Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by Zikes | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

Zikes

The Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps just updated with new permissions:

Other application UI

* Draw over other apps

System tools

* Read battery statistics

* Read Home settings and shortcuts

Your applications information

* Retrieve running apps

* Reorder running apps, run at startup

Phone calls

* Directly call phone numbers

The ability to arbitrarily run at startup, read what apps I'm currently running, and draw on top of them all concern me, and I've chosen not to accept the update at this time as a result.

View on HN

Those features are some of the flagship features of Home.

Drawing over other apps is core to their new messaging UI because it can show up no matter what app you're using.

Running at startup is pretty much required for an always on Messenger type app.

Reading your currently running apps is also required for any type of launcher app I would imagine.

I'd guess it needs to know what apps are running so it can draw over them.

This is getting off-topic but no, that's not how it works. Android handles those chat heads as system-level windows, you don't need to know what's underneath them. The running apps list is for that "Last app" functionality (though I've no idea why reordering is needed).

> The Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps just updated with new permissions

Not Home.

Really? I would hope the users at HN would be more inclined to understand the needs of those permissions rather than fear mongering. You know the features of Home and you should know that to accomplish those features, it needs those permissions. Remember that Home is more of a shell app and the majority of its abilities come from the Facebook app. The app shouldn't really be accessing that information if Home isn't installed, but they are necessary for Home to run.

I'd also think that HN users would understand what these permissions mean and be careful when giving away that much power.

But isn't that an "interesting" choice? They could have just kept the extra permissions tied to the Home app.

The current way, even non-Home users are giving a lot more unnecessary permissions to the FB app. And FB isn't the most trustworthy company to give unnecessary extra permissions.

> The Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps just updated with new permissions

Not Home.

"Drawing on top of other apps" seems to be the way that they have implemented their lockscreen replacement. I have seen a glitch recently which indicates that the default lockscreen is actually running underneath.

I'm fairly certain that they would use "retrieve running apps" to pull back information about how their competitors' apps are being used on phones. That could certainly be a competitive advantage in the mobile space.

I'm vehemently against apps drawing on top of other apps and will not update either. I do not want obnoxious popups to become the new paradigm.

I think it can be hugely advantageous if it's an optional functionality. Switching to another app is slow, whereas responding to a popup is fast. On phones, it seems like a much better way of multitasking than having apps side-by side (I have a NoteII).

I've done similarly. Sure, they have valid uses... but they could have done these things with Facebook Home instead of wiring it into the standard applications (which can communicate with Home via cross-process messages, so they could still do everything). Hopefully they'll roll them back if enough don't update, but probably not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com