Treffer: How Much Users Know About 'Permission' When They Permit: The Case of the Facebook App

Title:
How Much Users Know About 'Permission' When They Permit: The Case of the Facebook App
Authors:
Safir, Abdullah Hasan
Publisher Information:
Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange
MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit Student
Publication Year:
2023
Collection:
Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Subject Terms:
App Infrastructure, Critical Code Studies, Digital Hermeneutics, Permission
Document Type:
Fachzeitschrift article in journal/newspaper
File Description:
application/pdf
Language:
English
Relation:
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/354351; https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.100200
DOI:
10.17863/CAM.100200
Availability:
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/354351
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.100200
Rights:
Attribution 4.0 International ; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Accession Number:
edsbas.948DDBC4
Database:
BASE

Weitere Informationen

The Facebook app’s internal infrastructure makes it a giant data extraction medium, often exploiting the users unknowingly. Standing on this premise, this research examines the Manifest file of the app and relevant Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) embedded in its Software Development Kits (SDKs) and undertakes a tracker analysis of the app using the Exodus tool. The article shows that the reviewed version of the Facebook app has 59 permission requests in the SDKs. Later, it critically analyses the notion of ‘permission’ concerning the network infrastructure and device affordances of the app. The article raises an important question: Can the users (really) ‘permit’? The article suggests that such innovative methods and approaches undertaken in this research can inform more effective policies to regulate platforms like Facebook by safeguarding users’ privacy.