Moves joins Facebook
moves-app.comWhat really annoys me about this: I don't get a warning when this is happening. I had an account with them and now Facebook owns that data with zero recourse for me.
Sure - the moment I read this, I deleted my account and the app, but who's to say that the data is really gone now and hasn't been copied to Facebook before this?
First they got all my WhatsApp messages and now my Moves data.
No longer can I chose to not share data with Facebook when they can just come in and purchase it after-the-fact. This will certainly make me even more careful whom I'm willing to create an account with.
Up until the WhatsApp and Moves deal, I had this rule that if I pay for it, it'll probably going to be independent because whoever's running it will be able to sustain it.
But now that this is out of the window, what's left as an indicator? How can I use a service if I don't want the data I create/store there to end up at Facebook?
Short answer: you probably can't. I'm sure there's something in the legalese in the Terms of Service about how they are able to sell the company. Technically Moves still owns the data, but they are now owned by Facebook, so I'm sure they reserved the right to sell their company.
The only way I can think of is if you can find a service that has a legally-binding promise to notify you with ample time to terminate your account and remove your data before merging with another company. But I'd be shocked if many/any companies do this, because they'd be hamstringing their value.
Actually, there isn’t anything in that (kind of) contract other than the fact that the contract is with the company (Moves Oy, WhatApp Ltd.) If Facebook buys out that company, then the contract is the same, but with a subsidiary.
Even promisses to destroy in the contract wouldn’t be enough — because the entity that would promise to delete your data wouldn’t exist as soon as there is a legally binding event.
At the moment, the only thing protecting you from that are competition authorities. If you can file a request for consideration saying that this would harm their users overall (not just isolate case: Competition authorities deal with economic policy, not individual cases), then you might block the overall sale.
As someone who’s digged for years into current principles, I can say taht we are not even remotely close to having proper understanding by the lawyers of what kind of harm is at stake, let alone measuring it; from there, wait ten years and a couple of controversial cases to make it into effective policy.
How do you mean "All your WhatsApp messages"? Isn't it by design that WhatsApp only ever stores undelivered messages? Once they reach the recipient, they're gone from the servers. This lets the infrastructure be really small compared to the number of users on the system.
Who knows what they do with the messages. They certainly weren't peer-to-peer encrypted, so for all we know, they were storing a copy "for later use".
Even if they weren't initially, they could have started storing them whenever they wanted without telling anybody or any other indication that they would.
Especially since the deal with Facebook, assume all messages to be kept around and linked with your profile.
They back the messages up if you selected it in the settings (think it's opt in)
That doesn't mean they don't back it up if you don't select it in the settings.
I don’t think it’s out of bounds at all to assume that these companies would keep as much data as possible—including your messages.
Using an online service means you're participating in the current market system. Short of a popular global scale non-profit that wouldn't be up for sale, I'm not sure there is a solution to the problem of "how do I get warned if someone buys my favourite service". It's generally not a problem for most -- you put your data up, you took the risk, and most are just fine with giving up their privacy for convenience (I know I am).
Beyond privacy legislation (unlikely and probably draconian), there is only one solution to the problem that I see: help build the next generation of open web protocols so people can host their own private services and talk to one another without anyone having your data.
This would be the most private/open/free way to go, though the problem with that is there's basically no money in it yet. And no one has figured out how to make it a compelling user experience.
A service using open source software is a pretty good indicator that they will not sell out. Or even if they do, you will still be able to continue to use it by self-hosting or using a different provider.
In Europe I could see this type of privacy legislation passing, though not so much in North America.
BOOOOOooooooooo. I'm tired of this game of whack-a-mole I have to play on my home screen. If I've learned anything as a modern user it's not to let any app become a part of your routine. It's not worth the hassle when they cash out.
> For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.
What exactly is your problem?
'There are no plans' is PR speak for 'there are no current plans'.
Facebook is a data company, I'm sure they'd LOVE an accurate source of where their users have been, how they're moving around, etc. And then to sell-on that data to third parties, offer targeted advertisements in real time.
In sorry, but did you ever imagine this wasn't the future for moves anyhow?
If you are given a free service you better expect targeted ads at some point.
Moves wasn't free.
Moves.app was free up until November of last year when they released version 2.0. Here are the release notes http://www.appannie.com/apps/ios/app/moves/
Did they change the model recently? Or were they charging for their APIs? I don't remember they charging the users.
I paid CHF 3 for the app. It was free for quite a while but at some point they started charging for it. Now granted, that was a one off purchase, but considering that most of the logic could actually be done in the app itself, and the server could be used as just a data store, I'd say these CHF 3 would go quite a long way in paying for that.
Actually, most of the logic is done in the server. They're running some fairly sophisticated machine learning code that's beyond the capability of an iPhone. (It's pretty hard to distinguish between brisk walking, cycling, and driving in slow traffic.)
For anyone else who didn't know what a CHF is, it stands for Swiss Francs. CHF 1 = $1.13
I did not pay for moves on ios or android in the US.
CHF 3 = USD 3.40
Thanks, fixed.
Facebook and their historical lack of concern for people's data privacy. If FB or Google buy something, about a third of the users will leave (nearly) overnight to avoid getting caught in the data trap.
Can you elaborate using undisputable facts the "historical lack of concern for people's data privacy" ?
It is a widely assumed belief that I have never seen backed up with hard facts.
User data being FB & Google's crown jewels and competitive advantage, you bet that they are concerned about not leaking it to anyone at all...
> It is a widely assumed belief that I have never seen backed up with hard facts.
‘Privacy’ or even ‘Data’ are not even remotely well defined enough for those statements to have a clear meaning. However, many people have felt betrayed when using Facebook.
Some of it — potentially the majority of cases — have to do with the fact that the service is new, and the lack of understanding led to many context collapses: there are many situations to consider, but all involve three people knowing each other, one having authority over a second, but not a third. Classic case involve a teenage child, a parent and a common friend or relative. The relative reveals inadvertently something. This is far more disempowering to non-users mentioned by friends, or whose photo was taken.
Facebook was openly careless about those cases, manu legitimate — Mark Zuckerberg went up to publicly justify his disregard by saying that people shouldn’t have things to hide to their friends, a callous statement if there is any.
There are many more problematic cases, where the person feeling betrayed was attentive and knowledgable, but Facebook changed the way they handle privacy without clear warning, and something that wasn’t became visible. This is the case of profile pictures, for instance. You have important social information there; some people assumed that their photo with their significant other would remain as private as their set it, but that changed, without recourses. There are many more similar issues, related to poor explanations of updates.
There is no way the wordings chose for most updates came form considerate product managers.
There are more examples, generally to the overall attitude: ‘better ask for foregiveness than permission’, rephrased as (and plastered all over their headquarter as essential values): “Move fast, break things”. When it comes to privacy, you can’t get the cat back in the bag.
Company motto, public statements by the Founder-CEO, presentation of privacy-impacting updates… that’s plenty of proof for who would take five minutes to care looking.
I know for a fact that people at Facebook care about those — just they haven’t cared enough, repeatedly; and those cases where well documented.
You just answered your own question. It is generally accepted that Facebook and Google derive a large source of their revenue from advertisement, which is in such high demand at these companies precisely because they control so much of your personal data.
It isn't so much of a leap of reasoning to think that a company willing to sell some information about you isn't willing to go further than you'd like them to. Again, it's not that we're worried about them 'leaking' it - we're worried about how they're going to sell and make money off of it.
While I agree with your concerns, I think you are overestimating the level of concern the average user has for privacy. I imagine power users make up a far smaller chunk of the user base than 1/3.
Do you have some data on that? I'd be somewhat surprised to hear that 1/3 of all WhatsApp users had now left, for example.
Plans change. Why would Facebook buy them if not for the data?
It's not like Facebook is in need of new users and the app itself isn't especially novel from a technical POV.
FB hired the team they don't give a damn about the users or the data.
If FB hired them for the team, though, there's no reason to keep the app around. Those people would be moved into new roles and the app would be sunset.
Let's see 6 months from now if the app is still around -- personally I bet it won't.
Seems like Facebook is completely unaware of how the public perceives their disrespect for user privacy.
If I was a competitor the first thing I'd do right now is to make a way to migrate users' data from Moves to my app.
I think Facebook knows how people perceive their product, and I think they also know the difference between expressed preference and revealed preference.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-p...
OTOH, Hacker News is not "the public." It seems to me like most regular users complaints about Facebook are related to too many sponsored posts, junk notifications from games, and missing updates they consider important but Facebook does not.
I think HNers seem to be completely unaware that most Facebook users really don't care about user privacy that much.
These "oh crap I have to move my stuff, Facebook owns it" reactions baffle me. I can understand a desire for privacy, but using an online service by definition means you're at risk.
Hosting your own services on your own computers and communicating with open distributed protocols would be the most private way to go, though the problem with that is there's basically no money in building a social media system that works that way, so many attempts (Atompub/Atom, XMPP) have mostly remained niches.
They are aware that people complain (they complain to Facebook after-all) but they assume those are people that are exaggerating and won’t actually change their behaviour. By and large, that is also true. They have no metric to measure pent-up resentment, nor can their imagine a possible sanction, other than migration to a new service.
Because that threat is likely, they try to purchase those when they appear.
My take remains that public intervention should be considered. There is no legal framework for that for the moment — therefore Facebook lawyers don’t see the issue; if there were, their lobbyists would be all over it.
I personally don't feel they disrespect privacy and furthermore I know there are others who feel similarly. It's usually those who are outraged (not always the minority) that are the loudest.
For the record, I think they take privacy seriously, however I think allowing an entity to build up that much information on you & your family is inherently risky behavior.
History has shown that laws may target unpopular groups who have done nothing wrong, and well meaning governments can force well meaning companies to divulge information relevant to unjust laws.
It definitely seems a little naive to hand over the keys to your life's data without accepting that you're taking on a fairly large amount of risk with regards to privacy. Even if the party to which you're handing it over doesn't intentionally behave maliciously, you still have to trust that they share your exact opinion on what reasonable use of the data is.
Or they don't care, think they can get away with it.
Probably so.
99.999% of Facebook's BILLION USERS don't have the slightest care in the world for privacy concerns on Facebook.
99.999% of 99.999% figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
Unless they start citing things, 99.999% of all figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
I stopped using Moves a while ago when I noticed it absolutely hammering my battery. It was unfortunate as I used it almost as a journal (easier to remember what I was doing on the day when all that data is available).
The journal feature is the thing I missed the most when jumping back to Fitbit. It had an uncanny laser-like accuracy for figuring out to the minute duration for when I was at a location. I miss that data a lot.
Yep, I'm outta here. At least I can still export my data, unlike what happened / is happening with Gowalla:
http://www.quora.com/Gowalla/Where-did-my-Gowalla-data-go
A few weeks back I started playing with Moves' new export and TileMill, with some cool results:
Loved the app, but I'm hitting the delete account button as we speak.
cmd+f journey
Yes!
"Thank you for supporting us on this journey, and we’re looking forward to our future at Facebook!"
"joins" is quite an interesting word to use for being acquired and answering to new bosses.
Why does everyone have to use PR-Speak these days. "joins Facebook". That sounds like they're happy buddies going together now as equals. Why not simply say "Moves was bought by Facebook". Nothing wrong with that?!
I think this is another example of a popular business practice a few commenters have been pointing out a lot recently: "ignoring the considerable power you wield over other people and expecting them to ignore it too." We saw it with that out of touch ceo [0], as well as both Theresa and Tom Preston-Werner.
In other words, they're using PR-speak because they've started believing it.
The post talks about data not going anywhere. Will the app itself continue to be updated? I recently stopped wearing a fitbit in favor of just using Moves and couldn't be happier. I hope the app continues to live on.
Are you on a 5S? How bad a beating does the battery take?
Not bad at all. Just turn on the setting to "reduce battery usage" and it falls back (almost entirely) to using the M7 chip and reading cached data periodically.
Thanks. I set "reduce battery usage" but my phone doesn't have the M7 so the battery hit is still pretty bad.
I am very dismayed at news that Facebook acquired Moves. That's one less app I will be using on my phone. However I have to stop to think is this just a knee-jerk reaction?
Most of my friends, when I talk to them about how much information is being collected by FB/GOOGLE, just do not care all that much. Responses range from "I got nothing to hide from anybody" to "I think targeted ad is just fine". At that point I don't know what to say. Since in my case I just have a visceral hate toward company who attempt to collect all data about myself. Is it actually that bad?
Yes and no… But ‘no, it doesn’t matter’ isn’t the good option here.
Thing of it as your credit rating (if you live in the US) or you ability to lie to your plumber and say “I’ll just ask another one” when you have a leak, water up the knees and he asks for a month’s salary to fix the issue. Information matters when it allows to measure you willingness to pay for something — it’s basic micro-economics.
You can step in a wine merchant or your car dealer (both classic cases in the economic literature) or with either a t-shirt or a suit and tie; in either case, they’ll offer you all the same options, but unless the labels are true (they are not if they are too high and without dealer-negotiated rebate) the price will adapt and make sure you’ll pay as much as you can.
So… what happens on-line? Well, with the traces of your Facebook and Google logs, airlines can tell if you are really willing to take that flight, and might rake up the prices accordingly. It can come in many ways, depending if they have LinkedIn information (and can tell if it is for business or not) and they are generally far from perfect, but… Imagine that at one point, people notice it can be cheaper when you use the Incognito mode.
That would trigger a reaction: political ones (banning the practice, unlikely in the US; already done for some cases in the EU); one would be to only sell through a mobile application that have your Facebook ID (or your mobile phone, same thing) and don’t let you the option of hiding it. Very rapidly, anyone who refuses to be identified will be refused service — just like you can only pay using credit cards and letting FISA know you bough something big for many things today.
Forced service, cash is King? No problem: just make it more expensive than most non-revealing option, like what happen now if you want to purchase a car sticker-price. You are perfectly welcome to say you have negotiation and don’t want to deal with the slimy sales tactic: they would be happy to oblige.
But imagine that is not jus cars, but anything that is advertised on Facebook now: restaurants, transport, real-estate, games, electronic. Face value crazy high; “social price” lower, but never exactly the same.
You might be fine not having the social value — but if a single entity controls enough information about how much enough people are willing to pay… we will all suffer, except the stock-holders of that application.
For those of you who might be looking to move away from Moves, you could give Breeze a try. It's only available for the iPhone 5S (because of its M7 chip). It was announced last week by Runkeeper: http://blog.runkeeper.com/1547/runkeeper-debuts-new-iphone-a...
I haven't tried it, but I already have a Runkeeper account and I think I'm going to give it a shot.
Breeze is not really a replacement. It's a simple step counter app, it does not differentiate from different activity types, and is much worse on battery than Moves.
Too bad the terms of the deal aren't public, because that would tell us if this is just another talent acquisition, or if Facebook has an interest in the app (or data)...
I've been using the Moves app to add important context to my "quantified self" data on zenobase.com. The Saga app is an alternative in case Moves languishes--at least until they get acquired by someone, too :-)
Are there any open source alternatives? Is anyone interested in building one?
I've been toying around with throwing together an open-source clone for a while now. If you limit it to the 5S, the M7 abstracts away a lot of the hard problems you'd otherwise have to solve manually, and you can eliminate the server component by just having a flat-file Dropbox export (a la Nicholas Felton's Reporter app).
Anyone interested in maybe jamming on something like this should definitely drop me a line.
I rushed to buy the 5S for the M7. I was disappointed with the results. If you look at the offering of M7 apps, they mainly deal with step counting. The actual activity recognition is dismal (stationary, walking, driving, etc.) I had a demo of this working the afternoon the 5S came out. To get really good activity segmentation you need to monitor the accelerometer, not the GPS. This boils down to a signal processing problem, which I have no experience in. Any volunteers to tackle that problem?
Though not OS, Apple's Healthbook might help you out soon.
Aaaand I do not feel comfortable using Moves anymore.
> "the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook"
I very much doubt this will remain the case for long, otherwise why would they bother buying it?
Indeed. And the privacy policy says:
> Sharing data with third parties
> We do not disclose an individual user’s data to third parties unless (1) you have given explicit consent to each such disclosure, (2) we are required to comply with a legal obligation or (3) if our business or assets, or parts of them, are acquired by a third party. [...]
Then goes on:
> Third parties will be bound by applicable data protection legislation and/or this privacy policy concerning the disclosed data.
Well, of course they will be bound by data protection legislation, which makes me feel the whole sentence is disingenuous and meant to give you the warm fuzzies while meaning nothing at all.
Facebook is starting to unbundle their apps, so the standalone commitment may be true. Instagram has remained standalone. They're separating their messaging app into its own app.
I was referring to the data internal sharing, rather than the apps staying individual.
It would be easy to keep it working standalone while still allowing it to automatically integrate itself with facebook (whether you like it or not) if you are logged in to that in the same browser session.
Though I suppose anyone genuinely bothered by that (rather than just sounding off) won't be using facebook at all anyway.
Perhaps they are just trying to leverage people's personal data. See social trends, etc.
Yeah, you brought up a good point. Does "no plans to commingle data with Facebook" mean "your Moves data won't show up on your wall" or does it mean "Facebook Inc will not use Moves data to build your dossier" ?
I think it just means "we haven't yet made the plan of how we will commingle the data with Facebook, the meeting for that is scheduled for next week; once we've made those plans and are ready to implement them, we'll announce it as a shiny new feature."
You are probably right, however other reasons for buying them might be acquiring talent, or having access to technology that is either patented / expensive to develop independently.
I just exported my data via http://moves-app.com/export and deleted my account. Know of any alternatives for Android?
What are the alternatives?
Humanco Inc's Human App
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/human-make-moving-fun-run/id...
http://form-d.findthebest.com/l/25508/Humanco-Inc
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn...
Unfortunately, Humanco requires you to set up an account and store your data on their servers. Moves was great because you could store it all locally. I think the best option is to stick with Moves, and never update it again.
I have used Rove (http://www.roveapp.com), but I preferred Moved after testing it. Now I will be back to Rove.
Any decent Android alternatives? I only installed Moves this morning as well!
I'm definitely a fan of the brief 'About Moves' section they have at the bottom of the page. Too often these acquisition posts offer no details about what the app/company actually does, with the main website either not accessible through any links on the page or just gone completely.
For those looking for a replacement, Pedometer++ is a pretty good alternative (I'm not related to it in any way) https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/pedometer++/id712286167?mt=8
Every breath you take Every move you make Every bond you break Every step you take
I'll be watching you
"Every breath you take" by Sting
Are you guys sure you hate Facebook for privacy reasons and not becuase it is Google's nemesis?, becuase when I see someone complaining for Facebook and is using an Android phone with a GMail account there is something wrong.
I hate Facebook for other reasons than Google. Farmville spam of yore comes to mind. Stupid permission changes constantly is another.
I use iOS by the way. Still have a gmail account but that might not last long. Moving email is a bit harder than deleting an app off my home screen.
Farmville spam depends of your contacts and you can stop get it them easily, farmville is dead anyway, the stupid permission changes also exist in Google, they have changed them as often as Facebook, so, you must hate Google as equal I suppose.
To be honest I nuked Facebook at the height of farmville spam (I don't remember it being filterable at that time but could be wrong). Just couldn't care about Facebook anymore so deleted the account. So if its better now great, but I just have a finite amount of time in life to deal with computers and Facebook was becoming too big of a timesink.
Theres a reason I'm looking to replace gmail after being a "beta" invitee from ages ago. But its a long term project as I have to migrate both to new email account and also update countless logins to use it. Pretty much on the back burner for the moment.
If you don't care about Facebook anymore (for good or bad), why would you care then if they adquired Move? sounds illogical to me.
Its more I'd rather not give them any more of my data. Illogical sure, but thats just how I feel about things. I'm not going to be able to convince anyone of the rationality of it I'm sure.
what did Moves do? never heard of them before today.
It's a step counter, a bit like 'map my walk/run' which counts how many steps you walked in a day and mapped out a rough route you took
is it like argus? https://www.azumio.com/argus
Last week: Dropbox
This week: Moves
Next week: Gmail... oh wait.
sigh
Nobody bought Dropbox.. In fact Dropbox purchased Loom last week. I haven't seen news about Facebook buying anyone since Oculus.
They haven't been acquired but I think quite a few people were upset at the news Dropbox had decided to appoint Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, to the company's board of directors.
Which was more likely a PR stunt for an upcoming IPO, but I digress.
I didn't think anyone actually used this app. Anyone know how many active users they had?
I tried to use it, but it killed my battery and couldn't catch things that my Nike Fuelband could, since I don't take my phone to the gym, to run, etc.
Still, good on them for getting a piece of the pie.
I fail to understand why companies keep acquiring mobile app businesses, but what do I know.
They had lots of active users, reported numbers are in the ballpark. Lots of users loved it, despite the battery problem. I use it. My main use case is not the steps/activity tracking, but the automatic daily log and especially location tracking. Once a month I combine Moves and git logs and they give very good visibility to my daily work behavior. I've even used them even to make accurate hour reporting for some customers.
The battery consumption isn't a problem if I don't move around the city all day long, but if I do, I need a mobile battery charger.
Having worked with similar apps before, I can guarantee that the battery problem is hard to solve well, I know that Moves team did the best they could and their solution is world class.
I used it every day for just over a year. It didn't seem to be to big a drain battery-wise (I charge my phone every day anyway, so it lasted "long enough"). It's a very nicely designed app in that it doesn't try to do too much and what it does do, it does well.
I exported all my data and closed my account following this news as I feel I already give Facebook enough data by simply having a Facebook account.
Thankfully the exported data is in multiple formats and looks to be very complete. Hopefully I'll be able to do something with it someday.
I used it for a few weeks until I had a good sense of my average daily activity. After that I turned it off due to the battery drain as well. It wasn't a horrendous drag on battery life, but enough that it wasn't worth using when daily stats didn't change much.
I've used it for about 6 months and love it. The UI is really good and battery life is fine for me (but I'm using a 5S with the M7 chip which helps quite a bit).
Their announcement says 4 million downloads, so some fraction of that as daily actives.
>> For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.
I don't believe this for one second. Glad I have my Withings Pulse now so I can drop the Moves app.
Based on what?