[meta] Slightly paranoid

You know how they say "If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold."

I know that Google does some crazy stuff like scavenger-hunt-type apps that help them map pedestrian routes for Maps, and cover sites of interests with user photos. I'm fine with that; I know what it's used for.

Rando certainly is supposed to return profits somehow, someday, and I could think of various ways to do so based on location data and concepts similar to Google's.

But here's the thing: What if the idea behind the circular image format isn't just an aesthetic one (I admit it works in terms of making the users find new ways to take pictures), but they're not actually blocking out about 60% of the camera's field of view when processing the photos? Is there any way to find out whether the photos that are transferred to to their servers are cropped in advance, or if they possibly get to see (and save) the full frames? Because that would be a really sneaky way to trick users into revealing much more than they're probably willing to share, complete with location info.

Just wondering.