsequent reviewer of some work is getting sloppier because they assume that the reviewer before them already checked stuff.
So yes, I can imagine it being done with big apps, but I think this also quickly ends. Who knows how many open source libraries, apps etc are actually funded by secret services & other actors...
Yeah, a lot of open source projects basically have no-one looking at the code except the original maintainer. A lot of the benefit is theoretical, like, "I could if I really wanted to".
But with big billion-user apps, there's so much attention on them, so much money in play even from competitors trying to hurt them by revealing bad practice or making scandals (real or imagined) that I feel like the scrutiny is more real there.
The Economist has a piece in the last issue about TikTok and this particular topic. I thinkk there are many problems behind and my bet is they will ban it sometime in the future.
Good stuff! Can they really sandbox / close off an app completely, so that it doesn’t fire up mic or camera randomly? Additionally you can really infer a lot of data from limited data. I’m not using FB much myself, but would prefer them over TikTok ;)
Yes they can, but there's a bunch of caveats there because you can grant permission for one thing and the app can try to use it for other things. But the big apps are under a lot of scrutiny from people trying to reverse engineer them, do packet sniffing, etc, so it's hard to keep secret.
I was talking about this the other day with a friend: in open source communities, for example, everyone assumes that someone else is checking stuff and people just go on with it.
This is similar with some reviews, where each subsequent reviewer of some work is getting sloppier because they assume that the reviewer before them already checked stuff.
So yes, I can imagine it being done with big apps, but I think this also quickly ends. Who knows how many open source libraries, apps etc are actually funded by secret services & other actors...
Yeah, a lot of open source projects basically have no-one looking at the code except the original maintainer. A lot of the benefit is theoretical, like, "I could if I really wanted to".
But with big billion-user apps, there's so much attention on them, so much money in play even from competitors trying to hurt them by revealing bad practice or making scandals (real or imagined) that I feel like the scrutiny is more real there.
The Economist has a piece in the last issue about TikTok and this particular topic. I thinkk there are many problems behind and my bet is they will ban it sometime in the future.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/07/whos-afraid-of-tiktok
With all the layoffs taking place in various un-recession proof sectors, McDonalds should be hiring soon. "Would you like a cookie with your cache"?
😬