Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules
npr.org
npr.org
That's a very healthy attitude towards Apple's claims. They developed all these APIs that allow app makers to spy on their users, and then blame the app makers for spying.
For example, why does any app need to know which other apps I have installed, and how long I use them? This permission should very sparingly pass the review process, and only for apps in specific categories.
- There was never any API for a third party app on iOS to get the time spent in another app. The only workaround I saw to this was an app that asked you to screenshot your app usage screen, and it was able to process those screenshots in an automated way (can't find the link).
- There is an API to open URLs between apps, so that one app can link to another app. When developers realized that they could check whether or not a given URL was openable to check if an app is installed, they started abusing this API to check every app on the system. Apple cracked down on the API in iOS 9 and made it so that all apps declare which other apps they can check, and App Review decides if they have a legitimate use: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio...
This should be done the same as with location and microphone access... ie. "ask the user". "Flashlight 2000 DX app wants to access list of apps installed - allow once, allow always, deny now, deny always". Facebook wants to track 50 different things? Well.. ask the user 50 different times and try to explain why you want access to their call history and calendar data (adding calendar entries could also be a write-only option, with optional unique ids to change/remove entries).... and give your UX team a headache. Also, "deny" should be the "bolded" default. Maybe even give the user a list of unchecked permission the app wants, with explanations why it needs them, and have the user check the ones they want to give to the app (default state is unchecked (deny)).
Also granularity is key... giving location access for bluetooth connections, giving "manage calls" access to stop playing music when you get a call, etc. is just stupid.
What are you referring to? As far as I know, one app can't query the list and usage time of other installed apps on iOS. This stackoverflow question[1] seems to confirm this. But please enlighten me if I'm misunderstanding what you're referring to.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51634436/how-to-get-a-li...
What are you talking about?
They didn’t develop any such APIs, and have been progressively closing up anything that can be exploited that was left over from Mac OS.
Also, they aren’t blaming anyone for using anything they have built.
They are just asking users to consent to apps using it.
Why is that a problem?
People want apps to be able to do things and those things can often allow tracking in addition to being useful to the user. There is pretty much one API Apple devised specifically for tracking users and this very issue is Apple attempting to shut down.
Clarification: Just to be clear, Apple isn’t shutting down the API entirely, they are changing it from opt-out to opt-in.
Since I can't edit my original comment, I chose to reply to it instead of replying to everyone who corrected me. Yes, there's no API to directly query installed apps and usage on iOS. I think I got the wrong impression from years ago, when the function canOpenURL() could be abused to detect which apps were installed[0]. Thank you all for the corrections.
0. https://useyourloaf.com/blog/querying-url-schemes-with-canop...
It helps collect data that can be used to help detect malicious users of services.
They don't give you the ability to block them.
and of course, you can't find out what is going in and out of your phone over the network, and you definitely can't firewall it. ("content blockers" are nerfed)
So it's hard to come to a conclusion that Apple hates ads. It's easier to say that Apple dislikes advertiser networks, since their own attempt at a generic network (iAds) failed miserably. It's not even clear to me that blocking tracking is going to kill ads as a revenue stream, all it will do is make ads more expensive because they're slightly less targeted on iOS?
Also, Apple runs their own seemingly successful ad market within the App Store app — something I'm reminded of each time I search for an app and see a competitor's app I don't want at the top of my search results, filling my screen with the new design. So it's hard to say that Apple does this for the best user experience. Showing extra popups isn't great UX. And Apple likes free apps, it makes their phone and platform more valuable, so they can charge more for the hardware knowing folks can get great apps inexpensively or free.
While I'm in favour of Apple losing its complete monopoly over App Stores and apps that compete with its own, I actually am in favour of Apple enforcing these policies on apps from its own App Store and platform. And while I would say that third-party stores could have different stances on permissions, the idea that a third-party app store could prevent a popup asking to share a phone's identifier, for example, is frankly a security bypass. The same is true if apps want to communicate with other apps without the operating system knowing.
Personally, I'd love it if Apple went a step farther and used the network layer and code signing to identify which apps actively use which trackers and tracking networks the same way they currently identify apps that use the microphone and camera. It'd be fascinating to see an operating system feature that says 50% of my network traffic in Application X was telemetry being sent to Facebook, for example.
Even if Apple’s motives are somehow nefarious, Facebook is being scummy in the first place, so it’s a fair move for Apple to take advantage of that, IMO.
This is definitely good for privacy in the short term, but long term will depend on if Apple decides to monetize this data themselves.
SB's absolutely need a platform to compete, but I'm absolutely incredulous that FB is that platform, much less Google or any other like company.
I am against Facebook, but they are not lying at all. Facebook’s walled garden offers a robust advertising platform for small businesses that actually evens the field.
I do programmatic advertising on top of the open web, and your experience is correct there, but FB is different.
What tools or platforms for advertising are a better fit for small business in your mind?
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
I'm definitely not disagreeing "small business" has been turned into a propaganda term. That process was helped by the silly tax classification of what's a "small business". A lot of marketing dollars go into making people think the mom and pop florist when they hear the term and not the hedge fund.
My understanding is that Facebook does not sell this data, but rather lets advertisers create hyper-targeted ads, which are only possible because of this data.
Edit: Certainly not trying to defend Facebook here (in the slightest). Just trying to correct an inaccuracy in the article.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/122...
You certainly say they exploit it on behalf of their customers, but we need to maintain the distinction between this, and the companies that actually do sell the data they collect, because once sold, you can never trace who is using the data, whereas with Facebook and Google’s model, you can.
It’s also worth pointing out that it’s not in Facebook’s interest to sell the data. If they did, they would lose their advantage quite quickly.
Facebook collect data to sell targetted adspace, they do not sell data. This is a plain fact.
Facebook, if you know any small business that have a specific region of operation (e.g. one city) derive significant benefit and growth from Facebook's targeted advertising that they just were not seeing before.
Of course, if anyone logs in and fetches their data from facebook as a download and go through it, it is really rather unbelievable how much data there is beyond geographical data. Some of it pretty scary.
What intrigues me further, after i tried to do the same with google, i don't believe google are nearly as open to how much data they hold on a person. There doesn't seem to be any takeaway service that indicates the same depth of information. But of course we know for a fact they do hold some of it.
Anyway, the long and short of it is advertising is all we have to support enormous social networks and I feel some level of personalised data provides mutual benefit. It should of course all be opt in with no exceptions.
I'm actually conceptualising a service/product around this concept right now.
In fact, if they "sell" their user data, anti-trust regulators will be very happy; they want big techs to share user data to its competitors but the big techs are using user privacy and security as their excuses to rule out new competitions in the industry. Apple took the lead and other big techs are now following.
But when you parse out what it means you are left with something more accurately stated as: "<Company> will not sell its proprietary assets."
It sort of like the operator of a hotel saying "I don't sell rooms".
Even if they don't, Facebook is not the only app in the world. Tracking being disabled by default is a good thing, no matter what Facebook does with it.
I'd phrase it more along the lines of Facebook indirectly selling the data as hypertargeted ads, while keeping control of the data themselves.
We only sell the finest artisanal sausages rendered from gently-euthanised young canines.
Selling the actual data and selling access to use the data is a meaningless distinction.
Money changes hands. The data is used.
Perhaps we should say "renting" the data. Just the way a hotel rents you a room, but you use it on the hotel's premises.
(I'm surprised a bit, i thought phones offer app isolation).
The only things that comes to mind is to correlate device ids from different apps if the apps use the same analytics/advertising networks.
Pls enlighten me...
This, and also anything that uses "Sign in with Facebook". (That's one of several reasons I have for never using anything that requires signing in with Facebook or Google; if I can't create a username or enter an email address, I generally don't want to use it.)
They can tie all of this data neatly together using an identifier which Apple has to date provided as an opt-out service. Apple is now changing this to opt-in, so all these developers who have included APIs which are sneaking data out to the Google and Facebook will need to include a pop-up to get permissions to tie their data to the rest of Google and Facebook’s acquired knowledge about you.
If it's not obvious, these Facebook libraries are trojan malware, full stop. And, even though iOS apps are sandboxed, if 50% of a user's apps have the same Facebook library baked into them, it's not hard for Facebook to link all that data together to determine usage patterns across apps.
The reason why they're fighting with Apple now is that it used to be much easier for Facebook to obtain a device-unique identifier that each app could forward along to Facebook, giving them device-level usage data. Apple now sees the privacy flaws in device-unique ids, and has either started or plans to start rotating those device ids and making them unique at the app-level only, which reduces the resolution of its tracking from the device level to the network level.
A long time ago, device IDs were available to apps. But that changed because those are typically immutable and the user has no control on revealing a different one to apps. So the makers of the operating systems brought a new identifier (IDFA in Apple’s OSes) that can be controlled through settings. Even before the forthcoming iOS update, you could just turn off cross app tracking completely by turning on Settings->Privacy->Advertising->Limit Ad Tracking in previous versions. But this was off by default, meaning tracking was allowed unless disabled by the user. Now it’s an explicit prompt when an app asks for the IDFA. The IDFA can be used to uniquely identify and connect a user across apps.
Is this more due to FB dragnet network analytics that they can put enough data together that it doesn't matter if you isolate the app?
Exactly this.
This is probaly in the “/tmp” or similar directory and probably useful for the system as a whole to be readable (or probably /dev or /proc). It is not a big deal unless you are facebook and, for instance, want to know if your user watches foxnews or has the cnn app or whatever.
AFAIK just doing “ps” gives you a LOT of info on any unix env.
I know apple probably has deals with malicious governments regarding data access, but at least they are standing up to FB and exposing their vulnerable points where it hurts badly, Zuckerberg has no clothes.
How do I feel now? I absolutely love this ecosystem. I don't fear OS updates like I used to with Android. I don't fear my device will be stranded without updates. The UI is clean. The 11 is as fast today as when I got it. It seamlessly works the watch and my Bose headphones. BT was always finicky with the Android phones I had.
And there's the privacy angle.
I waited a long time for a new small iPhone and eventually got to the point where I had to buy a new phone, because my SE lasted about 15 minutes & I needed to carry around battery packs just to use it.
It's a reason I keep thinking about replacing my current phone with a used iPhone X, though the 12 mini would be nicer for the screen size.
https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/10/15/apple-to...
And so many others. Apple phone users weren't allowed by Apple to have Spotify as their default music program until recently.
Even my SSO works well enough. Some notifications rely on Google Play Services though, but I find I don't really miss those apps anyway.
I can't find the equivalent on iOS. All my searches lead to ad blockers using Safari's content blocking, but the VPN-style ad blockers appear to violate Apple's terms, and so aren't in the app store. I've also seen recommendations to use Pi hole on my network, which is fine until I leave the house.
If anyone has recommendations for system-wide VPN/DNS-based blockers for iOS, please share. That's the last real thing keeping me on Android.
Having to jailbreak to side-load apps that aren't on an approved storefront is not acceptable.
Being born a male a few decades ago
I suspect it’s as stupid as ranking all members based on some dumb algorithm like “25 year olds like females, this is a female” and just shoveling garbage.
Years ago Facebook just kept recommending people I hated over and over. I wish they would have a mode of “you’re good, we can’t think of anyone else you like.”
It’s like going into a store and the salesperson says “this is perfect for you” and they are just showing you every item in their store.
Apple is positioning itself as The Privacy Company today, but they've benefited immensely from the attention economy over the last 15 years.
They would not have sold as many millions of iPhones, iPods (heck, even Macbooks) in the last decade, if Instagram & Facebook weren't there to suck people in to their platform (clearly, the same is true for Android). Now that the iDevices are a self-sustaining status symbol with mass adoption and institutionally-ingrained utility outside of social media, Apple no longer needs to trade user privacy to build their moat, and they can pretend that they've been on the user's side all along.
Don't get me wrong, Apple's motions here are very good. But the entire mobile computing industry was bootstrapped with addiction. Facebook and its ilk might have been the perpetrators, but they were not the only beneficiaries.
The truth is that all the huge advertising revenue is just a plus for the investors, the apps would have been created anyways, and then network effects take care of the content.
I really don’t see the logic in this.
It’s pretty obvious these devices were useful for many things - messaging and the web would have been enough to guarantee growth.
I think you have the causality the wrong way round.
People only use Facebook so much because the iPhone put it in their pocket rather than on their desk.
Isn't it opt-in by using their platform? Or is your argument that targeted ads are not common knowledge to Facebook users? I likely wouldn't use Facebook or Google etc. if I had to pay cash; fine with paying with personal data; but for people who aren't fine with that, they shouldn't use it.
I realize that any attempt to discuss this is inviting downvotes, but I just ask for a quick comment if you do choose to downvote. I try to be very open minded.
The iPhone update doesn't even immediately forbid tracking, it just requests apps to ask for permission. That simple change pushed Facebook to buy newspaper, radio and TV ads to try to get people to reject the update. Think about it: they feel threatened by user awareness.
The dialog pops up and you give your consent for the FB app to track whatever it wants, because you're fine with that.
Other users similarly are allowed to make their own choice as to whether they accept that trade off.
I don't think this is an entirely fair argument unless it is exceedingly clear what you are opting in to. The fact that FB (and others) are so resistant to being more transparent about this is in itself informative.
Separately, opt in implies informed consent. Most users have no clue what data Facebook is capturing. It's not informed.
Would love to see some evidence of that. That's quite an accusation and it should be taken seriously.
I still haven't heard anything about a privacy consent screen regarding the default Google search box.
Can't fix the whole world all at once, but Apple is not uncompromising in their privacy stance by any means.
Now if Apple exempted Google from Adblock and cross site cookies that would be a different story.
A Google search on an iPhone and a Google search on an android produces very different data gathered by Google.
I applaud the fight in that it hopefully makes Facebook weaker but I'm not cheering for Apple having this power either. I'd rather wish for their greed to cause these two to destroy each other.
Sadly there is some truth to that. In a better world it would be regarded as the absolute, bare minimum.
Facebook would be giving away money if they ever actually sold your data. As everyone here knows, they use that data to target the ads that they sell.
Do journalists phrase it this way out of ignorance, or is it an intentional lie to make Facebook look even worse than it is?
I don't expect the usual reader to understand how that data is commoditized inside Facebook to serve better ads. Do you remember how a US Senator had a hard time understanding how ads allowed Facebook to remain free? People will not grasp without significant effort the ads economy and no journalist wants to take on that every time they write about tracking.
It's a tough situation. I'm not satisfied with how they do it, but I understand it's a limitation related to the medium and target audience.
I mean, it was always kinda obvious, but seeing them confirm it out right is interesting, to say the least.
E.g. if anti-vaxxers started pushing a campaign saying "doctors want to stab your arms with needles", I'd expect a similar pushback from the medical community about the perception-coloring of this phrasing (even if it's technically true). In both cases, it seems like the argument is more of "Yes people can opt in to that, but the opt-in process shouldn't bias you against opting in"
Whether that's a fair argument or not, I'll leave to society.
Is this better?
"This owners of this app are looking to gather as much information about you as possible so they can use it as leverage against you. They will sell that information to political agents who will use your demographics against you. There will be advertisers who know when you are having your period, when you are pregnant, and that you've searched for penis enhancing tools. While they probably won't share this information around, they will let advertisers buy adverts discretely targeting your race, gender, and sexual preferences."
Is that a better message?
I think Apple is being quite generous here myself. I'd have the dialog be bright red with a toxic logo on the yes button.
I’ve been successful enough to train my family to use 1Password[4], calendar their school works, etc. I’m not against paying for the things that my family and I get happiness from, such as YouTube Premium, Zoom, and the like.
I stopped using Facebook 5+ years back but maintained my account just so I can help families, friends who will usually ask me to fix their page for their tiny businesses, find or set up something new.
When Mark Zuckerberg said something to the effect of -- we do algorithms to help and serve people get the right ads; my thoughts were, “Wrong Question. Why the f*k would someone wants ads in the first place?”
But then, I realized that my wife likes the ads that come up on her Facebook, Instagram accounts. That is where she “discovers” all the awesome things she likes. So does my daughter. She loves the ads about Roblox, Minecraft, and the like. She had warned me to stop messing with her computers and trying to make them “behave like yours!”
The real world is an entirely different place where most people barely know anything of the underlying technology beyond the thin veil of interfaces that they use. Facebook and many others take advantage of that. If I'm choosing between the devils, I'd choose the lesser one.
This kind of stuff happens a lot. Almost every (Android) app I've downloaded in the past two years refuses to run if I don't allow it to see my location. Why does an HP photo printer app need my location? Answer: It doesn't. So now I have to install a GPS spoofer app just to print a photo.
The way to fix this nonsense permanently is to give the user a single dashboard that lets him/her determine for every app whether it can see true or random data when it tries to snoop. That way the FB app cannot tell when it's being denied something it wants, and thus it cannot arbitrarily decide not to work for that reason.
It's critically important that by default apps should not be allowed to know when they are being denied access to private data.
"This discouragement, this is going to have a real impact on the Internet as we know it, which is increasingly going to move to a paid experience, which again, benefits Apple's bottom line..."
The gist of the argument being that, regardless of what you think about Facebook, hyper-targeted "lookalike audience" models to target ads against actually do level the playing field for small businesses who do not the resources to produce large scale ad campaigns. Highly recommended reading.
I think transparency and allowing people to make the choice is fair. I don't suspect a lot of people give the "free" aspect much thought, and I'm glad this is getting the news out there.
I really wish companies would give you the option to pay to not be tracked, or exchange your information for tracked ads. I don't love that even though I subscribe to some online publication they still have ads.
Jaron Lanier a good set of videos on the problem and has a proposal to get you paid for your information (videos).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-...
So essentially, people here tend to agree in principle with Apple protecting user privacy and think Facebook is overbearing and infringing on user privacy, but think Apple should be legally stripped of any tools to actually protect users' privacy, because muh sideloading is more important than people's privacy.
Just bury a toggle deep in settings somewhere.
If you are starting a company with a very specific market, you might pay for your first customers more.
Second may have some ground. But does seem shallow once you consider that in order to support small business you are opting to take away privacy controls from individuals. What ethical model favors the ability of small sized businesses to spend less on marketing over individual's right to privacy?
This is what the data sharing is about. If you’re a regular user a Facebook that ad from the Charleston SC burger joint will still reach you. They don’t share that data with anyone else.
It’s the random game or app you install that will no longer push their data to Facebook.
Edit. Fixed typo.
That's all they are doing. They aren't preventing companies from tracking users in this way. They are just requiring them to get permission.
Says a lot about Facebook's business model that this is a cause for "all-out war," and that they'd rather try to stop the feature than convince their users to enable it. I guess they know that at the end of they day if they can't do this behind their users' backs, they probably aren't going to be able to do it at all.
The burger restaurant clip in the audio...couldn’t they still target users just based on interests? And not actually linking those interests to a specific person?
And on the other hand, I don’t hear much from Google.
I can't get that article to load, so I'm hoping they address how she knows that 90% of her business comes from facebook, and how hyper targeted ads are more effective than just geo-located tags.
It seems like ads for her business would be good for users within 'x' number of miles/blocks/whatever of her business, and not necessarily based on their interests, correct?
I think Apple is smart enough to know how to spin it if Facebook or Google left the App Store because of privacy issues. Some users would be annoyed at Apple, sure, but I would bet many users would see it as a Facebook/Google problem. I didn't hear people blame Apple for requiring listing what data is being collected when Google started not updating their apps and warnings started appearing.
This isn't about privacy or user data, it's a disagreement over how revenue is shared.
So rather than this sort of wording from the article: centers on the iPhone data of millions of people and whether companies should be able to track
We be read something like this: Facebook and Google go to war with Apple over revenue sharing agreement.
That is the price Apple charges for providing payment-related services on its platform. It is not a tax.
There is no opt out, and price is a function of earnings rather than value added.
This is definitely a true statement. The vast majority of small businesses who advertise on FB will be hurt by this change. The best estimate to date is a 20-30% drop in marketing efficiency due to worse targeting capabilities. Some of these small businesses will inevitably go out of business due to this change (for better or worse).
In the long term, I think Facebook is the biggest loser in this scenario, not the small businesses.
I worked at a small hardware store as a kid and we got all our business from word of mouth. IDK what the best argument here is, so I suppose I'm just admitting my feelings with this comment.
I don't think I've ever seen a source for this. Could you post one, ideally one which is not subject to conflicts of interest (e.g. funded by the advertising industry)?
What's even more interesting is that I don't think many considered those as threats 10 years ago.
Facebook's behavior becomes more and more disgusting with their continued push against privacy and transparency. although I think a 30% cut by apple in app store is too much I prefer apples way of building something users actually want to buy.
There is 0 drawback for users to ask for their consent before tracking them and sharing that data with who knows whom.
I'm only somewhat kidding. I imagine a flood of super cheap, but decent spec Androids would be pretty disruptive, despite sending everything to the FB mother ship.
Next order of business is removing the Apple's marketplace monopolisation; the App Store should not be the only marketplace available.
Wouldn't Facebook then simply stop distributing it's app through the Apple App Store and then create it's own app store that doesn't have any of the anti-tracking restrictions?
Cons: small retail sellers will find it hard to advertise and won't be able to compete with big ad spenders that use more wholesale ad strategies
I wonder how much of an issue this is in the real world, i.e. outside of the valley or where ever people change their buying behavior based on targeted advertising. I buy peanut butter when I need peanut butter and not based on any kind of advertising. I'm running low on socks, I'll go buy socks wherever I bought socks last time. Why would I buy something just because an algorithm shows it to me, that idea is so weird to me. I wonder if I'm the exception or if I'm missing something.
The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this statement! Nothing comes from the new consent requirements that directly stop you from keeping your app free. Can't do it because commercially not viable? Well then, how much are users paying you right now?
Good on Apple. I fear if it was any other company Facebook would be able to persuade them to change.
Hash up the tracking data in the app, send it back to the app's servers, send it to whoever you like? Same is happening with browsers and 3rd party cookies.
There appears to be a point of diminished returns.
Overall though, it’s amazing Facebook/Google have made “targeted ads” a thing.
I've never interacted with anything that should bring those up and I've never clicked on that sort of suggestion. The only reason I can think they'd show me them is my demographic, 30 something male. I haven't clicked on anything on FB or elsewhere on the web that should be getting me random foreign women as friend suggestions.
Facebook is terrible quality and has no idea what it's doing.
It could also be _you_ are the target for keep these ladies engaged. Who knows how many creepy psychological-mechanisms are behind their algorithms.
And I think most users will see no problem with this.
If I value the service enough, I'll pay for it. That Apple gets 30% is another discussion and as a user, not my problem.
If I don't value the service that much, I now get to be informed and can decide whether I value using it more than my privacy. Facebook's all out propaganda campaign shows which choice they think most users will make in this instance.
Now imagine they charge $1 monthly for their app subscription. Hell, even a couple of cents would be an improvement. Or even better: they charge a one-time payment to buy the app.
I had to change some of my Business Manager settings this week in preparation for the iOS changes before my new ads would run. They specifically mentioned "Aggregated Event Measurement" for anybody who wants to look into it.
Nice.
Even the most cursory investigation will reveal that Facebook does not sell this data as it is too valuable, they just rent out access to your eyeballs.
I believe this dialog does control access to apple's advertiser-id (IDFA), so apple did implement some technical measures. Unfortunately that's not the only way for an app to track a user, so giving the impression that Apple enforces this denial would be misleading. People already blame Apple for apps lying on their privacy labels.
However, when phrased like this, it does not JUST represent the access to the IDFA, it is a direct request from the user to not track you in any OTHER way either. And yes, the app can ignore that, but then Apple is free to deny it access to the App Store.
Also, I think markets have changed so that those companies who have great products don't need to advertise at all. Those companies who have the worst products will spend most on advertising. So, when I see an ad for an product, I know that it's likely to be a bad product.
Re: Indian full newspaper AD about Whatsapp privacy.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90593913/whatsapp-facebook-priva...
Even the Facebook app itself could refuse to work unless tracking is turned on.
It's still a positive change overall, and still affects Facebook but it appears to me the effect will be minor, even temporary.
I'd happily pay five bucks once to never be tracked on some dumb app, and that pretty much is the Apple demographic at this point.
While two titans of Silicon Valley are fighting for control over our data my question is how we protect our data from both of them.
FB is a product designers nightmare. Its a horrible product trying to force its way into every aspect of your life to slurp cash from the massive stupidity of humans.
Apple seems to be doing nothing legally wrong. So, I'm guessing FB is trying to sway public opinion. But, does the public really care that much about the health of small businesses who advertise on Facebook?
This is most stupidest hill to die on for a business. I am continuously amazed at how shortsighted Zuckerbeg is.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that if your business relies on unethical practices, they're the problem - not those who pursue privacy. If your business relied on breaking into people's homes and reading through their personal file cabinet, it wouldn't even be a question whether or not that business should exist. Taking people's digital data without consent is okay though? Plenty of small and large businesses thrived just fine before Facebook. Sorry/not sorry that not everyone buys into surveillance capitalism.
1) Try to destroy all ad platforms 2) Build their own ad platform
Big company behavior is so predictable... oh humans
AFAIK, Google does this on its apps. Whenever you install a new Google app - you're asked if Google can "use your data to improve your experience". If you say no, you're almost not tracked all.
However, AFAIK, the majority of users actually do agree to this.
Forcing all other apps to do the same doesn't hurt Google much, but it could crush their competition.
That actually does make some sense, I do enjoy this infighting between Big Tech, since the user will ultimately benefit by seeing each companies true colors (and that includes the "Cult" Inc., not just Facebook)
The insanity of the modern web.
I don't understand why iOS Location perms wouldn't be better for targeting ads than full-tracking across apps and sites?
Don't get me wrong. The Apple Tax has potential to get out of control. But FB needs to present better arguments than SMBs who can already geo target ads using basic tools.
It's disgusting what some apps do to slurp off personal information, that they are only able to get away with because users don't understand whats at stake.
I’m boycotting all or nothing now that it’s been made better for photos.
Whether Apple will have the courage to enforce them is another matter. We've already seen evidence that their new "privacy nutrition labels" are sometimes inaccurate with no consequences for the app developers.
AAPL vs FB vs GOOG?
I'd like to see that!
Every measure that weakens platforms like FB is to be welcomed.
Apple is big enough to confront FB and harm them. That alone makes Apple even more valuable in my eyes and makes me keep buying their products although I dislike their walled-garden-approach and their philosophy that is against open systems.
Edit:
A couple of years ago my impression was that FB is so big that it‘s futile to fight them. Recently more and more people seem to realize how harmful these kind of platforms are, and it seems there is hope in confronting them.
I don't think the "threat" is the obvious one... Nobody trusts Facebook -- many, if not most, people honestly believe they listen to their conversations already. The real message is how emotional and immature the leadership is to a perceived slight.
A message that said "Cigarettes will kill you" didn't stop smokers, and some label won't stop Facebook users or meaningfully impact Facebook. Hell, when Microsoft faced anti-trust breakup, the company didn't sit and whine. They fought the threat and sold billions of dollars of software and solutions to their antagonist.
They see it as the beginning of a slippery slope. And I hope they're right!
The concept of social media and living our lives on the internet is new, in the scale of things. The last ~10 years have been like the period of time where the sun goes in but the thermostat hasn't noticed yet. Now people have decided they don't like being cold (having their data harvested) and are pushing back.
Do I qualify as too much alarmist when I'm horrified from seeing doctors and lawyers happily exchanging photos of clients sensitive documents using Whatsapp? (read: forgetting them in their phone gallery, ready to be exfiltrated by any malicious software or repair technician). The sad part is that people is slowly adapting to not give a damn about their and others privacy because today's electronic gadgets and services are designed in a way so they're almost unusable by privacy conscious users.
Nothing existential about it at all. It's an actual threat to Facebook's business model. And I'm OK with that.
(It's debatable whether or not Google is any better. At least they're a lot less overt about their contempt for user privacy and data sovereignty.)
Buh bye facebook. May you rot in hell.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I hate FB like the next guy, but I don't like the idea of Apple playing government.
Now, current situation is also not good, with the amount of tracking/ers not only affecting privacy, but also the look, speed and size of the web pages in a very bad way.
Also no advertising on the web at all, as much as people say they would want it, I think they would even less want the effect of no advertising at all. So many services would be not be feasible, and everything else would be pay per month to access kind of thing. And you can only pay so much.
There should be a middle ground. But me personally would rather prefer _some_ (where that amount is less than today) targeted advertising to the alternatives. Even though I almost never click on ads, on any platform.
In the long run this will be a net loss for the Apple customers whose experiences will likely suffer compared to Android and other players. Already in my subjective opinion Android on Pixel phones provides a much richer and engaging environment than iOS and the difference will only become even more pronounced.
Now it's a race. Will Apple superior hardware and privacy focus draw the majority of users before Google and others deliver clearly better software experiences, or whether the difference in software smarts will cause users to gravitate away from the walled garden of iOS and towards more permissive ecosystems.
That seems off to me. Apple isn't crippling anything, they're giving their users the choice of opting in/out of tracking. If, as you say, choosing not being tracked makes the users' experiences so bad, they can simply opt-in and all will be good again. What am I missing?