Apple's new iPhone operating system will decimate part of Facebook's business | Hacker News Reader

Apple's new iPhone operating system will decimate part of Facebook's business

businessinsider.com

> Apple is making it harder for companies to track people's data across apps — and Facebook says it could have devastating effects on part of its business.

Good. Any business that relies on tracking people without their explicit opt-in consent deserves to be destroyed.

I wonder how many people are going to be shocked at the invasiveness of Facebook that will only come to light as Apple (and others?) start to block things that Facebook does.

More shocking to me is how many people know and don't care.

Most people will see a pop up on their phone and click OK without reading it so they can get to Facebook, just as they do with every other little box for an updated TOS, European Cookie Law notifications, etc.

What blows my mind is that all of these capabilities and extensions were happily built in, like "oh of COURSE there's a good reason for any random app to know all this stuff", and they're shocked, SHOCKED to see it being abused.

People don't know because they don't have the knowledge to know. They further don't know just how deeply people can analyze the data. Those who dismiss it usually do because they don't understand the depth. They'll think "oh, why do I care if Google or Facebook knows I went to the pet store today", when in reality, these systems could give a mini-biography and psychoanalysis of you. These are complicated systems that have been intentionally covered up through marketing and lobbying and other deceptive means.

People have additionally been hoodwinked by these companies saying "hey, we're providing you a service for free" when it's actually the other way around. This is where a capable government is supposed to step in and say, no, you can't just leech off citizens' personal data for free and without actual consent. However, the U.S. government is not capable and at the same time wants access to the same data that's being collected, so it hasn't done anything about it.

Two previous discussions of this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284613

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24284046

If only we knew of other instances of large companies making platforms that were massively abused in bad faith so we could better understand this shocking black swan event. Oh. Wait.

Facebook just happen to be on the other end this time: sometimes you’re the pigeon, sometimes you’re the statue.

I think Facebook could stand to be reduced by 1/10th.

Facebook destroyed by new iPhone operating system

Finally, some great news about Apple!

While this presents Facebook as losing from this change, remember it is Facebooks customers who rely on their cost effective advertising campaigns to run their business.

Commerce was a thing before Facebook. It will be a thing after.

This makes me so happy. As someone who works in the advertising sector, I'm happy to hear the bells tolling for the creepy tracking companies.

I'm not sure if WhatsApp's chat data is accessed by FB too. I thought it was impossible after they implemented end-to-end encryption. A friend of mine recently bought a mattress and talked about it with other friends in a WhatsApp chat. One of those guys didn't even look up the mattress anyone on the web but still got an ad for it on FB in a few hours. Could be just a coincidence. All of them are on Android.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com