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I CAN'T WAIT for decentralized infrastructure to finally become robust enough that clones of instagram and facebook can all share a network -- they'll all become portals to the same social graph data. When that happens, there will no longer be any reason to put up with this abuse of privacy garbage.
How will we have privacy when the graph is open?
I might be one of the few, but I like the ads I see on Instagram and have purchased lots of things via IG ads. I can’t think of any other app/site where the ads have sucked me in. I realize this is besides the point, but I thought it was worth sharing in terms of how they might be doing personalization. For me, it’s so good that it actually works.
I CAN'T WAIT for decentralized infrastructure to finally become robust enough that clones of instagram and facebook can all share a network -- they'll all become portals to the same social graph data. When that happens, there will no longer be any reason to put up with this abuse of privacy garbage.
It'll be this cycle of a new platform being fresh and trendy, then they become bigger, care about being taken seriously by traditional media, for getting ad deals with the big players, then a new platform pops up, cycle repeats.
I might be one of the few, but I like the ads I see on Instagram and have purchased lots of things via IG ads. I can’t think of any other app/site where the ads have sucked me in. I realize this is besides the point, but I thought it was worth sharing in terms of how they might be doing personalization. For me, it’s so good that it actually works.
Google AdWords was great, you search for product X you definitely wanted to buy X, that's reasonable personalization.
Now they want to know who you are, so they can optimize manipulatating you to want X even if you didn't before you saw their ad.
There's a big difference between the two type of advertising, although they're both personalized. One is aligning stake holders interest, the other forms an adversarial dynamics.
Of course, in reality, these are the two ends of a spectrum, I dichotomized it to make my point clearer.
For all the free market cheerleaders, remember this: we already have laws in place preventing or regulating businesses from engaging in certain activities, like exploitation, gambling, addictive drugs, etc. And these companies fighting Apple want to do exactly that: Epic wants to sell digital gambling (loot) boxes to children. Facebook and Instagram want to track everything you do every second of the day, for the dubious goal of making advertising “more relevant to you” (and just happens to have the small side effect of being a tool currently in use to topple democracies around the world). Social networks are hooking into addiction centers of the brain to keep people hooked on misinformation that is actually killing people.
Is Apple perfect? No. Is this one thing going to stop all that I mentioned? No. But you have to start somewhere.
I hate being in a position to defend Facebook or Instagram, but independent of the size of any of the platforms, Apple is a gatekeeper for them, not the other way around.
Given that Android has a 75% share[0] of the mobile OS market, that isn't really true. Apple is a gatekeeper for the 23% or so of mobile devices.
I think that giving end users control over what data about them is exfiltrated from their devices is a good thing. And assuming that applies to Apple apps as well, it sounds like a win for IOS users.
N.B.: I do not currently, nor have I ever owned an Apple device. Even the Apple ][ I built from a kit in high school was a clone and not Apple hardware.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...
I hate being in a position to defend Facebook or Instagram, but independent of the size of any of the platforms, Apple is a gatekeeper for them, not the other way around.
However, hasn't this happened just because they themselves wanted to be mobile first - mostly due to the fact that it was (and partially still is) a "virgin territory" in which abusing users privacy is easer? Sounds like they should only blame themselves...
Not just "mobile first", but they were iPhone-only for the first eighteen months:
* https://techland.time.com/2012/04/03/no-joke-instagram-is-fi...
* https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/03/tech/mobile/instagram-android...
How many users Facebook or Instagram has is beside the point which is that Apple is most definitely abusing its market position.
Watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix, see how far off the rails the industry has gone, then come back and tell me that Apple is the bad guy here. Someone needs to start standing up for what’s right, and Apple is probably the only one with the size and cash reserves to be able to do it. For all the free market cheerleaders, remember this: we already have laws in place preventing or regulating businesses from engaging…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're 100% right. Everything Apple does can be construed as "abuse" if someone is willing to argue in bad faith. iOS now tells you when one app pastes content from the clipboard, if the contents of the clipboard came from another app. e.g., You copy a zip code from Messages, and then switch to the "HN-Maps" app. If HN-Maps sniffs the clipboard in order to suggest that zip code as a destination, you see a notificatio…
> iOS now tells you when one app pastes content from the clipboard, if the contents of the clipboard came from another app. Does it do that for all apps, or only non-Apple-apps?