Facebook is no stranger to "Is this in my terms of service?" experiments, like when they performed a psychology experiment on unsuspecting users. But a report from The Information indicates they didn't quite learn their lesson. In order to test the limits of how much their user base would put up with constant app crashes, the company intentionally crashed the app multiple times.
Partly, the move is over a contentious relationship Facebook has with Google. The search engine giant alleges that the social networking site deployed a series of apps within the app over Google's terms of service for the Google Play store. Facebook wanted a contingency plan in case the app was taken off of Google Play. Instead, the app would come preloaded on Android phones through deals between Facebook and phone manufacturers like Samsung.
Most of the article from The Information is about the bickering between Facebook and Google, and the information about the experiment is buried near the end. Amir Efrati writes:
Facebook has tested the loyalty and patience of Android users by secretly introducing artificial errors that would automatically crash the app for hours at a time, says one person familiar with the one-time experiment. The purpose of the test, which happened several years ago, was to see at what threshold would a person ditch the Facebook app altogether. The company wasn't able to reach the threshold. "People never stopped coming back," this person says.
Efrati also notes that the company temporarily took the app out of the Google Play store in some regions to test audience reaction, then providing a link to those users on how to install the app through a backdoor in the phones. There were some hiccups along the way, but the experiments results weren't disastrous, according to an anonymous interviewee for the story.
So yeah, Android users. There's why your Facebook app crashed.
Source: The Information
