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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

It's harder to program for them. You have to code in different cases for "I have this permission" and "I don't have this permission".

Consider potentially lots of:

if session.gps: show_ads(location) else: show_ads(general)

but for every feature of the application that could be using extended permissions.

This flashlight app is a bad example, and I'm not saying this is an excuse, but I think this is the rationale that is generally used.

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No, you don't. In fact, you couldn't even tell an app that it doesn't have permission, because then the stupid flashlight app will do something like, "let me see your location, otherwise i can only be 50% bright!" Obviously the writers of the app want that info.

Instead, it thinks it has a GPS, but you've decided to tell it that, for example, its "GPS" will always be e.g. times square or perhaps something a bit more realistic, but not real.

Eh. I get what you're saying but I think there's some terrible downsides to this approach. For example, what if the app is supposed to direct you to the nearest hospital, and the user denies its location permissions and then forgets and reopens it later or something? If the app doesn't know whether it has permission (or, worse, thinks it's getting accurate data when it's not), it would be impossible to program reliable error functionality.

If developers try to coerce you into giving extra permissions, hopefully the average user will be smart about it and just delete the app. At any rate, your solution definitely sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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