When I read "privacy nightmare", I think of a system collecting or revealing information without the user's knowledge. As I understand BeReal, the user understands exactly what information they're sharing, and with whom. That said, I'm puzzled by why anyone would want to participate on either side.
Here are some things I might be doing in any random time window in which such an app might prompt me to share a selfie:
Eating food, usually not interesting food foodie friends would like to see
Walking, usually somewhere pretty boring
Sitting on the toilet
Writing code at my computer (often code someone is paying me to write and wouldn't like included in a social media post)
Picking dandelions to feed to the goslings at the park
I don't want to share any of those activities with my friends. If we're catching up on life in person, I'm not going to talk about any of that. If any of my friends do want to see those moments, I'd find it weird and voyeuristic.
The interesting moment I do want to share, and people might actually want to see is the close encounter with the wild gosling taking the dandelion leaf from me.
They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that's not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
If you're willing to endure a lot of inconvenience to maybe move the needle a tiny bit, I admire you. It also differs from place to place; if no restaurants exclusively put their menus on Instagram where you live, and most people do use SMS, then it wouldn't be as painful for you as for the author.
A consultation with a lawyer will tell you what, if anything a lawyer will do for you. Pressure consisting of implied loss of opportunity is probably enough.
Alternately, you might not have a case, and a consultation will tell you that too.
every cafe that only distributes its menu solely via Instagram will not be visited by me
There's a good chance I'd walk out over that too. I've never encountered it in the USA or Germany, but the author made it sound common in Australia.
you can write an SMS or call me
The author specifically mentioned people telling her “Oh I don’t text, do you have Insta or WhatsApp?” This is also true in Europe; WhatsApp is essentially universal, and some people have to pay per SMS sent. Some people also have another messaging app (Signal is reasonably common among my social group), but that won't cover everyone, and group chats with more than three or four participants just aren't going to happen.
If you are not willing to do that much, you do not really understand what meta is doing.
The average person does not really understand what Meta is doing. I do, and I think the author does, but neither of us is in a position to change the behavior of a majority of people in our regions.
When asking about laws, it is essential to say where you live. Different places have different laws. After a look through your recent posts, it appears you live in Ohio. These practices probably violate specific laws in Ohio.
One of them is ORC 2903.216 (B) (1), which prohibits causing a tracking device or application to monitor a person's movement without their consent.
The other is ORC 1345.02 (A), which prohibits unfair or deceptive trade practices. It's a bit more open to interpretation, but something makes me think a judge would not be amused.
Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, and it sounds like you need one. It's not rare that lawyers offer free consultations to determine if you have a real case.
The author goes into detail about the problems she experienced as a result of not having access to Meta products. She seems to recognize that it's bad that there's no way to read a cafe menu without an Instagram account or that the only messaging services some of her contacts use belong to Meta.
These are not problems the author can fix. She would be negatively impacted in the real world by not having access to Meta products.
Companies that were app-first like mobile games probably won't cut prices much if any. Companies that were web-first like Proton and Patreon probably will.
I'm guessing a tankless water heater involves some electronic controls. It probably could be designed to use low-voltage DC with a battery backup, but that would be fancy.
A gas stove should never need electricity for a burner to work if the user supplies another source of ignition like a match. This is surely a "safety feature" to prevent people from leaving the gas on when the electronic ignition is unavailable, but nobody with half a brain and a sense of smell would do that.
This doesn't seem to be the mainstream press, but a small tech blog. Mainstream American news outlets have been far more straightforward in their coverage of this case.
Furthermore, this case was a fight between two large corporations; there's no little guy here. Smaller developers may benefit from the outcome though.
I encountered a gas stove that wouldn't work during a power outage. It had a valve that shut off the gas if electricity wasn't present. Way to intentionally sabotage one of your biggest advantages.
However, this U.S. court order is inconsistent with the Apple App Store business standards
This is terrible writing. The court order is inconsistent with the Apple App Store business standards? No. The court ruled that Apple's business practices were illegal.
I'd bet on it being algorithmic from Facebook because leaning into algorithms is part of that company's culture. A bunch of manual tweaks require maintenance, though it wouldn't surprise me if someone was thinking about this when deciding that deleted selfie should be a different signal to the algorithm than deleted picture of cat.
No, because I can't use it on entirely third-party infrastructure and interact with BlueSky users. It should be possible in theory, but if it was practical in reality, somebody would be doing it.
Collision insurance, the kind that pays for damage to the policy holder's car in the event of a crash caused by the policy holder or an authorized driver of their car often more than doubles the overall cost of insurance. Collision insurance is usually optional when there's not a loan.
As I said in the previous comment, state prosecutors would be unsuccessful due to the supremacy clause. State kidnapping laws cannot punish Federal officials for deporting foreigners in accordance with Federal law, or with a good faith belief that they are enforcing Federal law.
Federal court orders can, of course make a deportation illegal, and did in this case. Still, criminal contempt would only apply to officials who knew about the court order, which has not been alleged with regard to the initial decision to deport Abrego Garcia. There was, however a separate order from judge Boasberg to turn the planes around. As yet unnamed officials who knew about that order and had the ability to carry it out discussed it and decided not to obey. They are guilty of criminal contempt.
When? There have been a few times people stopped using Firefox in large numbers.
One of them was when Chrome first came out. Firefox (and every other browser) at the time ran every site in one process. As sites became more reliant on Javascript, which was usually poorly written, that meant any one tab having a problem made other sites and even the browser's own UI unresponsive, or sometimes crashed the whole browser. Chrome's multiprocess model was a revelation. Firefox didn't get its own implementation until 2016.
Recently, there's been some movement away from Firefox due to Mozilla making decisions people don't feel align with open source, the open web, and privacy. The one that has me looking at forks is the planned addition of terms of use to the browser. Terms of use are for an ongoing relationship between a service operator and a user; Firefox is local software I'm operating myself on a computer I own. Its fine for optional online services like Sync to have terms of use, but the browser should work without those.
Zak @ Zak @lemmy.world Posts 10Comments 1,256Joined 2 yr. ago
When I read "privacy nightmare", I think of a system collecting or revealing information without the user's knowledge. As I understand BeReal, the user understands exactly what information they're sharing, and with whom. That said, I'm puzzled by why anyone would want to participate on either side.
Here are some things I might be doing in any random time window in which such an app might prompt me to share a selfie:
I don't want to share any of those activities with my friends. If we're catching up on life in person, I'm not going to talk about any of that. If any of my friends do want to see those moments, I'd find it weird and voyeuristic.
The interesting moment I do want to share, and people might actually want to see is the close encounter with the wild gosling taking the dandelion leaf from me.