This doesn’t make sense… you don’t do “negative testing” on customers equipment. It’s something you do in house so you can COLLECT the failure data as well as insure that the test was run correctly.
It doesn’t make sense to run down a customer’s device as your data will be automatically sus, let alone the legal ramifications.
Either the programmer got fired and is trying to (stupidly) smear the company or he’s misrepresented what he was ordered to do. I’ll go for the former.
Right - I could see them wanting to implement a particular feature for some data collection that would drain the battery faster than normal. (EG like playing games on your phone does) But that's not illegal anymore than doing negative testing - though that would be a more ethical problem regarding the quality of software.
If anything I think that's what probably happened, the programmer balked, got fired and is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. So long as the feature was legitimate and had a legit business use (even if data collecting) battery draining isn't illegal because you're using the device as intended. Now if they INTENTIONALLY were trying to drain the batteries for no other reason than to do so, that's at least vandalism and you've got a case on that. But I highly doubt that here.
A lot of phones are preloaded with Facebook and its treated as required app you cannot uninstall. I still doubt the story, but many people aren't giving permission outright.
It’s something you do in house so you can COLLECT the failure data as well as insure that the test was run correctly.
Facebook collects all the same data, they just use customer phones to do the testing because they don't care about ethics or making customers angry, and its cheaper than buying, manning and maintaining a large fleet of test phones.
This doesn’t make sense… you don’t do “negative testing” on customers equipment. It’s something you do in house so you can COLLECT the failure data as well as insure that the test was run correctly.
It doesn’t make sense to run down a customer’s device as your data will be automatically sus, let alone the legal ramifications.
Either the programmer got fired and is trying to (stupidly) smear the company or he’s misrepresented what he was ordered to do. I’ll go for the former.
I agree it doesn't make sense.
There is a central accusation that FB intentionally drained people's batteries.
Right - I could see them wanting to implement a particular feature for some data collection that would drain the battery faster than normal. (EG like playing games on your phone does) But that's not illegal anymore than doing negative testing - though that would be a more ethical problem regarding the quality of software.
If anything I think that's what probably happened, the programmer balked, got fired and is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. So long as the feature was legitimate and had a legit business use (even if data collecting) battery draining isn't illegal because you're using the device as intended. Now if they INTENTIONALLY were trying to drain the batteries for no other reason than to do so, that's at least vandalism and you've got a case on that. But I highly doubt that here.
IANAL , but I can't see how any of it is illegal. You gave them permission to run on your device. Wasting cycles isn't a crime, that I've heard of.
A lot of phones are preloaded with Facebook and its treated as required app you cannot uninstall. I still doubt the story, but many people aren't giving permission outright.
Facebook collects all the same data, they just use customer phones to do the testing because they don't care about ethics or making customers angry, and its cheaper than buying, manning and maintaining a large fleet of test phones.