Facebook’s new world domination ploy is a two-megabyte Instagram app tested in India and Brazil
- Reference: 1615532468
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/12/instagram_lite/
- Source link:
The new Instagram Lite was built by the same team that coded Facebook Lite and replicates that app’s strategy of offloading functions to the cloud instead of running them on a smartphone.
[1]
Facebook has removed animations and augmented reality filters for faces, but [2]says it has “kept features that could deliver joy with less data, like GIFs and stickers.”
The result is code that can run on even very modest hardware: Facebook’s spiel for the new app quotes a user who was able to run it on a Samsung Galaxy S Duos, a device from 2012 that runs Android 4.0.
[3]
It's wild the lengths Facebook engineers will go to find new ways to show you inane ads about tat: This time, AR... [4]READ MORE
The Social Network™ has named India and Brazil as among the target markets for the app, and has made it available in 170 countries. Doing so is completely in line with its plans to win more users in the developing world so that the company can amass a user base in time for ads, e-commerce and other money-spinners to become more prevalent.
Making Instagram more accessible also means that Mark Zuckerberg can replicate the pincer movement he’s conducted in other nations, where users that don’t fancy Facebook can turn to its biggest rival – the Facebook-owned Instagram.
[5]
While owning Instagram has [6]earned Facebook an antitrust lawsuit in the USA, the company is renowned for outpacing regulators. And by the time ten or twenty or fifty million new Instagram users are happily sharing selfies in the developing world, government responses won’t matter much to Facebook. ®
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[2] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/03/bringing-instagram-lite-to-170-countries/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YEtJyfLQKViUAfLXSY1oQgAAAJQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/11/facebook_ar_future/
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/09/facebook_crushed_competitors_to_maintain/
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I don't think that that is the point. I think the point is that the app can run on (very) low-end hardware.
The cancer is spreading.
Exactly...
What if those developing countries are using 2G/3G for the fact that it's robust & reliable over longer ranges than 4G/5G? Will those 2G/3G phones be able to download data at a speed that would allow FB/I interactions in anything even remotely approaching a reasonable time? Hell, some of those devices don't have enough RAM nor internal storeage to download an entire photo, especially if someone accidently clicks on some 4K monster that'll all-too-quickly cause the device to shite itself under the load.
Re: Exactly...
That's the point of the "offloading to the cloud" part - the app says, "get me a tiny version of this picture" and FBs server farms do the work to send a picture the device *can* cope with.
I think it is about time the world developed a vaccine against Feacebook and it's mutations, it is after all a pandemic disease that infects much of what it touches.
Keep on delivering joy, Zuckerborg.
Wow! Brilliant!
" replicates that app’s strategy of offloading functions to the cloud instead of running them on a smartphone "
What an original idea - server side processing. Who'd ever have thought of it. Maybe the concept is patentable (in the US anyway, where almost anything including sneezing is, provided nobody has previously filed).
Re: Wow! Brilliant!
Well, they could still patent it even if someone else has, just have (might be had to now), put, on a computer on the end of the other patent.
So basically Facebook are proud that they are able to run the Instagram app on hardware that came out in 2012? The original Instagram app from 2012 quite happily ran on Android 4 phones of the time with lower memory requirements. It only since Facebook got their hands on the company that its become another bloated mess of an app that takes a lot more resources to run.
Friend sent me a link to something on Instagram the other day. First thing I got was a modal box with "Accept cookies from Instagram on this browser?" The only options were "Accept" (everything) or "Learn more".
"Learn more" basically says the only way you can control cookies is by using native browser cookie management, with a warning that playing with them my render Instagram unusable - there is no option to decline/accept and end up with a set that retain functionality but prevent tracking (though I'm not surprised).
The Zuck empire needs to be brought under control...
The Zuck empire needs to be brought under control
No chance. It's registered in Mordor.
But seriously, [1]nobody (statistically speaking) bothers to get this (or any other privacy related matter) right.
[1] http://businessinforisk.co.uk/library/Awful_not_Lawful-final-BiR.pdf
"The result is code that can run on even very modest hardware: Facebook’s spiel for the new app quotes a user who was able to run it on a Samsung Galaxy S Duos, a device from 2012 that runs Android 4.0"
Shame that same phone would not be able to connect to anything over https, as most of the trusted CAs will have renewed their roots, root updates are pinned to OS updates on android. Any site using anything over TLS1 will not be able to negotiate.