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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

#31

But all of the engineers passed LeetCode, how could this be?

Facebook engineering generally is super competent. Leet code or not, such slip ups are bound to happen from time to time. True test of competence would be these mistakes don't repeat and that they learn from it, which I'm pretty sure they would.

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

#34

Why is facebook spyware part of Spotify. I signed up to Spotify via email not facebook login.

It’s part of most apps you use on your phone - Facebook is great for app download campaigns and adding the SDK means end to end visibility on marketing. So “everyone” is using it.

In an abstract sense this is similar to how Facebook (ab)used the like button on 3rd party sites to track anyone using that site. Only it’s much worse because with an app SDK they have access to much more sensitive data.

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

#35
post #15

I block all Facebook domains with the NextDNS iOS app — didn't seem to be affected by this. Blocking spyware has its perks.

Same here and I’ve always been a bit skeptical about how well it actually works but I’m pleasantly surprised by the results of this impromptu test!

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

#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 and run your mobile app. So really the Facebook SDK is there to collect data of that advertisement being effective and provides both Facebook and the mobile app developer with knowledge of how their ad spend went.

Is that "spyware"? Some would call it merely wanting to know if your marketing budget was wisely spent - I suppose a lot depends on what data it collects on people.

More info: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-ads

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

#39
Seems to be some suggestions now that apps were continuing to crash even after commenting out the FB implementation because FB is managing to do remote API calls just because the framework is linked.

https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk/issues/1373#iss...

> It does not matter. Their libraries are dynamic, and they abuse +load functions for classes with some business logic calls. So, +load will be called anyway on the application launch when dyld loads all linked frameworks.

and

> I really don't understand why it is still crashing when we turn it off? Could you please explain, why there is a remote connection even we comment out the implementation? Linking binary framework just enough to break things down, why? What do you do in background? Sending or receiving some data even it's not been initialized?

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

#40

But all of the engineers passed LeetCode, how could this be?

Facebook engineering generally is super competent. Leet code or not, such slip ups are bound to happen from time to time. True test of competence would be these mistakes don't repeat and that they learn from it, which I'm pretty sure they would.

> “ True test of competence would be these mistakes don't repeat and that they learn from it, which I'm pretty sure they would.”

Which begs the question why test engineers with leetcode trivia bullshit. You are yourself emphasizing why their interview process (and they are just one of many offenders) is so bananas inappropriate.

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