There is no reason to require this setting for users who aren’t posting live videos.
Consider pixelfed, the fediverse alternative to Instagram
The official app won’t work with my instance (pixey.org). Pixeldroid does through
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
“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
I set up Amazon Echo buds recently. I have no desire to use any of the Alexa crap on them and just wanted cheap, decent noise cancelling Bluetooth earbuds on prime day. You apparently can’t set them up without the Alexa app and like all the permissions. I downloaded it on an old phone that’s practically blank, set up the buds, and deleted the app. Once it’s set up you can use like regular Bluetooth earbuds. They wanted location all the time and a few others (microphone maybe?). Selecting only allow this time wouldn’t even work. I get it Bezos, u want my data, but fuck off u aren’t getting it.
You should look if it works with gadgetbridge. Maybe you can get some functionality back that the app had?
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.
It’s a new frontier in sourcing material for AI training…
If they don’t already have rules about this, Google and Apple should update their store rules to prevent this crap.
iOS plus Facebook
The “dream” combo
I only use Instagram to look at the reels my family sends me, I don’t allow myself to use it for anything else because you can easily waste 2 hours and feel miserable afterwards. What I like about Lemmy is I can get through all new posts for the day in at most 20 mins and maybe learn about some interesting while I’m at it.
Yeah I use it to keep up with friends/family and have a private account— most people I know don’t post regular posts, only stories, so it’s actually quite easy for me to exhaust all the content I care about and then leave. The post feed is mostly ads for me since my friends don’t post. The ‘explore’ feed for me is mostly indian weddings and flood content for some unfathomable reason.
I believe that there’s some app out there for Android that lets one create a spoofed environment for apps that demand certain permissions to function. Returns bogus data to them. Might require a rooted device, though.
goes looking
Yeah.
I think I’m thinking of XPrivacyLua, which requires Xposed, which in turn requires a rooted device.
EDIT: all that being said, I do think that if practicable, it is kind of an argument to use something other than Instagram, and more broadly, to try to keep use on a personal computer rather than phone, where it’s easier to deal with or avoid shennanigans like this.
Technically Graphene OS can do this
gee, guess i’ll just have to continue never using it, then…
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.
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.
