People’s trust in Facebook is arguably at an all-time low. The social media giant has lately been embroiled in one too many scandals in the recent past. Earlier this week, a user alleged that Facebook is using iPhone cameras in the background. Along with the accusation the user also screen-recorded videos that caught Facebook app in the act.
Facebook has now replied via a series of Tweets and claims to have fixed a “bug” that turned iPhone camera on in the background. Facebook’s vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, acknowledged the issue and said that they are looking into it. Later, he assured that no content was recorded, stored or uploaded in any instance.
“We’ve confirmed that we didn’t upload anything to FB due to this bug and that the camera didn’t capture anything since it was in preview mode. We’ve submitted a fixed version to the App Store which is already rolling out.”
We recently discovered our iOS app incorrectly launched in landscape. In fixing that last week in v246 we inadvertently introduced a bug where the app partially navigates to the camera screen when a photo is tapped. We have no evidence of photos/videos uploaded due to this.
— Guy Rosen (@guyro) November 12, 2019
Rosen went ahead and explained the cause for the bug.
“We’ve confirmed that we didn’t upload anything to FB due to this bug and that the camera didn’t capture anything since it was in preview mode. We’ve submitted a fixed version to the App Store which is already rolling out.”
Our Take
Bug or not, the expose couldn’t come at a much worse time for Facebook. Last year the company faced scrutiny over the Cambridge Analytica scandal wherein user data was sold and eventually used for political targeting. Meanwhile, Facebook has denied the charges and stated that they don’t use personal information for ad-targeting. Facebook’s userbase is slowly dwindling. According to a report from Marketwatch, the social media giant has lost a staggering 15 million users in the past two years.