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Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

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Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#101

Post by ben_w »

notpushkin wrote: post #91
gruez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different threat model. You're thinking of big tech companies like Meta, who are big enough to warrant regulatory attention. I'm thinking of fly-by-night shady app developers that make flashlight/weather/"security"/IoT/game apps, that fly under the radar because they're too small.

Not really the kind of apps people would sideload?

The reason I would rather we'd kept walled gardens (plural is fine, given that monopolies are also bad) is that I expect such apps will quickly become sideloaded soon after it becomes possible.

We shall see — that may simply be a security mindset paranoia on my part.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#102

Post by gruez »

nrabulinski wrote: post #98
gruez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People might not sideload a flashlight app, but they're probably going to sideload an IoT app (especially if they bought the corresponding product first) and games (especially if their friends are peer pressuring them into it).

Then the EU can stop them from selling their products to EU customers, since as soon as you’re providing services to EU customers you’re obliged to play by EU rules

>Then the EU can stop them from selling their products to EU customers

So you want the EU to play whack-a-mole with fly by night IoT vendors, some of which might be shipping directly from China? Or do you want to fix this with even more regulation, like requiring licenses to import IoT products or whatever?

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#103

Post by Spooky23 »

notpushkin wrote: post #91
gruez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different threat model. You're thinking of big tech companies like Meta, who are big enough to warrant regulatory attention. I'm thinking of fly-by-night shady app developers that make flashlight/weather/"security"/IoT/game apps, that fly under the radar because they're too small.

Not really the kind of apps people would sideload?

Once side loading is available, the stupids will do it for “freedom” or whatever.

Regulating the AppStore makes sense. Proliferating lots of them is the most inane policy decision ever.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#104

Post by ImJamal »

gruez wrote: post #70
twoodfin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple routinely rejects apps that try tactics like this. Otherwise it'd be an easy way around the "Ask App Not To Track" prompt.

>Apple routinely rejects apps that try tactics like this. This is going to be irrelevant in the EU once sideloading gets popular.

What makes you think it will get popular? Android has had it forever and almost nobody uses it.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#105

Post by paldepind2 »

mort96 wrote: post #58
paldepind2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All their other “products” are just suction pipes for hoovering up that data. I don't think that's true for their VR/MR hardware. That's Meta's attempt to get a product that is _not_ like that, but which instead gets them in a position similar to where Google and Apple are for phones. I.e., where they own the platform and can profit off of that.

Dude they tried to force you to log in with your Facebook account to use your hardware. Everything made by that wretched company is tainted.

That's true, but then, I'm not saying that the Quest is an offline-only device without cloud features. I'm saying that Meta didn't invest $63 billion just to create a "suction pipe for hoovering up that data". They have much bigger ambitions than that.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#107

Post by jaredklewis »

saurik wrote: post #82
br0wnr1c3 wrote: post #66

I think one of my personal issues with allowing Meta to access these private APIs is that they may not take "don't allow" for an answer. I have WhatsApp to talk to some family and I recently disabled allowing all contacts in iOS 18. WhatsApp now has a persistent notification at the top of messages to "Allow All Contacts". If Apple allows users to choose whether or not to give Meta access, and users choose "no", Meta…

> I have WhatsApp to talk to some family and I recently disabled allowing all contacts in iOS 18. WhatsApp now has a persistent notification at the top of messages to "Allow All Contacts". If this is still possible, then Apple fucked up the implementation of this feature, as clearly there should be no way to differentiate not having bothered to fill out a ton of contacts and having limited access for an app to see yo…

No? For this particular case if the api exposed a bunch of bogus contacts then the WhatsApp app would be displaying and autocompleting non-existent contacts to the user throughout the UI, which would be a horrible UX.

There are cases where you can fake data and cases where you need to be able to block access and the apps should respect that.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#108

Post by paxys »

gruez wrote: post #71
Yeul wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like on Android? Hell nowadays you can choose "approximate location" instead of tracking people. App permissions have come a long way.

>You mean like on Android? Hell nowadays you can choose "approximate location" instead of tracking people. Apps can and do detect this and deny access certain features. For instance the mcdonalds app won't give you offers if you choose approximate location.

And there's nothing wrong with that. If users don't have the will power to close and delete the app when faced with such a situation then that's on them. An adult has the right to decide that their privacy is worth a 50 cent discount off a shitty burger.

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#109

Post by NikolaNovak »

oefrha wrote: post #35
NikolaNovak wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got a new iPhone two weeks ago (corporate mandated:(. I don't recall messages, photos, apple maps, notes, camera, calendar etc asking me detailed permissions. I think health did ask for some. Installing equivalent Facebook messenger, Google photos, Google calendar, etc also of course did. (Greediest award goes to whatsapp which basically doesn't work unless you grant it full access to contacts boo)

I had to contact someone in Europe so I started using WhatsApp. It does work without granting access to contacts, but it seems I can't even assign a name to a number without the contacts permission, so thousands of messages later the contact is still a bare number. Really scummy behavior. I probably would have caved if I had a number of contacts. And no iPad app, wtf.

Can you initiate a conversation? My experience with WhatsApp is that if I don't give it access to contacts, other people have to initiate conversation. I cannot just tell it to start a chat with phone 123 456 7890 (this is on Android).

I guess it's debatable whether that's categorized as "it works" :>

Re: Apple and Meta go to war over interoperability vs. privacy

#110

Post by mort96 »

paldepind2 wrote: post #105
mort96 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude they tried to force you to log in with your Facebook account to use your hardware. Everything made by that wretched company is tainted.

That's true, but then, I'm not saying that the Quest is an offline-only device without cloud features. I'm saying that Meta didn't invest $63 billion just to create a "suction pipe for hoovering up that data". They have much bigger ambitions than that.

If they have other ambitions, those ambitions haven't materialised yet. Selling decent hardware at a loss and profiting from hoovering up user data is all Facebook has accomplished with the Quest so far from what I can see.
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