Also, I was a broke college student. How can I even afford to invest! Still having hard time grasping the concept of stock market and related topics :P
I think there are better ways to bring food to the table than this, such as getting a job as SWE, or donations.
I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it
As a user, I am curious and excited to know the future of the apps I use. Reverse engineering allows catching a glimpse of the future without having to wait for launch events or press releases.
Often times, this kind of scoops could be beneficial to companies. Product teams at companies could look at public opinions and take that into the consideration of product decision. It functions similarly to "focus groups" or "soft launch", except it's free. According to my profile on CNN, a Twitter spokesperson mentioned [0]:
> the platform wants its users to be part of the process, and these types of discoveries help it learn
That's not to say companies encourage users to reverse engineer their apps. However, if they make it completely impossible to find any unreleased features whatsoever, it will kill off this free channel of unofficially gathering public opinions (or hype) before launch.
It is understandable there are competitors out there in reality. Getting better at hiding tests and under-development features could help preventing the competitors from knowing the company's upcoming strategies.
To hide or to not hide, they both have pros and cons. It really comes down to how companies balance their priorities. If their priority is to hide everything until launch, even if it means getting rid of the free QA and focus groups, go for it.
I personally hope companies will choose the transparent route rather than being a sealed black box. I believe users deserve to know what is changed in the apps installed on their own phones. Being more specific than the vague "bug fixes and improvements" will provide a sense of assurance to users.
Hi, Jane here! I hope you like this profile of me :)
It has been delightful to watch different approaches companies take to enrich, optimize and harden their web and mobile apps.
For example, Facebook has been dogfooding a new approach to improve the overhead in their mobile apps since last year. I speculate (or hope) they will announce it during F8 2019 in coming days.
Question: why don’t you profit from this either with the stock market or selling info to companies? What is your motivation for doing this anyway since it takes significant time and skill?
Have you done any analysis of job ads to see whether they give you insights into the product strategy of a company? I know you can’t uncover specific features from them, but it might offer clues into their priorities or roadmap. Just a thought.
My focus has been analysing within the scope of apps and its code. But I do read tech news of journalists' analysis on job ads, and note that down for future references
What's your preference for tools to go about this? I've found some dex decompilation to be very hit and miss. Just wondering what is your go to/process for android and iOS if you don't mind sharing ? Cheers
It's me who reverse engineer the Instagram app, demo the unreleased features, and then tweet about it, in which is then picked up by Constine as per usual:
Ooh, I don't know. If they regularly see people dig through their code and then tweet about what they find, planting things in the code sounds like a great way to "soft announce" features to gauge reaction. That way if they decide not to go forward, they don't lose face, it was just some unannounced feature that they were considering.
Interesting! I have no reason to doubt your intentions or that you are working independently. That said, if you have a history of finding these and getting picked up by news, it's certainly possible that Facebook could be using your reverse engineering skills as a way to leak things.
I know how cynical that sounds, but I've seen too much from disinformation from Facebook execs to take anything from them remotely at face value, no pun intended. Anyway, there's no way to prove it, just speculation based on a feeling I had.
I can't argue with that. Plus it might make people question your "Not Facebook Employee" twitter tagline.
Speaking of which, I saw a tweet that you're interviewing at Facebook this week. Is that true?
Not that I would ever begrudge someone from trying to make it big in tech, but dang, I would hope someone with your skills would find an opportunity working for the resistance rather than the occupiers :-)
I included "Not Facebook Employee" because too many people told me to not roll out this and that feature, ask me to give them verified badges and tech support
Yes, I am interviewing with Facebook. It's true. It'd be my first time actually stepping into the tech industry
In Instagram's app itself, the feature is elaborated as follow:
> We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get. During this test, only the person who shared a post will see the total number of likes it gets.
There does not seem to be an option to link a WhatsApp account to a Facebook account (other than associating phone numbers). So it does not seem to be the case
Not surprised. Facebook/Messenger Android App can read phone call log.
Somewhere in their Messenger Android app indicates they might be planning to provide a dialer and support voice calling. It makes the excuse of reading call log more justifiable /s
I think there are better ways to bring food to the table than this, such as getting a job as SWE, or donations.
I never earned any money from this hobby and have no plans to change it