There is no reason to require this setting for users who aren’t posting live videos.
I installed it earlier this year on android. But it wouldn’t let me sign in or browse without syncing my contacts from my phone.
So I uninstalled it.
That is the healthy choice
There is a metric somewhere that shows installation and then instant uninstall. I hope it brings sadness to soulless hearts.
Yup, that’s the correct reaction.
Consider pixelfed, the fediverse alternative to Instagram
I really like pixelfed, but it replaces what instagram was a decade ago, not what instagram is now.
Pixelfed is amazing for sharing photography type photos.
Instagram is now a photo sharing, video sharing, tiktok doomscrolling, messaging service, noticeboard in one.
I used to love Instagram 5-10 years ago. I despise today’s Instagram.
I left it about two years ago. The tiktok style short videos are way too fucking addictive and bring near zero value to my day.
As an amateur photographer, I’m still hoping for a Flickr resurgence. Instagram is so restrictive.
You can share videos but it isn’t supported on all instances
The official app won’t work with my instance (pixey.org). Pixeldroid does through
“Meta IS NOT LISTENING TO YOUR CAMERA, MICROPHONE, OR NETWORK CONNECTIONS! REEEE!!”
It is actually pretty sad
Although to be far they have way more effective ways of surveillance
Instagram no longer allowed to be installed on my phone, how is that for a deal, Meta?
Then do that
Instagram and all Facebook products are invasive addictive malware
all meta’s apps are suck ngl. i hate the way i can’t paste image from clipboard in whatsapp chat without giving whatsapp permission to manage my storage.
It’s probably compressing or resizing before upload.
idk when this sh*t started but in the older versions (as far as i remember), whatsapp didn’t ask for this if the image was from my clipboard. that was one of the trick to not giving the permission to manage my files to whatsapp when sending images.
Gonna play Devil’s Advocate for a moment here.
I assume that this isn’t actually for nefarious purposes, and is actually just a low-effort way of curbing spambots on their platform. It’s likely that the bots are using emulated devices to post from the official app, and this permission might lock up a lot of those bots. Obviously this wouldn’t be the best way to combat spambots, but I’m gonna go with Hanlon’s Razor on this one.
I know the immediate first thought most people will have is that this is just so Meta can open up another avenue to spy on you. But let’s consider for a moment the logistics involved in that. Audio/video data is huge; capturing and parsing it it requires a non-insignificant amount of CPU/battery usage, and transmitting it will use a good bit of bandwidth, both of which would be noticeable by even novice users (since most modern devices these days will show an on-screen indicator whenever certain sensors are being activated, and will tell you what app is using it, so seeing Instagram trigger your mic/camera when you’re not using it would be immediately noticed by just about everybody). That would also make this one data stream exponentially more costly to gather and process for Meta than most of their other data streams combined.
Also consider the fact that Meta already has over a million data points on just about every single person on the planet, anyway; what could they stand to gain by monitoring your IRL presence that they haven’t already inferred from the other, less-invasive data they’ve gathered on you? Half of the recordings they’d get would be farts and “oh my god, stop barking, nobody’s even at the door”, and Meta probably already knows that you have a dog and lactose intolerance.
It’s more expensive to produce, it’s more likely to be detected, and there’s less of a guarantee that you even get any usable data from it at all since they already know just about everything about you already. I really don’t see spying as the end goal for this particular action, only because it doesn’t seem like a profitable venture.
None of this is to suggest that Meta isn’t spying on you. They are. They 100% are spying on each and every one of you. I just don’t think the mic/camera are how they’re doing it.
Not even that, it’s more than likely some PM said “we want to open the camera and be ready to record when someone goes on the story tab”, then it gets implemented as needing permissions first and not considering that some people wouldn’t want to give the permissions and only upload from camera roll
It’s a new frontier in sourcing material for AI training…
Not surprised. It’s just Meta being Meta and garbling up all yo data so that it can make money from it. Maybe don’t use the app. Try accessing from your mobile browser.
If they don’t already have rules about this, Google and Apple should update their store rules to prevent this crap.
Playing devil’s advocate here but there could be legitimate reasons to prevent features of an app if you don’t give the permissions.
Things like professional type apps that need geolocation to work (geofencing, photo geoloc) or because x big shot client wants to track their employees and you’re just forced to accept that unless you want to declare bankruptcy.
Definitely is a very hostile pattern though and there’s no reason for meta to do this shit…
They keep filtering the stupid people, but there’s always more.
I keep wondering what zuck has to do to be more obvious, but it seems like an infinite horizon to someone whe never signed up for any meta product.
Also, soft switches don’t really turn things off. Physical covers over cameras, mics, and speakers can’t be overridden.
iOS plus Facebook
The “dream” combo
gee, guess i’ll just have to continue never using it, then…
I’ve wondered for quite a while if there was ever any truth to the rumors that Meta apps “listen” to people. It doesn’t make logical sense, as the OS should expose they are doing it. Unless they had API access to allow microphone access without triggering the microphone icon. These companies have had API access in the past, like when Uber had full screen display capture access, and Meta definitely has some agreements with the fruit company to access some kinds of data. Or, when iOS first introduced the location tracking symbol in the status bar, I was able to write a program that allowed gathering of location access without actually triggering the icon.
Most of the time, the events can be explained away by knowing how adtech works, like, I was drinking a beverage, a friend asked what it was, the next day I started getting ads for it.
In that case:
- They were on my wifi network
- They picked up their phone when they were asking about it and did an Internet search
- So once the GeoIP was cross-referenced across ad providers, the IP started being targeted for those ads, makes sense
Some stories I’ve heard are more strange.
It does make me wonder if it was true the whole time, but they now have to ask for permission.
Don’t use the platforms myself or I’d try and set up a test experiment.
In this case by hitting create post, it triggers the permissions for mic/camera because it tries to activate them.
As to why, it’s probably because they want you to create videos, so it defaults to that when trying to create a post. And then in there, you can go for a text post instead. But I don’t use Instagram so I don’t know if anyone who does can confirm that.
Good theory, I like it.
Relevant thread today - you would be a good person to test this seemingly unlikely theory!
I wonder if saving the website as an app would work around this restriction?
This does appear to be a functional workaround atm (the mobile website via safari app allows me to post photos to stories) but the editor is severely gimped so you can’t resize images and such. Desktop version doesn’t seem to allow you to post stories at all. If I NEED to share something perhaps I’ll use this.
