Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#91

Post by kalleboo » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

smallbigfish wrote: post #83

buzzert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it appalling? Can you be more specific?

That even today many European languages don't even have a basic dictionary. I'm not talking about the "guess the next word" feature. All I want is a dictionary that could suggest a correction to a misspelled word. Use two languages at once? No way! I guess they need to invent a new chip or something. Swipe to type? Hehe. The keyboard in itself is fast and good but it lacks features.

> Swipe to type? Hehe

That's finally coming in iOS 13

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#92

Post by calimac » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

THANK YOU APPLE!!!!!

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#93

Post by hermitdev » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

lyctc wrote: post #61

freehunter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty nice and I was considering subscribing because of them lifting the paywall but it doesn’t seem like they show the subscription cost until after you’ve given them your email address and created a password? I always assume if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. It just seems when you click the “subscribe now” button it would tell you the price of the subscription on the next page.

The footer's Payment Policy says: Monthly – $39 Annually – $399

$400 annually for a news site as a casual user? Fuck no.

Edit: I mean, my wife's Netflix sub is on about $14/month, which we would use far more often than a random single website. About 3x a Netflix subscription for a single "news" site? I think they're dramatically overvalualing themselves.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#94

Post by daliusd » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #19

I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…

I have messenger installed and I see the same. Honestly I think in this case it is only development team incompetence doing cache invalidation properly.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#95

Post by giancarlostoro » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #19

I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…

Have you tried messenger.com from your browser?

Edit:

Just went on it. On a browser you have to enable desktop mode for login to show.

Also if you login this way and disable desktop mode it forces you out. If you reenable it renders the chat. Theres no reason the chat wouldnt work on Mobile desktop mode isnt using a different browser just lying to the web server and frontend JS.

Amazing. I already rarely use Facebook as it is. I might just outright stop since they are dying to infest your phone so badly.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#96

Post by buildzr » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:15 AM UTC

Am I reading this right? If WhatsApp and similar are no longer able to implement End-To-End crypto because they have to use an Apple API which supports only specific protocols, this is going to be a huge loss for users.

I've considered switching to an iOS device, but stuff like this keeps me away, I'm very glad I can keep direct SIP, SSH, IMAP and XMPP connections open at all hours of the day.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#97

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:17 AM UTC

b_tterc_p wrote: post #63

Messenger app initiated a conversation between me and a random friend so we could talk about our 5 year friendship anniversary. Couldn’t fathom who thought that would work.

While not exactly the same, I see people in Slack workgroups that will dutifully respond to the Slack bot, which can die in a fire. While it's usually welcome someone to the channel or whatever, it's all annoying as hell. So, yes, I can easily see people dutifully following the app's suggestion.

Hell, people randomly text their phone number neighbor. People are really just sheep.

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#98

Post by vincentmarle » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:23 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #46

acdha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption: they’re abusing the VoIP feature to stay running in the background, which is trading battery life for better surveillance of your activities. Apple is doing it to _protect_ privacy by closing one of the ways unscrupulous app developers keep trackers running.

It has everything to do with end-to-end encryption. Prior to iOS 10, the only way to display notifications for end-to-end encrypted chat without giving Apple a plaintext copy of everything in the notification was to abuse the VoIP feature. More specifically, the "PushKit VoIP API" Facebook's spokesperson mentioned allowed services to push down an opaque blob of data and have their apps immediately wake up in the back…

> Prior to iOS 10, the only way to display notifications for end-to-end encrypted chat without giving Apple a plaintext copy of everything in the notification was to abuse the VoIP feature.

It’s not the only way, but VoIP is the most reliable way. You can accomplish the same thing with encrypted silent push notifications, that wake up the app and trigger a decrypted local notification. Problem is that silent push notifications aren’t reliable because they don’t always wake up the app (which is throttled by the OS).

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#99

Post by o-__-o » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:27 AM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #95

codeulike wrote: post #19

I've noticed something sneaky about Facebook on my phone. I refuse to install their apps but I do use Facebook a bit so I use it via the phone Browser (in my case, Chrome on Android). I've noticed that sometimes Facebook shows a fake 'youve got a message' icon to try and trick you into installing their messenger app. To re-produce this behaviour: (this works best if you dont get a lot of facebook messages. Also you n…

Have you tried messenger.com from your browser? Edit: Just went on it. On a browser you have to enable desktop mode for login to show. Also if you login this way and disable desktop mode it forces you out. If you reenable it renders the chat. Theres no reason the chat wouldnt work on Mobile desktop mode isnt using a different browser just lying to the web server and frontend JS. Amazing. I already rarely use Facebook…

U s a g e S t a t i s t i c s

Re: Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

#100

Post by EGreg » Wed, Aug 07, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

What are the details? What will change?

We will still have VoIP Push Notifications? We personally rely on them to encrypt the notification payloads and increase privacy so our servers can’t read the plaintext of the notification. Is that now going away?