How Facebook tracks you on Android [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#211

Post by kowdermeister » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 11:21 AM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #175

icelancer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty frustrating. The web is infinitely better than the app-based nonsense we have. Desktops are better than mobile devices by orders of magnitude when it comes to productive tasks. It'll shift back over time. Mobile is not going away but there will be a resurgence of desktop usage in the form of the mobile devices being hooked up to dumb terminals or something of the sort, and privacy/usability initiatives wi…

The web platform is complete garbage. It's extremely restrictive, outdated, and slow. It has fantastic benefits, particularly in the brief usage long tail category, but it's not an app platform. Stop trying to use it as something it just isn't. There's plenty of room here for both native and web.

This is just wrong, the web is an app platform. It's even more obvious now with WebAssembly support.

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#212

Post by etphonehome » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #34

nly wrote: post #8

We're spoiled in the desktop browser by being able to clear history, cookies, local storage etc, or use a private browser session. There's also the importance of the "same origin policy". The Android platform API should simply never allow apps to obtain global system identifiers (serial numbers, "advertising IDs", MACs, Wifi network info, EMEIs etc) in the first place. Perhaps even going as far as not providing a sha…

> The Android platform API should simply never allow apps to obtain global system identifiers When the revenue stream of the creator of Android fundamentally depends on being able to tie devices to identity and behaviour, it's highly unlikely this is going to happen. They can't also keep it only for themselves and block for others or they'll get unfair trade practices action on their backs. Thr fact that Apple which…

Not true at all..this would have significant monetary impact. If advertisers lose to ability to monitor purchases at a granular level attributed to advertiser specific initiatives they will not spend and that has a chain effect that trickles to apple since they take 30% cuts of all in app revenue. If advertisers pull the plug on in app purchases and go around...they may go the route of removing IDFA to screw over advertisers for trying to go around their App store.

Re: How Facebook tracks you on Android [video]

#213

Post by vageli » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #106

vageli wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? F-Droid usually lists apps that I "won't like" because they include non-free software.

F-droid doesn't have non-free software. F-droid flags some apps with anti-features for various reasons like non-free network services ( https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Category:Apps_with_NonFreeNet_... ), which is quite useless honestly since it makes no difference even if a remote service is free since you don't control that end. Perhaps historically f-droid allowed non-free dependencies ( https://f-droid.org/wiki/pag…

Ah, admittedly it has been some time since I've tried to run a completely free Android device so I may have been mistaken.