Comment by kevinmchugh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinmchugh | Hacker News Reader

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At this point I'm running at least 2 versions behind on the facebook app. I didn't install it last time it asked me to allow it to "Send emails to guests [of events] without host's knowledge" among other things. I see now that they also want to be able to connect and disconnect from WiFi.

The Facebook app is probably the fastest way to find a list of all permissions in the Android system. "Draw over other apps", "Read battery statistics". I don't know what part of facebook requires either of those options, and the mobile version of their website offers me the minimal amount of functionality I need.

The act of writing this comment has made me uninstall the damned thing. Just reclaimed 17.61MB, and probably a fair amount of space in my mind since I'll check Facebook less often.

I'm sure, as the author of the linked article asserts, most people blindly accept the permissioning changes, but I hope this permission-creep starts to cost them installs.

Same here - about running 2 versions behind, at least. I haven't deleted the app yet, but I refuse to give it permission to send or read texts without my knowledge or permission. I don't care what their explanation is for wanting those permissions, but they're not necessary and not something I'm willing to trust Facebook with.

"draw over other apps" is to implement chat heads (see http://www.piwai.info/chatheads-basics/)

Which caused me to freak out when it first happened. I was furious. I had to stop everything I was doing immediately in order to figure out how to disable it.

I can't possibly state emphatically enough how user-hostile that feature is. It is so disruptive to my thought process...it's nearly as bad as that awful focus-stealing thing that Windows does.

I can understand it might have been unnerving but on the other hand the feature was documented in the change log and in the list of new permissions the app required (in the version chat heads were introduced). Personally I find chat heads convenient and useful

"Useful" for what purpose?

It makes it easier for me to carry on conversations while also doing other things on my phone. If I'm reading something, and someone responds to a message, I can quickly pop open the chat window and respond, then close it and go back to what I was doing. I find that more convenient than going back to the home screen and launching an app from there or the (rather slow) app switching process.

Yes, sometimes it does get in the way of what I'm doing, and in those cases I just swipe the chat head down to the bottom of the screen and it goes away. And considering turning it off is one of the options in the first page of the settings, I'm not really understanding why it would make you furious or think this is user-hostile. Overall it's a pretty unimportant change that is easy to disable if you don't like it.

Notifications in the top bar achieve that purpose for me, without disrupting what I'm currently doing.

Wait so when you get a facebook message it just bam takes over your screen?

Yeah this is the update I stopped at too.. Now I might just delete the Facebook app because I hate constantly seeing that there is an update waiting for me.

"view Wi-Fi connections". Hmm, is there a reason it also needs the geolocation permission and that? Are they gathering their own geolocation data bootstrapped from google's somehow?

The "view Wi-Fi connections" thing is probably for the free Facebook WiFi access thing[1].

[1] https://www.facebook.com/help/126760650808045

I just deleted mine from your comment. Thank you.

I did the same. I am several versions behind due to the requests for increased permissions, but this gave me the impetus to finally purge a bunch of applications with updates wanting additional, seemingly unnecessary, permissions. Though it was slow, I liked Bandsintown until a recent update wanted to read my contacts.

Facebook is now wrapped by Tinfoil-Facebook and Twitter is now relegated to the browser.

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