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App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

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Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#281

Post by marinosbern »

letitbeirie wrote: post #250
marinosbern wrote: post #194

While Spotify crashing on launch may be a nuisance, this also affects life-critical apps crashing on launch. Our forensic analysis [1] found that half of the top 21 iOS safety apps send data to Facebook, and last time this happened back in May we spot-checked some of these safety apps and they were all crashing on launch. The SDK is typically included for ad attribution/tracking, not Facebook login, so it wouldn’t ev…

I've installed dozens of life-safety-critical services and none of them had ads or the Facebook SDK for very good reasons. AMA.

> I've installed dozens of life-safety-critical services and none of them had ads or the Facebook SDK

Can you give a few examples?

> none of them had ads

The comment was about the Facebook SDK being used for ad attribution, not that the apps themselves have ads.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#282

Post by baxtr »

chancemehmu wrote: post #45
baxtr wrote: post #16

I recently learned that you need the FB SDK in your iOS app if you want to promote it on FB or Insta. So I guess most apps doing social marketing have the SDK.

This is not true.

Hmm, strange then. We tried it just recently and it would not let us create Insta ads w/o the FB SDK. Can you point to a source?

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#283

Post by fsociety »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #236
emerongi wrote: post #228

The most popular apps on one of the most popular operating systems just plainly don't even open. What has this industry become? How are we so goddamn inept at writing software? This is an industry where we can automate testing - not many other industries have this capability - and we still don't have a simple test regime of "check if the app opens" for any of those apps. Somehow, at the most valuable software compani…

Years ago, I had one of the employee builds on my company phone, and it picked up an update and would "instacrash" - tap the icon, and it'd die immediately. Crash. Crash. Crash. A couple of days later I caught up with the people allegedly responsible for this stuff in the bigger review meeting. "Shouldn't you open a SEV because you are shipping stuff that can't possibly work and aren't catching it pre-release?" The r…

Yep at such a large company there is such huge variance in quality. Wish you and many others were still here to help fight against this mindset. There is lots of high quality work done here, but it doesn’t matter if we end up with issues like this.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#284

Post by musha68k »

barbs wrote: post #233
levosmetalo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up after realizing that Signal will not deliver message for a couple of days and that message notification doesn't work. Why wasting personal credit on something that is clearly inferior from the usability point of view. And after it started insisting on creating a PIN each time I start Signal, I finally deleted it from my phone. You can forget about security if you can't get a seamless user experience.

> I gave up after realizing that Signal will not deliver message for a couple of days and that message notification doesn't work. That has never happened to me.

I think it used to be the case back in 2015 or so, I believe they meanwhile fixed the issue. For sure it hasn't happened to me for a couple of years now.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#285

Post by corndoge »

slipheen wrote: post #271
corndoge wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. If hacker news goes down while you are writing this comment, it is your responsibility to ensure you can still post your comment despite the service breakage.

Unless your app is designed for browsing Facebook, there's no reason that anything on Facebook's servers should affect if your app works. Many of the apps crashing are using Facebook for a portion of their app, such as one login option. Letting that take down the whole app is insufficiently defensive coding, whether in the app, sdk, or glue between them.

How do you defend against abort() in library code?

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#286

Post by mattgreenrocks »

blantonl wrote: post #277
emerongi wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not. The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch them as we go. No long-term thinking. Someone should collect all these horrible incidents and start a university course on just plainly what NOT to do.

Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook. As much as I would love to rip on Facebook, I also understand that integrated software development is hard, and I guarantee you that Facebook is "doing it better" than most. Don't sit in an ivory tower and throw stones in glass houses. Can you guarantee that your own SDLC house is in order? Because it might be, right up until a sneaky edge c…

Let's avoid lionizing/denigrating here.

They're using static initialization and it bit them in the ass again. They should stop using it because it is prone to things like this which result in apps not launching at all. I'd like to see them commit to stop using this method to initialize themselves, and take responsibility for the crashes. Then, IMO, we'd be good.

In a scenario like this, I'd hope they'd want to make this bug's recurrence impossible.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#287

Post by anonms-coward »

beagle3 wrote: post #214
anonms-coward wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I definitely disagree with the way drive doesn't give access to users for their own data, I think giving access has it's own problems, as you might land in another Cambridge analytica type situation. 1. Shady addictive game requires full access to drive. 2. Shady game downloads all your chats with all contacts 3. FB is on fire since they allowed access to people's chats with others, even those who didn't downlo…

The same list you gave already applies to data already readable on Google Drive - most people have data that can be used against them on those drives. Also, many apps ask for (And get) permission to read contacts and messages on your phone. Claiming that this is the reason is sort of like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the titanic when you can see the iceberg. Much more likely it is to stop import/export to a…

The number of people who use whatsapp is an order of magnitude or more than the number of people who consciously use Google drive, as in people who know google drive exists. Even the people who have google drive, most of them have much less intimate data on it than in their private messages on WhatsApp.

If we are to take the position that all users are tech literate and should be fully in charge of how their data is used, then even Cambridge analytica wasn't bad. People explicitly gave it access to data that was accessible to them. However, the uproar proves otherwise. People don't like it when they click yes yes and some random app has access to their social media data or messages. This is why Gmail also started requiring independent audit for all gmail apps.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#288

Post by scarface74 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #268
scarface74 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly how much money does Apple make from free apps? If Apple wanted to make money , it should make it harder for advertising supported apps to make money and force apps to either not exist or get people to pay for them. I would be okay with that.

I guess Apple will have to weigh whether they'll want to tolerate the Fb app on iOS, but more probably they have a deal with Fb (else they would've kicked them out already). Considering Fb is said to be the main portal for "the web" as a Fb user might see it (which I find still very hard to believe for a number of reasons), if the Fb app (or worse, WhatsApp) isn't on iOS, with Safari and FF already blocking most trac…

I would think that Spotify would want to remove the SDK. It doesn’t need the marketing tie ins anymore and it doesn’t use FB for advertising.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#289

Post by frenchy »

slipheen wrote: post #271
corndoge wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. If hacker news goes down while you are writing this comment, it is your responsibility to ensure you can still post your comment despite the service breakage.

Unless your app is designed for browsing Facebook, there's no reason that anything on Facebook's servers should affect if your app works. Many of the apps crashing are using Facebook for a portion of their app, such as one login option. Letting that take down the whole app is insufficiently defensive coding, whether in the app, sdk, or glue between them.

> there's no reason that anything on Facebook's servers should affect if your app works.

Absolutely, but the problem is that in order for you to use these features, you're supposed to use the official Facebook SDK. The additional problem, is that Facebook has no interest in defensive coding, because if you're not interacting with Facebook in an app, there's no benefit to Facebook for you using that app at all.

Re: App suddenly crashing on startup due to FBSDKRestrictiveDataFilterManager.m

#290

Post by emerongi »

blantonl wrote: post #277
emerongi wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not. The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch them as we go. No long-term thinking. Someone should collect all these horrible incidents and start a university course on just plainly what NOT to do.

Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook. As much as I would love to rip on Facebook, I also understand that integrated software development is hard, and I guarantee you that Facebook is "doing it better" than most. Don't sit in an ivory tower and throw stones in glass houses. Can you guarantee that your own SDLC house is in order? Because it might be, right up until a sneaky edge c…

If an industry leader with "the brightest software engineers in the world" is unable to write their software to a higher than average standard, then I think I am in the very reasonable position to point it out and raise discussion about it. Don't place me in an ivory tower for that.

Why should we just sweep this under the rug and call it a day? There is something very important that can be learned from this. Apparently, FB themselves have not learned, because this is not the first time this has happened. Why was this allowed to happen more than once? Did Apple, Google, Spotify, Facebook etc not take any actions?

"Shit happens" is one way to look at it. Another way is to question whether we as software engineers are really doing our job properly.

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