"The iPhone received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the helpful sign suggested, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being checked-in on social media any given moment. How often, or on what system, the service provider plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they included everybody all the time. But at any rate they could connect you whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
a non-jailbroken iPhone
You don't think it's a little unfair to compare a sideloaded (thus, compromised) Android phone with a non-compromised, non-jailbroken iPhone?
Sad that there's not a single, not even one positive mention of this feature here. I'm starting to think this whole privacy thing has turned a lot of you into luddites. I'm serious. The highest rated fucking comment is a post that takes a line from 1984 and replaces "telescreen" with "iphone". Yes, very clever and completely relevant.
I remember a time when this would have generated discussion on how cool it is or what technology they're using to accomplish it, but instead, it's PRIVACY PRIVACY PRIVACY (even when it's an irrelevant concern, such as this) - the same reaction I'd expect had this been posted to 4chan /g/.
I had song identification on a candybar phone something like 6+ years ago. Why should I say the feature are cool and how the tech interesting? It's not anymore. I had those conversations years ago. Is the fact it got added to facebook's interface even slightly interesting? There is a very narrow window of posts where I care to tell people I was watching The Simpsons, but am not going to type anything about The Simpsons in the post. It's like location data, who cares where I am? Nobody but facebook, unless I'm traveling and say something about the travel, in which case it also doesn't matter the post is geotagged.
So should we sit around and coo about how great it is that a social network I barely use anymore integrated known tech I don't care to receive from them? Is that how you responded when facebook announced that they would provide email service? No, because it's a boring solved problem from a boring company just trying to gather more data on users. Google already did it, and better. Maybe there is an interesting article to be found somewhere in there about implementation or scaling it, that's it.
Of course the conversation is on privacy because the tech savvy are starting to realize just how much they've lost. And it doesn't sit well that it's been stolen in ways hidden from them and/or they been have been told to sit down, and accept. So I find it entirely expected that people are jumpy around another encroachment, even for something benign. Time and time again someone spills the beans on a benign use case that got leveraged for access. Sure you may find it poorly articulated, off target or needlessly reactionary. It doesn't mean there isn't an important underlying point.
Right, but as you yourself stated in your first paragraph, this isn't new. This kind of tech has been available for TV shows via Shazam for some time. Inevitably conversation will turn to privacy because that's the only new thing here.
Also, I don't "scrobble" because I was never comfortable sharing that data.
Facebook doing what Shazam does doesn't somehow make it more skeevy.
If I read it right, it can detect the TV show down to episode? I'm guessing it functions just like Shazam style music detection, but I still find the idea of it incredibly cool.
Edit: Chrome now lets you use "Ok Google" as well.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/22/5740946/chrome-ok-google-v...
It's pretty awesome when you've dirty hands and can't touch the phone, but you need to turn it on, and unlock it first.
They have added a feature which works the same way Shazam et al do. You want to share what you're listening to? Press a button, the mic gets activated, and Facebook ID's the song for you to save you typing it out and searching yourself.
They are not listening to you all the time, even when you're in the Facebook app.
Shazam also isn't the same level of data mining/profiling.
Automated narcissism doesn't exactly make for good conversation. People will get bored of it after a day or two.
Ultimately you can't completely protect users from their own stupidity. You have to make the security vs usability tradeoff somewhere. I appreciate that my phone allows me to manually install applications - it is in fact one of the reasons I chose it.
Why wouldn't they do that? They could get more valuable marketing data. If they run voice recognition software, they can automatically pick out brand names, or listen in if you're talking about upcoming purchases. Maybe they overhear you having a fight with your spouse, so they can position ads for divorce attorneys when you log in to Facebook.
> Facebook doing what Shazam does doesn't somehow make it more skeevy.
Yes, it does, because Facebook is inherently a way skeevier company than Shazam. All you have to do is look at their history to date to see that.
>> Facebook doing what Shazam does doesn't somehow make it more skeevy.
Of course it does.
On the other hand they are not in a position to combine it with a truckload of your (partially at least) most intimate data, sucked up with all their other data gathering ventures.
For what it's worth: I'm putting my money where my mouth is and "deleted" my Facebook account years ago.