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Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

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Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#261

Post by drawkbox »

bschwindHN wrote: post #224

Hi everyone, Please use the oauth-only version for login and strip the facebook SDK garbage from your apps. It seems it's not worth the trouble.

The Facebook SDK is a single point of failure it seems.

If you must integrate Facebook, it is better to use OAuth + API and then control every call, only necessary ones needed i.e. login, friends, maybe game leaderboards, profile photo, etc.

Not sure why people are still putting the Facebook SDK in their apps, it is basically malware and tracking for authoritarian ends [1][2].

Engineers are supposed to be anti-authoritarians.

Engineers are supposed to be into decentralization and distributed systems, and not have single points of failure like libs with hard crashes that inject network calls that don't fail gracefully before your app can even launch.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/yuri-milner-faceboo...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-f...

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#262

Post by dan15 »

Nicksil wrote: post #52
yllus wrote: post #36

For those wondering why the Facebook SDK is so widely used in popular mobile apps: Facebook Login is actually in the minority of reasons to add the Facebook SDK to your mobile app. The vast majority of apps will add the Facebook SDK because it contains Facebook App Ads; a library that "completes the circle" in terms of finding out how effectively the ads you ran on Facebook were at getting people to download, install…

>Is that "spyware"? Yes, absolutely. It uses energy and bandwidth I paid for to surreptitiously transmit my information for use which will solely benefit Facebook and the software developer.

Do you feel the same about Google Analytics? Its data collection is very similar.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#263

Post by zlorch »

MCKapur wrote: post #17
surferbayarea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah these SDKs are siphoning off data without authorization like your location, songs you listen to and who knows what else (eg other processes or apps running on your phone). Eg the latest iOS exploit allows any app to get access to all SMS data. Tech companies of today trample upon individual privacy openly. Amazing!

i'm by a longshot no facebook fan but... are you sure the SDK can actually siphon out what songs you listen or your location from the app it's sandboxed in (which, BTW, is in its own sandbox from an iOS system POV, and also has its own set of permissions)?

I think he's talking in general. I worked at Spotify for a while and I can tell you the only reason they have the FB SDK bundled is to provide login. They dont use FB for any tracking or attribution at all, for that they have other frameworks. They are aware of the FB SDK misbehaving in some cases and do take steps to prevent it.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#264

Post by dan15 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #246
floatingatoll wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook chose to make Facebook Login spyware, and Spotify didn't think anyone would mind when they did, because who cares about tracking? and/or wasn't aware, because who could realize this from the unclear Facebook docs? (Either is possible!) That was a very pre-2019 decision, and now that Facebook just set the world on fire, we're probably going to see a lot fewer Login with Facebook.

The ironic thing is that you can actually implement Facebook login in a privacy-respectful manner by using standard oAuth where Facebook is only contacted when the user decides to log in with it (which is mostly fine as they have an account anyway and thus consent to Facebook tracking).

It's likely that apps that load the SDK are using other features of it, such as Facebook Analytics (which is similar to Google Analytics), not just login with Facebook.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#265

Post by MrGilbert »

Nicksil wrote: post #205
marmada wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm in the minority here -- but I don't understand the problem. Software developers want to know whether their existing marketing methods are effective. The FB SDK helps with this. You always have the choice to not install the app (if you don't want to). This also helps developers make sure their marketing is effective and reaching the right people, which seems like a win-win to me.

>Software developers want to know whether their existing marketing methods are effective. The FB SDK helps with this. As you mention, this is something the software developer want, not necessarily the user . >You always have the choice to not install the app (if you don't want to). This argument may have some teeth if directed toward a user in our industry. Depending on the scope of the particular software in questio…

> It's all about what the software developer wants, not the user and that's not OK.

I work in Software Development. Most of the time, the user doesn't know what he or she wants. They might feel that something is just not right, but don't know why, or cannot express why, because they don't know. Or don't care: I used to send out surveys, and the response rate was usually around 300 out of 50.000 confirmed users. That's... not much. At least for me, if I need to make major decisions.

My main takeaway with metrics is that I'm fine to give metrics to the vendor, as long as it's only me and the vendor, and as long as I know what it's used for. Also, it depends a lot on what is tracked.

Starting and closing the app, ways the user took to get to a certain point - I'm fine with that. But dare you transmitting my file names over to your server. Or any data I enter. That's none of your business.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#266

Post by asquabventured »

Waze, a company owned by Google was also broken and force crashing over and over again for a few hours.

Whenever I hear of some Facebook offering all I think of is when you dance with the devil, you shouldn't be surprised when you get burned.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#267

Post by busymom0 »

drawkbox wrote: post #261
bschwindHN wrote: post #224

Hi everyone, Please use the oauth-only version for login and strip the facebook SDK garbage from your apps. It seems it's not worth the trouble.

The Facebook SDK is a single point of failure it seems. If you must integrate Facebook, it is better to use OAuth + API and then control every call, only necessary ones needed i.e. login, friends, maybe game leaderboards, profile photo, etc. Not sure why people are still putting the Facebook SDK in their apps, it is basically malware and tracking for authoritarian ends [1][2]. Engineers are supposed to be anti-author…

> Engineers are supposed to be anti-authoritarians

Strongly disagree on this. Exact opposite maybe but I don't want to generalize. Modern authoritarian tactics are pretty much impossible without engineering.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#268

Post by busymom0 »

jeffbee wrote: post #206
RandallBrown wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A consulting company or a company that makes "white label" apps like for restaurants or stores.

Can we agree that each restaurant having a separate app is one of the dumbest outcomes imaginable?

That's not how it actually is. Apple actually rejects those type of template apps. The restaurants use an ad-hoc way of installing the apps. So those apps are only available to the restaurant for example.

Re: Facebook iOS SDK Remotely Crashing Spotify, TikTok, Pinterest, Winno and More

#270

Post by rendall »

edmundsauto wrote: post #192
admax88q wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really just a variant of the "and yet you participate in society, hmmm" argument. At some point users are allowed to complain about shady behaviour done by huge corporations with resources they use to try to thrust their way into everyones lives.

And at some point, companies are allowed to make their own decisions about how they want to instrument and monetize their products. This general complaint about not liking a component of someone else's software doesn't resonate with me at all. Not that you're wrong, but we just have different values. I sometimes will load a website that uses React when really it's just a static content site. It just gets tiring, and…

>

With sincere respect, I don't understand this argument, in general, whenever it comes up. Whenever I find a discussion unhelpful or tedious, I move on or mute it. Often, I've been in an interesting online discussion, and someone pipes up with the wish for everyone to stop talking about this topic because it's not interesting, when they have the tools available to not follow the discussion.

Can you explain? Honest question.

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