Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

I’m technical enough to be using PiHole[1], and also have AdBlockers[2] at the local machines. I live with very typical friends, family, and relatives who would still ask my help configuring Wi-Fi, buying the right UPS models, scared when papers got curled up in their printers. (I moved to NextDNS[3] from PiHole, where I don’t have to manage something for a small premium.)

I’ve been successful enough to train my family to use 1Password[4], calendar their school works, etc. I’m not against paying for the things that my family and I get happiness from, such as YouTube Premium, Zoom, and the like.

I stopped using Facebook 5+ years back but maintained my account just so I can help families, friends who will usually ask me to fix their page for their tiny businesses, find or set up something new.

When Mark Zuckerberg said something to the effect of -- we do algorithms to help and serve people get the right ads; my thoughts were, “Wrong Question. Why the f*k would someone wants ads in the first place?”

But then, I realized that my wife likes the ads that come up on her Facebook, Instagram accounts. That is where she “discovers” all the awesome things she likes. So does my daughter. She loves the ads about Roblox, Minecraft, and the like. She had warned me to stop messing with her computers and trying to make them “behave like yours!”

The real world is an entirely different place where most people barely know anything of the underlying technology beyond the thin veil of interfaces that they use. Facebook and many others take advantage of that. If I'm choosing between the devils, I'd choose the lesser one.

1. https://pi-hole.net

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_blocking

3. https://nextdns.io

4. https://1password.com

I completely agree that it is a healthy attitude to have, and all of Apple's claims should be independently investigated. But I also agree that you should check facts or provide citations before spreading FUD:

- There was never any API for a third party app on iOS to get the time spent in another app. The only workaround I saw to this was an app that asked you to screenshot your app usage screen, and it was able to process those screenshots in an automated way (can't find the link).

- There is an API to open URLs between apps, so that one app can link to another app. When developers realized that they could check whether or not a given URL was openable to check if an app is installed, they started abusing this API to check every app on the system. Apple cracked down on the API in iOS 9 and made it so that all apps declare which other apps they can check, and App Review decides if they have a legitimate use: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio...

There's no incentives for Facebook to "sell" their user data as long as this is the primary advantage over their competitors including Google, Amazon, MS, etc. Big techs naturally tend to monopolize connections to its users and FB is no exception.

In fact, if they "sell" their user data, anti-trust regulators will be very happy; they want big techs to share user data to its competitors but the big techs are using user privacy and security as their excuses to rule out new competitions in the industry. Apple took the lead and other big techs are now following.

Facebook offers libraries for iOS (and Android) developers to add features Facebook login, but which include other features like native app analytics and drop-in widgets that serve Facebook ads.

If it's not obvious, these Facebook libraries are trojan malware, full stop. And, even though iOS apps are sandboxed, if 50% of a user's apps have the same Facebook library baked into them, it's not hard for Facebook to link all that data together to determine usage patterns across apps.

The reason why they're fighting with Apple now is that it used to be much easier for Facebook to obtain a device-unique identifier that each app could forward along to Facebook, giving them device-level usage data. Apple now sees the privacy flaws in device-unique ids, and has either started or plans to start rotating those device ids and making them unique at the app-level only, which reduces the resolution of its tracking from the device level to the network level.

Also, many elders cannot differentiate legitimate links and ads. They are more innocent than we can imagine.