[bergstromm466]

This is fucking important. I think it's deceiving to refer to different child companies as if they are separate entities, instead of refering to the mother entity. It only benefits the corporation when this happens, not customers. I'd even call it Doublespeak or a PR strategy. Divide and conquer. The illusion of choice. Monopoly is the name of the game.

"Competition is for losers."

— Peter Thiel

[ComputerGuru]

Except we’re not talking about companies, we are talking about the actual app in question. The app is called instagram and it is separate from another app called Facebook by the same company.

[bergstromm466]

How do you know that they aren't heavily integrated? How do you define an app, where are the boundaries?

[thundermuffin]

In my opinion, a great place to define that boundary is when you have to move to a completely separate app; unless something's majorly changed recently, you can't access the majority of Facebook or Instagram from the other app unless you end up in a WebView and login that way. At that point, you aren't using a native experience where they have the same level of access that they do from the actual app and the main issue about having the camera open isn't even relevant anymore, haha.

That isn't to say that Facebook Inc. (the parent company) doesn't have their hands in the Instagram pot, because they obviously do and it only seems natural based on their past behavior they'll integrate heavily and push way past bounds they should be allowed to. All of that said, it doesn't mean the other poster is wrong about making it known this is a problem inside of Instagram rather than in Messenger or Facebook (the app).

I understand where you're coming from; being able to deflect their transgressions on a child company and then toss it aside and rebrand when it gets too much heat isn't a way they should be able to operate; heck, I'm just as skeptical as anyone that this is just a "bug" and have personally disliked FB's practices for a while; however, it doesn't make sense to start treating all products from large companies as if they're all just one single thing. In my mind, I akin it to Google having a pretty gnarly bug in GMail, but then everyone not being able to separate it from Search; it feels like an apt comparison to me, especially since Google is just a few steps down from the nefariousness of FB in some people's minds.

[bergstromm466]

> a pretty gnarly bug in GMail

My critique has less to do with bugs or with the programmers who are coding these apps, and more to do with the parasitic business models and the proprietary underlying functions and capabilities that these engineers are asked to implement by the Venture Capitalist-backed Silicon Valley-startups they work for. Or more precisely, my critique has to do with the dynamics of the corporatocracy and technocracy and how it relates to our economic system, including the effects on humanity's health and the health of our planet.

[thundermuffin]

I actually agreed with you that the way Facebook and other companies abuse their acquired / spun off companies and toss them aside when it gets heated is wrong, and that it definitely has an impact on the entire tech ecosystem, including just consumers of tech; originally, you asked how you could separate apps from each other, and the only reason I included the statement about GMail was to give more insight on how I viewed the topic, but it looks like it didn't matter since only six words of my response is what you took away.

I don't think we'll be able to really have a good discourse on this since we're approaching it from two different areas of discussion, but I appreciate your response.

[annadane]

I fail to see why this is downvoted. Completely agree.